Eldora ski area is located in Boulder County, Colorado near the unincorporated community of Eldora and three miles west of the town of Nederland. This is the closest ski area to the Denver metro area (and by a large margin the closest to Boulder). It is about 20 miles west of Boulder and about 45 miles from downtown Denver. The N bus, operated by RTD, departs Boulder for the ski area five times daily in the winter and serves as easy transportation from town to mountain. The ski area was founded in 1962 and has proven popular partly due to skiers not having to use the extremely busy I-70 to reach the resort.