Summer Tubing is Latest, Greatest Colorado Craze

The latest, greatest craze in Colorado is summer tubing.

The ski season may be over, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be heading to the slopes for fun.

The YMCA Snow Mountain Ranch, near Winter Park, is the place to be for summer tubing. Summer tubing is like inner tubing on the snow -- except there is no snow.

This is the first tubing hill of its kind in Colorado, and only the third in the entire country.

For $35, you can spend the day flying down the big hill on a tube - but that price also includes other activities like mini-golf, an indoor pool, tennis courts, hiking and biking trails among other things. It's $25 for kids 6-12 and $15 for children 3-5.

Summer tubing should be pretty good exercise, though it doesn't look like you have to climb all the way back to the top. A conveyor belt moves people at least part way up the mountain for the next trip down the slope, so you shouldn't completely wear out after a couple of trips up and down the mountain.

Give summer tubing a try, and enjoy the summer.