This Summer, Lake Dillon Has One Boat Ramp Left. Here's Why Dillon's Survived and Frisco's Didn't.

If you wanted to launch a boat on Dillon Reservoir this summer, you had exactly one option. Not two marinas to choose between, not a quieter alternative if the main ramp had a line. One ramp, serving the entire 3,233-acre lake, for the whole season.

That's not a metaphor. The Town of Frisco closed its public boat ramp and all roughly 160 slips at Frisco Bay Marina for the entire 2026 season, citing low water levels and ongoing drought. Every trailered boat on the reservoir now launches from the Dillon Marina, the only ramp still operating. The interesting part isn't that the drought caused this. It's that the same drought, hitting the same reservoir, produced two completely different outcomes on opposite shores of the same lake. That gap has more to say about how waterfront property actually works here than any headline percentage-full number does.

What Actually Closed at Frisco Bay

Frisco Bay Marina didn't scale back this year. It shut down the parts of its operation that depend on trailered access. The public boat ramp is closed for the season. The main slip system, about 160 slips, is unavailable, along with the temporary dock normally used for nightly, weekly, and monthly rentals. Courtesy docking for boaters visiting from Dillon is gone too.

What's left is a smaller version of the marina: paddle sport and limited power rentals, about 50 mooring balls further out in the reservoir, and the Island Grill still serving lunch and dinner on its deck. Frisco Bay Marina general manager Logan Snyder put it plainly to CBS Colorado back in March, before the season even opened: the main slip system simply wouldn't be available, and the public ramp would stay closed. As of early August, the Town of Frisco's own marina page confirms the reservoir sits at approximately 75 percent full, still open for rentals, but with the same ramp closure standing for the entire season.

The One Ramp Carrying the Whole Reservoir

Meanwhile, the Dillon Marina opened on schedule over Memorial Day weekend and has stayed the only launch point on the lake ever since. Marina director Craig Simson, who CBS Colorado noted goes by the affectionate nickname "the mayor of the Dillon Marina," told the station he expected to be busy and asked boaters to be patient with the lines.

The season hasn't been simple there either. According to the Town of Dillon's own season update, several things changed to keep the ramp functional through a historically dry year:

• The amphitheater dock, normally installed for the summer, was left out entirely and relocated to the launch ramp to speed up boat traffic.
• The marina's blue crane, used for launching and retrieving larger sailboats like Etchells, is inoperable this season. Sailors coordinate directly with staff instead.
• The pump-out barge may not deploy at all due to water levels and power requirements, meaning boaters are told to plan ahead for pump-out service.
• Gangways in some sections rest directly on the shoreline as water levels shift, leading to what staff are calling "long walks on the beach" to reach docked boats.

Despite all of that, the Dillon Marina is still hosting the Dillon Open Regatta in August, still running rentals through Stand Up Paddle Colorado, and still functioning as the reservoir's only Aquatic Nuisance Species inspection site, which every trailered boat on the lake must now pass through before launching.

The 38 Feet Nobody Puts in the Listing

Here's the part that actually explains the gap. It isn't that Dillon has more water than Frisco. Both marinas sit on the same reservoir, at the same elevation, on the same day. The difference is what each ramp was built to reach.

Denver Water's own recreation page states it in plain numbers: the ramp at Dillon Marina becomes unusable for most motorized craft at a water elevation of 8,971 feet. The ramp at Frisco Bay Marina hits that same failure point at 9,009 feet. Full pool for the reservoir is 9,017 feet.

Frisco's ramp can only handle 8 vertical feet of drop before it's out of commission. Dillon's ramp can handle 46 feet, a buffer nearly six times larger, because it was built to extend roughly 60 feet down the shoreline slope, as Simson described to CBS Colorado. That 38-foot gap between the two failure points is the whole story. It's not visible from the parking lot, it's not in most marketing copy, and it's the reason one marina is running a full season and the other closed before Memorial Day even arrived.

Why This Isn't a One-Season Story

It would be easy to treat 2026 as a fluke and move on. Denver Water's water supply manager Nathan Elder doesn't describe it that way. Speaking to Summit County commissioners in March, Elder said that snowpack feeding the reservoir sat at 61 percent of normal, the second-lowest measurement Denver Water has recorded since it started tracking snowpack data in the late 1970s. He called the situation "pretty concerning" and noted forecasters weren't predicting a late-season recovery.

By late June, the reservoir had peaked for the year at 80 percent capacity on June 17, ten days earlier than the prior year's peak and 19.5 percentage points below the 99.5 percent capacity the reservoir reached on June 27, 2025. Elder attributed part of the reservoir holding up as well as it did to lower demand from Front Range users, not just to the snowpack itself, which means the marina outcomes this year reflect both a dry winter and a set of water-management decisions that could look different in a wetter or drier year ahead. Either way, the ramp elevations at Dillon and Frisco don't move. Whatever year comes next, the same 38-foot gap will decide the same outcome if water drops far enough again.

What This Means If You're Comparing Waterfront Property

If you're weighing a lake-adjacent condo in Dillon against one near Frisco Bay, "walk to the marina" sounds like a fixed amenity, the kind of thing that's either true or it isn't. This year shows it's closer to a conditional one. The distance to the water doesn't change. Whether that water is reachable by boat does, and it changes based on infrastructure that's specific to each marina, not to the reservoir as a whole.

That doesn't mean one town's waterfront is a better buy than the other's. It means the due diligence question is different than the one most buyers ask. Instead of just confirming proximity to a marina, it's worth asking:

• Which specific marina does this property's dock or slip access run through, Dillon's or Frisco's?
• Is that marina's ramp or slip access seasonal, and has it been affected in recent low-water years?
• If the property markets short-term rental income tied to boating or marina proximity, does that income assume full-season marina operation, or does it need to account for years like this one?

None of this is a reason to avoid either town. It's a reason to ask more specific questions than the listing photos answer on their own.

A Short FAQ

Does this mean Dillon Marina property is worth more than Frisco Bay property this year? The research doesn't support a value claim either way. What it supports is that access reliability differs by marina, and that's a factor worth weighing alongside the usual ones like price per square foot and HOA terms.

Will Frisco Bay Marina's ramp and slips reopen if next winter's snowpack is closer to normal? The closure this year was tied directly to water elevation. If the reservoir returns closer to full pool, Frisco's ramp would likely be usable again, since the 9,009-foot threshold is well above the historic lows the reservoir has seen in past droughts. Watch the Town of Frisco's own marina updates for the most current word each season.

Is a low-snowpack year like 2026 likely to happen again soon? Denver Water's Nathan Elder described 2026 as a "bottom-four or five year" for Dillon Reservoir storage, meaning it's among the driest the reservoir has seen, though still not as low as the 2002 drought or the 1970s. The utility has already redirected some demand to other sources in its system, including the Antero Reservoir and Williams Fork Reservoir, which is part of why Dillon Reservoir hasn't drawn down to those historic lows even in a season this dry.

If you're weighing a home near Dillon Reservoir, whether it's the marina access, the year-round rec path, or simply how the town's water-adjacent lifestyle actually holds up in a season like this one, that's exactly the kind of question worth walking through with someone who tracks these details locally. Tanya Delahoz has spent two decades in Summit County watching how these small mechanical facts, ramp depths, water rights, marina operations, end up mattering more than the headline numbers ever do. Request a personalized market consultation to talk through what a specific Dillon or Frisco property actually offers this year, not just what its listing photos suggest.