Powder Ghost Towns. Peter Bronski
who has appeared in more than a dozen feature ski films, including ones from Warren Miller Entertainment and Matchstick Productions. He is the second person to ski all of Colorado’s Fourteeners (http://www.skithe14ers.com), and the first person to complete the feat in a single year.
A skier approaches Ironclad Ridge, with the Rock Creek drainage and lower slopes of Saint Vrain Mountain behind.
Introduction
HISTORY
Because the individual chapters of this book discuss Colorado’s skiing history in great detail, here I’ll paint the picture using only the broadest of brushes, so as to put the individual backcountry destinations and lost resorts into historical context.
The earliest documented skiing in Colorado dates back to the 1850s. Guides, doctors and nurses, priests, mailmen, and miners all skied simply to get about their work and daily lives through the heart of Rocky Mountain winters. Those earliest skis were made from wood, and averaged 8 to 12 feet long. Animal skins strapped to the base of the skis served as the “skins” that allowed for uphill travel.
It wasn’t long before those pioneering skiers were racing one another downhill. By the 1880s, Crested Butte and Gunnison were already hosting ski races. In 1883, the Ski Club at Irwin became the first documented organization devoted to recreational skiing in the state. By 1887, skiers at Ouray had developed “après skiing,” enjoying wine and food together after a day on the slopes.
Colorado hosted the first Winter Carnival west of the Mississippi in 1912 at Hot Sulphur Springs. Many other Winter Carnivals soon followed, as did an influx of Norwegians, Swedes, Swiss, and other talented skiers. Soon, native Coloradans started to leave their own mark on the state’s ski culture. By 1936, Colorado had its first rope tow; by 1939, its first overhead chairlift. Both of these “firsts” belong to ski areas that are now lost, as do other significant milestones—first night skiing, lowest elevation ski area, first double chair.
The 10th Mountain Division, which trained at Camp Hale near Leadville, ushered in another era of skiing for Colorado. When the soldiers returned from World War II, they founded many of the state’s megaresorts that operate today.
Today, only a relative handful of ski areas remain open—27, plus or minus a few in any given year. They include the big resorts—Breckenridge, Vail, Aspen, Telluride, and Steamboat—and also mom-and-pop locations such as Eldora, Monarch, Wolf Creek, and Sunlight. These resorts continue Colorado’s legacy as “Ski Country USA.” But it was the lost ski areas—which total perhaps as many as 200—that started it all.
Looking down the lift line of Bear Bumps at Cuchara Mountain Resort
They closed for many reasons. Competition. Not enough skiers. Inconsistent snowfall. Financial woes. Yet they all share one common attribute—they’ve become Colorado’s “other” ghost towns. They are powder ghost towns, reclaimed by the mountains with the passage of time and falling of snow each winter season. But they remain accessible to the backcountry skier who is willing to leave the beaten track and the lifts behind in search of untouched powder and tangible pieces of Colorado’s skiing past.
USING THIS GUIDE
This section describes how to use the guidebook, including how lost ski areas were selected for inclusion, as well as the information you’ll find within each chapter.
CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION
The selection process for deciding what lost ski areas would be included in the book was, in part, a subjective one. As the author of the book, I had the luxury of deciding which ones did and didn’t make the cut. In general, every ski area had to have a blend of good history and good skiing. But I did try to bring a degree of objectivity to the table. Every ski area also had to satisfy three basic criteria:
It had to be legally and publicly accessible (about half of Colorado’s lost ski areas are on private property);
It had to have enough vertical to make the skiing worthwhile (many lost ski areas were small rope tows with vertical measured at a few hundred feet or less);
It had to have reliable snowfall (more than a few lost ski areas, especially those in the Front Range, closed for lack of consistent snowfall).
Those criteria were more guidelines, though, than hard and fast rules. In the end, I made choices intended to give you—the reader and backcountry skier—the best skiing. If it made sense to link up a smaller lost ski area with a larger area of backcountry terrain above it, I did so. In a select few cases, a historically significant ski area was fully or partly on private property, but the mountain above it or adjacent to it was perfectly public. In those cases I’ve sent you nearby. And in an equally small number of cases, I’ve included significant ski areas that were proposed but never built.
The remainder—the vast majority—are exactly what you’d expect; lost ski areas where you’ll backcountry ski the same runs that were once served by lifts. In some instances, those areas are old enough to have become overgrown almost beyond the point of recognition. In other instances, the lost ski area remains so intact—with buildings and lifts and chairs hanging from those lifts—that the feeling is almost spooky. They genuinely feel like “powder ghost towns.”
In the end, though, the areas selected for inclusion in this book all guide you to my original goal: good skiing blended with good history. And in so doing, they offer a new world of backcountry possibilities to satisfy your powder dreams.
CHAPTER SECTIONS
Every chapter in this book includes the following information for each lost ski area:
| The Essentials | Basic statistics that summarize the area. | |
| The History | Just what it sounds like. | |
| The Trailhead | Where to start. | |
| The Approach | How to get there. | |
| The Descents | How to get back down. | |
| The “Buzz” | What other backcountry skiers have to say about it. | |
| The Après Ski | Where to get food and drink when you’re done on the slopes. |
While most of those sections are largely self-explanatory, the first section—The Essentials—requires greater elaboration. Every chapter begins with a basic summary of statistics that summarize the ski area. Those statistics include:
Nearest Town
The closest town where you can expect to find basic services like gas and dining. This may not necessarily be the closest town as listed on a map, which might not provide those services.
Distance
The one-way distance from the trailhead to the highest point from which you’d start your ski descent.
Vertical
The amount of vertical gain you can expect from the trailhead en route to the high point. Typically, this is listed as the net vertical gain. However, if there is a significant difference between the net gain and the cumulative gain, the overall (cumulative) vertical gain will be listed parenthetically.
Season