The Colorado outdoor recreation office has doled out more than $3.7 million to 49 projects in 27 counties in the last two years. The latest dollop of pandemic-recovery dollars from the U.S. Economic Development Administration is heading to the Cuchara ski area, which closed 24 years ago.
The $250,000 from the state is not going toward getting the shuttered ski area’s long idled chairlift running. It’s going toward operating expenses to support a now eight-year community-based effort to breathe new life into the southern Colorado ski hill.
“This one was a real learning curve,” said Conor Hall, the director of the state’s outdoor recreation office. “The grant for Cuchara was a great example of adapting and learning together to find a way that ultimately helps this project in a pretty big way.”
Last winter, after struggling to get the ski area’s base-area chairlift running and approved by the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board, the volunteers behind the effort to fire up Cuchara Mountain Park bolted 11 school bus seats to a car-hauling trailer on skids and attached it to PistenBully snowcat donated from the city of Denver and its Winter Park resort.
“It takes about five minutes for the ride up and then you get to ski back,” said Ken Clayton, with the nonprofit Panadero Ski Corp., which operates the ski area for Huerfano County.
The $250,000 Colorado State Outdoor Recreation Grant could not go toward work on the ski area’s Chair 4 because of federal guardrails on the funding. The nonprofit Cuchara Foundation that has driven the revival of the small ski hill since 2017 applied for the outdoor recreation grant last year, asking specifically for $162,000 to replace the electrical system for Lift 4 so it could pass state muster.
That request got mired in federal guidelines. This year, the Cuchara Foundation tweaked its application to ask for support for operational costs around the volunteer-run ski area, which charges $40 for a day of skiing on about 50 acres. On a snowy winter weekend, it’s not uncommon for more skiers to be skinning up the groomed track — accessing 230 acres of trails on the upper portion of the old ski area in the San Isabel National Forest — than riding in the sled. Uphill access is free — and welcomed — at Cuchara Mountain Park.
“The compliance was so complicated that the decision was made to not spend the federal money going through the state on the lift,” Clayton said. “That allows us to spend the grant money on operations and then we can put our operational funds we have set aside … toward the lift.”
The foundation also received $100,000 from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Outdoor Equity Grant Program, which directs support toward projects that reduce barriers to outdoor recreation. The grant at Cuchara Mountain Park will create two four-day ski and bike camps for students in Huerfano and Las Animas counties, with environmental education lessons alongside training on skis and bikes.
“This will help them envision possible future careers for themselves connected with the outdoors,” reads the foundation’s application for the grant.
A Great Outdoors Colorado grant also supported infrastructure improvements at the ski area.
The confluence of funds flowing into the Cuchara Valley and its struggling ski hill “perfectly captures the impact we are hoping for,” Hall said. “That community has been so inspirational with all the tenacity they have for this project. The benefits from reviving that ski area are long and multifaceted. It will be a source of jobs, community pride and in terms of access to the outdoors, just a tremendous opportunity for their quality of life.”
Cuchara was hosting 30,000 skiers a year when the Texas owner suddenly shut it down in 2000. It was one of several shutdowns by a series of Texas owners since the ski area opened in the 1980s and the Forest Service in 2002 yanked its permit to operate on about 345 federally managed acres. There have been attempts by investors in the past 20 years to fire up the lifts, but nothing has come to fruition.
The Cuchara Foundation raised $150,000 in 2017 to buy 47 acres at the base of the ski area, creating the county-owned Cuchara Mountain Park and sparking a now eight-year effort to get the base-area Chair 4 running.
“It’s going to be a new lift on old lift towers,” Clayton said. There are a lot of older chairlifts running in Colorado, but none of them were shut down for nearly 25 years.
“Now we have to meet modern standards to get that lift running again,” said Clayton, whose group is aiming to enlist lift workers this winter and have Chair 4 running by next summer.
Optimism is high around Cuchara. There’s a groundswell of community support for local ski hills. Nederland is vying to buy nearby Eldora Mountain Resort. Locals in Bend, Oregon, are corralling investors to buy Mt. Bachelor ski area. As behemoths battle for dominance in the ski industry, small nonprofit and municipally owned ski areas — like Lake County’s Ski Cooper, Steamboat Springs’ Howelsen Hill, Silverton’s Kendall Mountain and Durango’s Chapman Hill — are luring more skiers.
Could this be Cuchara’s chance?
“There is quite a bit of disruption in this space right now. Disruption is a powerful force that can drive lasting change,” Hall said.