The Cuchara ski area is set to turn a chairlift for the first time in more than 25 years.
The next step in decades-long plan to revive the dormant Cuchara ski area landed this month as the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board gave preliminary approval to a yearslong, community-driven renovation of the historic Lift #4 at the ski area that first opened in 1981 and last hosted lift-riding skiers in 2000.
The nonprofit Panadero Ski Corp. has spent close to $200,000 in state and federal grants to rebuild the motor and electrical systems of the fixed-grip Riblet double chair that climbs about 270 vertical feet at the now county-owned Cuchara Mountain Park.
“Now the hard part is ahead of us,” said Ken Clayton with the Pandero Ski Corp. “Now we have to operate a ski area and we are going to fine tune it as we go.”
In 2023, the Panadero Ski Corp. started hauling skiers up the dormant ski area using a snowcat and a trailer mounted with bus seats. Huerfano County commissioners in May reached a 40-year agreement with the nonprofit Panadero Ski Corp. to run the county-owned Cuchara Mountain Park.
The county has owned about 47 acres at the base of the former ski area since 2017, when the nonprofit Cuchara Foundation raised $150,000 for Huerfano County to purchase the mountain park from a local couple who acquired the property in a tax sale in 2015.
After online surveys and several public meetings, a 2018 master plan for the park proposed renovations to the base lodge, changing the old patrol building into a cafe and meeting space, developing an amphitheater on the hillside and repairing Lift #4 and the snowmaking system for skiing.
The master plan also proposed phased development of a long list of summer and fall activities — like canopy tours, mountain bike trails and climbing structures — to create a year-round attraction and amenity for the region.
The 40-year agreement with the volunteer-led Panadero Ski Corp. followed two recent proposals by private developers to revive the Cuchara ski area. A pair of Florida developers in 2022 responded to the county’s request for proposals from potential investors with a plan for an adventure park. The county ultimately rejected that plan.
In February, the directors of the Cuchara Foundation sent a letter to Huerfano County commissioners urging them to reject a proposal from a developer considering tiny homes on the county-owned land.
“While we appreciate and fully support the county’s decision to continue partnering with the Panadero Ski Corporation for winter operation, we firmly oppose any for-profit development within the park,” reads the Cuchara Foundation board’s letter. “The introduction of commercial enterprises not only violated the park’s founding principles … it also sets a dangerous precedent for future exploitation of public lands.”
There’s a long history of failed financiers at Cuchara, all of them from Texas. The Panadero Resort first opened in 1981-82 and a parade of wealthy Texas investors began proposing more lifts and more condos. Seven different Texas owners failed to make anything happen at the ski area, which would open and close sporadically over the next 19 years. The resort, which sits at 9,250 feet, last turned lifts in 2000, and the Forest Service pulled the ski area’s permit to access some 345 public acres in 2002.
The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board on Dec. 5 issued a license for Cuchara Mountain Resort’s Lift #4, which was first licensed in July 1989. Five other lifts licensed by the tramway board at Cuchara Mountain Resort — including a rope tow and a tubing hill lift — expired in December 2000.
For the last couple years, Panadero has charged about $40 a day to ride in the open-air trailer to the top of the hill. The plan with the lift is to keep lift ticket prices below $45. Season passes are priced at $230.
“There are a lot of people who can’t afford skiing with the current conditions and we want to be an option for those people who are frustrated with the current skiing scene,” Clayton said.
Clayton said the Panadero crew is waiting for colder overnight temperatures so it can start blowing snow. Once that happens, they can set a date for opening next month. He said the ski area will spin Lift #4 three days a week this season as the nonprofit operator adjusts revenues and expenses for the roughly 50-acre Cuchara Mountain Park. The ski area is run with volunteers and about four paid staff. Clayton said lift operations will likely require an additional five full-time workers.
If the first few seasons of lift-served skiing go well, a final phase for Cuchara Mountain Park could involve renovations of existing lifts that climb up the mountain into Forest Service-managed land. The nonprofit operator has asked the Forest Service for a permit to bring skiers up higher with a snowcat or side-by-side snow machine.
Clayton said the nonprofit will move carefully when it comes to expansion further up a mountain that tops out at 10,800 feet.
“All the previous owners who operated that mountain could not do it and they all quit. If it becomes a viable option and we think we can succeed, of course we can try to move skiing higher,” Clayton said. “We are going to err on the cautious side when it comes to expansion because we do not want to become one of these failed owners.”
Bob Kennemer has been skiing at Cuchara since before there were chairlifts. In the 1980s, he opened a ski, hike and bike shop in La Veta, hoping to serve ski hill visitors. He eventually was forced to close his shops after the rotating cast of Texas owners kept closing the ski area.
“I’d be ordering skis and winter clothing and then the ski area would announce in August or September that it would not be opening and I’d have all this winter inventory,” said the longtime member of the Huerfano County Tourism Board. “That can only happen so many times.”
For the last two decades, most of Cuchara Village shuts down in the winter. La Veta, with a population around 870, typically hibernates, with spending in the town around $500,000 a month in the winter, compared with twice that in the summer months.
Kennemer said Cuchara will likely need two seasons of lift-served skiing to find its footing. If Cuchara can show skiers coming up from Texas that it is worth the trip, “this region will thrive,” he said.
“There is a lot of excitement right now,” Kennemer said. “The ski area opening and closing since its inception has certainly discouraged a lot of people who have given up hope that it would ever open again. With that history, it’s going to take a while to change some minds. But we are confident that will happen.”