Efforts ongoing to revive ski area in southern Colorado, with 'final hurdle' seen for lift
Nov. 25—The effort to revive an abandoned ski area in southern Colorado has shifted to a new organizational plan, with one focus unchanged: to get a chairlift running again.
Panadero Ski Corp., the nonprofit committed to the old resort base in Cuchara, recently stated its "final hurdle" as the electrical control system. The group has expressed confidence in passing all other structural mandates by the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board.
"We will exhaust every single option to get certified this year," read an update on Panadero Ski Corp.'s Facebook page. "We're close but still working through the mysteries of repairing a more than 40-year-old chairlift."
The lift once ferried guests 300 feet up from the mountain that bustled through the decades, with several investor starts and stops between 1981 and 2000. A grassroots fundraising campaign resulted in Huerfano County in 2017 accepting 50 acres that would be Cuchara Mountain Park, making up the old resort base and front slopes.
Some knowledgeable locals and outsiders formed the Panadero Ski Corp., with the sole mission to raise funds and repair the inherited lift. Now, that mission has expanded to include the overall future and development of the park.
That's after an initial idea fell through with a commercial operator. The idea had been for that operator to make money and take on the costly burden of insurance that would come with running the lift potentially year-round — for skiers as well tubers, mountain bikers and sightseers. Amid local outcry, county commissioners declined a deal.
Now they're in an agreement with Panadero Ski Corp.
"We are always going to be a fundraising 501(c)(3)," said Cale Dancho, vice chair of the board. The ultimate thinking, he said, "was that only a nonprofit in this park could be in a position to succeed, because we only have to be at a point where we're not losing money. And we think we can do that through fundraising, and we feel we can do that through lift-served activities."
Dancho pointed to models in nonprofit ski areas such as Vermont's Ascutney Outdoors and Wyoming's Antelope Butte, "where basically the 501(c)(3) is the fundraising branch, and then they have a separate entity that does the day-to-day operations," Dancho said. In Colorado, another loose example is Lake County-owned Ski Cooper.
With or without the lift, "we are going to continue to embrace the alpine touring crowd, the uphill crowd," Dancho said.
After big snows, he said the park's parking lot fills with self-powered skiers earning turns on eight green- and blue-rated runs.
Access will remain free this winter, while Panadero Ski Corp. expects to post waivers on its website for visitors to sign in advance.
