Tag: Colorado skiing

2022–2023 Ski Season Opens

Hope it’s a safe and snowy one for all

The Denver Gazette reported in the week before Thanksgiving that seven resorts were opening to skiers, adding to the nine that were already open.

It’s a different world than the one early skiers in Colorado knew, largely because of snowmaking. For many years skiing happened when there was enough snow naturally and when there was no snow, there was no skiing.

The lives of the early skiers were focused on raising families and making a living through the trades, mining, and ranching. They barely had time to think about skiing, but when snow came, they made the time to go out and have a little fun sliding on it. Also, they made skiing happen for the kids, and the sport grew and spread.

You can read all about it in Lost Ski Areas of Colorado’s Front Range and Northern Mountains and Lost Ski Areas of Colorado’s Central and Southern Mountains. If you buy through this website, we’ll sign the books and get them out to you right away. By the way, they make great gifts.

Anyway, here’s to a wonderful ski season! Enjoy!

Skiing on Colorado’s Plains?

A funny thing happened this past weekend. With hardly any snow on the ground and only five miles from Greeley, people were having fun, fun, fun, and skiing up a storm.—Greeley Journal, 1971

Hat tip for image to Coloradoskihistory.com

Sometimes politicians do good things for their communities. Yes, really. This was true of Mayor Dick Perchlik, who created a beginner ski hill for the kids of his town, along with his wife Sylvia and others. They made it on a sandstone bluff overlooking the Cache La Poudre River, only minutes from town.

The purpose was to allow the average boy or girl living on the plains, who couldn’t afford to go to a mountain ski area, the opportunity to ski. While constructing the hill, the Mayor and friends found sharks teeth; hence the name.

Hat tip to Coloradoskihistory.com.
Hat tip for image http://www.coloradoskihistory.com

Read more about this ski hill in Lost Ski Areas of Colorado’s Front Range and Northern Mountains.

Another remarkable instance of skiing on the plains, also covered in this book, is the ski jumping exhibition that took place at Inspiration Point in Denver after the Big Snow of 1913. It started the craze of the extreme sport in Colorado, which went on for decades.

Carl Howelsen and friends set up a makeshift jump and demonstrated ski jumping for a crowd of some 20,000 people on January 19, 1914.

The images below are from Municipal Facts Monthly, January 11, 1920, when folks also came to see ski riders go off the jump at Inspiration Point.