A dusting of fresh snow had blanketed the hills overnight and the sun was breaking through the clouds.
A couple of miles and a world away, skiers were riding high-speed quads to the tops of groomed runs at Winter Park and carving turns down the slopes where luxury accommodations and sumptuous après ski meals awaited them.
At a place called Idlewild, we were snowshoeing through moose habitat and Colorado’s past. It was so quiet, we could hear the trees creaking in the wind.
I felt like a grave robber.
Like dozens of other ghost ski resorts around the state, Idlewild attracts the more intrepid of winter athletes.
Since the ski lifts rusted into relics years ago, lift tickets are no longer required. Stamina is.
You see, if you want to glide down the runs, you’ll have to get to the top on your own power. For connoisseurs of lost ski areas, this is part of the appeal.
There are lots of ghost ski hills to discover around the state. Creede, Haviland Lake, Lizard Head Pass, Red Mountain, Broadmoor, Fun Valley, Sugarite and Conquistador are just a few of them.
Pat Pfeiffer estimates that there are more than 150 ghost ski areas in Colorado, each of them harboring a piece of the state’s history amid the aspen overtaking the downhill runs, the busted parking lots and remnants of broken rope tows.
“It’s fun to go around and see if you can find the old areas,” she said. “It’s automatic in our family now.”
A keen eye can identify the lines of smaller trees on forested slopes, a patch of asphalt from an old parking lot, a bit of rusted cable left from a primitive chairlift. Pfeiffer digs them like an above- ground archaeologist.
Now in her 70s, she came to Colorado as a student at Colorado College and promptly learned to ski. For a while, she and her husband had a part interest in the old Pikes Peak ski area, where they were regulars on the slopes each winter.
“Then one day we took the kids to Breckenridge, and they were never happy with Pikes Peak again,” said Pfeiffer, a member of the board of the Colorado Ski Museum for the past 20 years.
In a personal way, that illustrates the arc of the industry.
Pikes Peak went belly-up in 1984, just about the time big chairlifts, big snowmaking operations and big money buried the mom-and-pop ski areas.
One of the most famous among them was Hidden Valley, site of the 1934 national alpine championships. Just off Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, it was a windy outpost whose best attributes were screaming steeps and lots of powder.
Hidden Valley began as a ski resort after the forest was logged to provide timber for the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. It operated until 1992 and still attracts lots of cross-country skiers even though the National Park Service has restored the wetlands at the base, planted native vegetation throughout and placed picnic tables where skiers used to come to breathless flying stops at the bottom of the slopes.
The old Geneva Basin ski area near Guanella Pass remains obscure despite the fact that it was owned by former Gov. Roy Romer for a while.
The lifts are long gone; the operation has been closed for more than 30 years. But the leftover ski runs so close to Denver still draw lots of backcountry skiers.
Even closer to Denver, the old Genesee Mountain ski area looks like a casualty of global warming. But it’s not, Pfeiffer said.
Even during its heyday, it was known for its single swath of white surrounded by brown weeds. Operators packed in the snow for ski-jumpers.
It was a different time. Today’s skiers probably wouldn’t recognize the sport as it once was. Even Pfeiffer might not.
For Christmas this year, she said, one of her kids gave her some fabulous high-
tech, quick-dry long underwear. It’s great, she said, so comfortable and efficient. “It brought to mind all of the times in that little lodge at Pikes Peak that we hung our wool socks and mittens in front of the fire to dry.”
It was a real wood fire, incidentally.
But that’s another story.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
