SQUAW PASS
— The Never Summer tent has been torn down, the Sobe van come and gone. And still Echo Mountain remains.
“Last Park Standing” — that’s what they’re calling last weekend’s competitive season finale at the new school gem known as Echo. And hundreds of skiers and snowboarders showed up Saturday to pay their respects at the 2-year-old terrain park only 35 miles from downtown Denver.
The irony of Echo’s echo as a ski area re- incarnated likely was lost on most of the young jibblets born after the original Squaw Pass Ski Area on this very site closed in 1972 and became one of Colorado’s so-called “lost resorts.” As the small area dedicated to free- riding in all its forms pulsed with life and enthusiasm for shredding snow Saturday, the giant terrain parks and superpipes at established areas like Copper Mountain and Vail — among others — loomed empty on the slopes above Interstate 70 just to the west like abandoned ghost towns in search of a purpose.
According to officials at those mega- mountains, that purpose has expired, at least for this season. Despite ample remains of the second-snowiest winter of all time in Vail and the deepest ever next door at Beaver Creek, those two areas are shut down until summer, with resort officials citing a lack of staff and interest to keep lifts running even on weekends.
Somehow that attitude didn’t apply outside the corporate cocoon of Vail Resorts and Intrawest (which manage the affairs of all those closed I-70 areas), however. The parking lot at Loveland was brimming Saturday, and word from the bustling slopes of Aspen Highlands — which extended its season to appease locals on consecutive weekends in April — was that senior vice president David Perry was making phone calls to see what it would take to keep the mountain open for yet another week.
Others lacking in corporate capital, Arapahoe Basin and little Wolf Creek among them, somehow managed to keep the lifts spinning for folks still seeking some spring ski turns. And discussion of this Sunday’s closing day at Echo elicited moans of remorse, even among employees.
“I’m bummed,” said Nicole, a cashier at the on-mountain cafeteria. “I have to find a new job in eight days.”
Echo’s small size and proximity to Evergreen, Idaho Springs and Denver clearly give it an advantage when it comes to a large labor pool from which to draw seasonal employees. But it seems somewhat self-evident that if the large ski resorts are in such a bind to find even a skeleton crew to man the mountains while there still is so much snow on the slopes, they should consider providing what most ski resort employees seek in the first place — more skiing, not less.
Ultimately, it amounts to timing, and a bit more flexibility on the corporate skiing front. As it now stands, the big-league resorts are all about opening days surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday — when snow is unreliable at best. It makes more sense to push the opener back into December — as Mother Nature forced many to do this season — and target a conditions-warranted closing date for at least a few lifts of, say, Cinco de Mayo, that will send employees off to mud season in Mexico with a bona fide fiesta. If the snow arrives early, skiers and staff will only be champing at the bit.
It isn’t a new concept. In 1996, Vail Mountain managed to stay open into May when conditions allowed, going so far as to offer $10 lift tickets to anyone who showed up. At $39 a day and only $129 for the season, little Echo Mountain somehow still manages.
They call this place “Colorado Ski Country USA,” after all. The least we can do is try to live up to that reputation, or better yet, bolster it with a tag line borrowed from the Echo Mountain attitude: “Colorado — Still Shreddin’ — USA.”
