CUCHARA — Folks who live in this rural mountain valley have watched their local ski area open and close so many times that they sometimes feel as if they are stuck in a real-life version of the movie “Groundhog Day.”
In Cuchara, southwest of Walsenburg, the ski area has had eight owners in 27 years, never staying open more than a few years at a time. Most of the owners were from Texas. Most were real estate investors, not skiers. The current owners closed the hill abruptly in 2000, saying it would reopen with a new owner the next year. The lifts, Sno-Cats, ticket booths — even the rental equipment, are all sitting there. But almost monthly rumors of reopening have so far amounted to nothing.
Not knowing whether there will be a ski area has left local businesses with few other economic options.
“It’s like the movie. We’re stuck in this never-ending cycle,” said local resident Steve Perkins. “We realized, if we’re ever going to break the pattern, it’s up to us.”
So Perkins and a handful of other locals decided this year to form the Cuchara Valley Recreational Cooperative. Since so many owners had failed to make a profit off Cuchara, they want to try to run it as a nonprofit.
They are still in the planning stages, and no one is sure if their idea will work, but if it does, Perkins said, it will provide a steady antidote to the boom and bust of the past 30 years.
Even now, the community is caught in another cycle of uncertainty. The current owners announced a prospective deal in September to sell the hill to a Florida developer interested in reviving the ski area. But so far, there is no deal.
At the ski area, the 40-acre base area is private land. Another 200 skiable acres and two lifts rise into the San Isabel National Forest. To use those runs, operators need permission for the U.S. Forest Service.
But the Forest Service revoked Cuchara’s permit in 2001 because the area was not operating. An assessment by the Forest Service in 2002 said marginal snow, a lack of customers, and years of losses by a procession of owners showed skiing was not a feasible use for the forest.
