Ski Hesperus has closed, perhaps for weeks, while repairs are made to the southwest Colorado resort’s only chairlift.
James Coleman knew he had a long list of projects ahead when he 11 miles west of Durango last September.
The 160-acre ski area had been a one-man show for 30 seasons, run by owner Jim Pitcher, who sold tickets, cooked hamburgers, directed the volunteer ski patrol and ran the show. A ski day at Hesperus was a bit of a step back in time, with hand-painted signs and a Quonset hut base lodge that hadn’t been updated for decades.
That quaint feel makes Hesperus a local’s favorite, especially among folks from Durango, who hit the hill for after-work turns under the lights.
But the nostalgic vibe didn’t fly with the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board, which of the area’s signage, record-keeping, lift maintenance and employee training following an unannounced inspection.
After the tramway board found the and mother who fell from a lift at Ski Granby was , Coleman’s team chose to close the chair at Hesperus to make needed repairs.
The closure was first .
“I don’t think anybody was shocked,” said Greg Ralph, the head of marketing for Coleman’s nearby Purgatory ski area, which is honoring Hesperus season passes during the closure. “But with safety being our driving concern and the heightened awareness on lift safety, it was in everybody’s best interest to shut it down and get everything fixed and start anew.”
Ralph said the ski area could reopen later this month. Hesperus closed for the season last year on March 7.
did not require the area to close, but deficiencies needed to be fixed in less than four weeks. Those issues include improper signage for loading and unloading the area’s sole chairlift. The inspector found general maintenance issues with the upper lift terminals emergency stop system. There were incomplete maintenance logs for the chairlift and an issue from a previous inspection concerning the documentation of training for maintenance workers was not remedied.
“The current management and maintenance personnel do not generally comply with operational rules and safety regulations of lift, including scheduled maintenance work, daily pre-operational inspections, and record keeping requirements,” reads the inspector’s report.
The inspector also found a third of the chairlift clips on the 1960s-era Riblet fixed-grip double chair failed inspection. Those clips — inserted into the tensioned cable and attached to the chairs with a sheave, bearings and pin — are inspected annually for cracks. The inspector found 13 of 21 clips failed non-destructive testing, or NDT, inspection. The previous annual inspection found the same issues with the clips.
In 2011, two teens at Red Lodge Mountain in Montana , sending the chair plummeting to the snow.
Coleman’s team is ordering new clips and plans to install them in the coming weeks. He has already made the necessary repairs to the emergency braking system and the area is updating signage and training workers, Ralph said.
