HUERFANO COUNTY, Colo. — A small, once-dormant southern Colorado ski hill in the midst of a revival is getting a boost from state grant money that will help it operate this winter – and possibly even allow it to open for lift skiing in the near future.
Cuchara Mountain Park in Huerfano County, the rehabilitation of which Scripps News Denver has followed over the course of the last two years, on Monday celebrated $250,000 in Colorado State Outdoor Recreation grant money.
The funds will help Panadero Ski Corporation, the nonprofit responsible for the park, with operational costs like supplies for ski patrol and other upgrades including the search for a third snowcat, Panadero board member Ken Clayton told Scripps News Denver Monday.
With grant money secured and thanks to a generous early snow season boosted by two new snow guns on loan to Cuchara and 1,200 feet of new piping going up the slope, the mountain will open for snowcat skiing this Saturday, Dec. 14.
Its “ski bus” – bus seats welded to a car hauler that’s attached to the back of a snowcat – will run Saturdays and Sundays, with the hope of soon adding Fridays to the schedule, Clayton said.
“We want to get the general public there, [but] Fridays will be geared towards local kids,” Clayton said. “We will do everything within our power to get those kids up on that mountain.”
Lift tickets cost $40 and a season pass costs $200. Clayton said he hopes kids can ski for free or at a reduced cost.
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But the seven-member team behind the Cuchara comeback – Panadero’s five-member, all-volunteer board of directors and a couple of maintenance workers – has dreams bigger than snowcat skiing.
Central to the group’s mission in recent years has been Lift 4, the only chair fully on park property, which would allow the mountain to serve more skiers faster, and give them access to 300 more vertical feet of terrain. Last year, Scripps News Denver Gives viewers generously donated $3,000 to the mission.
The $250,000 in state funding announced Monday cannot go toward repairs on Lift 4. But Clayton said separate grant money awarded to Huerfano County by the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) is in the process of being funded and would go toward Lift 4, in addition to some other building upgrades at the park.
“When we get the funding from the DOLA grant through Huerfano County, we believe that's the last step into getting that lift going,” Clayton told Scripps News Denver.
Once funding is complete, Panadero can schedule the work on Lift 4. Once the work is complete and state inspectors certify the work, the chair lift can open. There’s a chance – albeit remote – that all of that happens before the end of the 2024-25 ski season, Clayton said.
A third financial boost, in the form of an outdoor equity grant through Colorado Parks and Wildlife, is expected to be funded in March, Clayton said. It would put $100,000 toward a ski camp in the winter and a bike camp in the summer, as well as an observation deck at the top of Lift 4, he said.
Striving for outdoor accessibility
For Clayton and the small-but-mighty team working to resurrect the ski area, the goal is about so much more than 50 acres of skiable terrain at the bottom of Cuchara Mountain.
The stated goal has always been to make skiing accessible.
“I want my kids to be able to ski there. I want my kids’ kids, when that time happens, to be able to go ski there,” said Clayton, who has two teenage daughters. “If there's not a place for those people to go, my kids, everyone else's kids, people from Pueblo, Trinidad, Raton, Alamosa – where are they going to learn to ski if they don't ski at some place like Cuchara Mountain Park?”
Panadero also takes pride in bringing affordable skiing to a traditionally lower-income corner of Colorado. Rehabbing Lift 4, in fact, could even allow the park to lower its $40 lift ticket rate – which it already boasts on its website as “likely the lowest” in the state.
“There's a need for a place for kids to learn how to ski and enjoy and appreciate the outdoors,” Clayton said. “We're not in a position where we could go buy $300 lift tickets over the holidays. But because of the people that have donated time and money to Cuchara Mountain Park, we're still at $40 a ticket this year […] with goals of being lower. Hopefully we can fundraise and make enough up there to lower that ticket so it's even less for people.”
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