ABANDONED

[Music] since Colorado was founded in 1876 it has been home to nearly 200 Ski Areas only about 30 of those ski areas are in operation today the rest play doorman forgotten parts of lifts hours and hints of old buildings now lost amongst the trees old ski runs left like scars on the mountains marks from another time what was it like to ski these areas what is their story and what are they like today we went out and searched for these places seeking answers to these questions join us as we explore the abandoned [Music] Geneva Basin opened the late season of 6263 at that time it was called Indian heads area I was involved up there first in 1963 when it was Indian Head mountain I skied on the junior ski patrol up there three or four years later of 66 the Burke family and roamers and another investor Ward Anthony that's when we purchased that and I bought do you need a base in October and so you know decided well we're gonna ski there this year somehow so then I had to negotiate with the Forest Service you know on the lease and they no way you can operate it this year every time they said no I said why not and so when they told me why not well I didn't we solved that problem and those were the kind of things that we had to do you know Geneva Basin was just absolutely known as the customer friendly families ski area generally speaking we had skiing for just about any ability first lift tickets we sold for $3.75 the best part was when they opened they left certainly and you got a ski a run or two before everyone else got out there they'd start to lift it was a old diesel that thing you know oh you know finally being a white poof of smoke and that cold and cheerless start moving that thing doesn't start the ski area is not opening when Geneva was being conceived my father heard about it being in the planning stages and thought well that would be a good place for my son to work and then they were working on the t-bar it was close to the end of the day and unfortunately my brother was tall and had on a ski parka and his parka hood got caught in the cable and that was very sad and very tragic you know and unfortunately there's stories about being haunted and this and that and the other thing and you know was it was a tragic death of a young man that was somebody's son even though my brother was killed there we continued to appreciate the ski area they built a lodge and they dedicated it to my brother and we thought that was very nice I feel as spirit as always they're taken as a young person and somebody that loved the Bounty's 1978 when we sold the ski area then it lasted another four maybe five years in one way or another after that the Forest Service said we're not going to issue a permit any more and then it was sort of abandoned it was really sad when they decided to burn the lodge down I was brokenhearted you know because when everybody said it wouldn't work and everything we made you know we made something out about that many people enjoyed yeah I love that I'm scared and I in a one-eighth days on a like yeah I got them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] birthday pass was at one time the busiest ski area and all of Colorado I mean that place was packed it got started in 1937 as an officially organized ski area when the may company donated a ski rope tow there and that was the first rope tow in Colorado it was around 1950 that sterling Huntington came in to Bertha pass and he installed the nation's very first double chair ski lift at Bertha pass so Berthoud Pass has this double chairlift and that allows it to really increase up hill capacity far more than when a part can do at the time because when a park just had t bars and Aspen had the single chairlift in the sixties things start to change because you start getting well fail fail changes the face of Colorado ski a lot of areas open in 1964 they start drawing away from birth and pass at that time all of a sudden you're getting better roads to access these places what really hits birth had passed hard was the opening of the Eisenhower Tunnel and i-70 that really affects Bertha past but they keep going and in the eighties they do the most remarkable thing ever for a ski area and that's that they allow snowboarders that was one of the greatest things they ever did and so the snowboarding world all of a sudden is focused on Berthoud Pass and you get people like Simms up there burnin up there and you know these guys are coming there and they're showing off their new snowboards it's almost like this punk-rock culture going on Bertha was a unique place it was a diamond in the rough and there is no making every day mother nature we we didn't need artificial machine-made snow i'm routine we would ski knee-deep to thighs just about every day floral park which is underneath is probably I'm giving myself goose bumps I was I'm six foot four I was in chest deep powder the best run of my life Bertha passes on the continental divide so you get the storms coming from the west and the storms coming from the east and the quality of the powder blower [Music] in black [Music] friends and said good [Music] Oh [Music] let me come [Music] in [Music] goodbye [Music] you go to birthing it does something together you ski it just once and you're hooked so I took it personally basically when Bertha passed closed when it closed that's when I retired from patrolling and I had put in 25 years at that time he ripped my heart out it was just like it was like losing a child like losing your best buddy it was a family area it was direct family and it was the birth of family so it was just superb area we all were sitting there and watching them the crane came in and knocked it down and that that tugged on some heartstrings but the biggest one was watching them pull the lifts out grown men were crying a couple of patrollers that were at the area that helped closed it started friends Berthoud Pass because again Berthoud is all Avalanche shoots friends of Bertha pass is a non-profit grassroots Avalanche education group it originally started in 2003 when the ski area closed for the last time the original mission was access advocacy to make sure that the area stayed open for winter recreation after the access was maintained it quickly became a Education Group we provide free avalanche awareness classes it's not a level 1 or level 2 it is a awesome prep for a level 1 or just a good refresher if you've already taken level 1 or level 2 and you just want to come to the classroom session I think Berthoud Pass gets gets more traffic and used today as a back country area than it did as a resort Berthoud Pass totally sucks don't ski there never snows there just stay away [Music] lady 1 and that's when pan Adaro came into play and it's struggled but we had a lot of fun and it would have helped this community so much if it could have stayed open well the hype around town about building the ski area was really very positive everyone was very positive we were excited the first time I saw this place I was sold even since being a little kid I love the place and then when they when they decided to do the ski area up here it was like wow this is gonna be magical but the runs they had were really fun runs it was really exciting to see what was going on that one right under the chairlift it helped some pretty nice faces and then you could go out and so you could just do these huge GS turns all the way down the mountain I would say Diablo which is the expert run on the one side and the back bowls were the funnest part up here the back bowls almost always have snow in them one year we took the kids ski team up there and they talked us into taking them in the back bowls but the snow was all over their head so we had to ski them out one at a time on our shoulders people that started the ski area in 1982 were pretty gung-ho and hands on people almost all the owners after that most of them didn't know anything about the ski business and so we were just pawns working for them if you did absolutely everything it's not like Vail or Aspen or a big ski area he went up there at 5 o'clock in the morning if you hadn't been up there all night making snow and fixing machines and equipment and then you'd ski all the runs in the morning to make sure that we're ready to go and then you'd go down and sell tickets and then you'd run the lifts and then you'd be a ski patrolman and a ski instructor you did absolutely everything under the last owner they'd actually skied 30,000 skiers one here and we always thought that breakeven was about 40,000 skiers but there were a lot of years when we skied 8 and 10,000 skis we had this adventurous top spirit that took hold of us and we took our kids out of school and we drove out here and we we opened three shops at the base area for partners started the resort not one of them had resort experience you can't operate a ski resort if you don't understand what resort business is it dawned on me that you know we went through Christmas and more any skiers here I'm not sure we can survive financially here gosh when the ski season is over nobody's going to convince me I might ought to start looking for other things to do we lost every penny we ever had in that ski area we gave our house away to avoid bankruptcy even though things didn't turn out exactly the way we planned it has been a marvelous adventure and I wouldn't trade it for anything and we always thought we'd get a fantastic person in there that would run it forever and it just never happened [Music] early years are scary was the most fun because we had snow then and we've had years you know now and then that had great snow it just isn't consistent year after year after year down in southern Colorado if I had no other reason to believe in global warming I would believe because it is so different than when we there's no question in my mind that we are getting much warmer and less snow I can remember getting a 48 inch snow up excuse or I'm guessing this year is going to be the worst since we started keeping track [Music] [Music] we finally got the cachoeira Foundation convinced that they should put up the money to buy what was left of the resort that tax sales they've appointed nine of us to be part of the committee to help run the ski resort since we're a little tiny County our plans are to put educational programs up there have classrooms for kids tub to have the small lift opens next ski season and the small snow making system so all the kids in the valley can ski we sort of see it as a training area for bigger ski resorts the kids ski here and very inexpensively it's just great to see what when you somebody says you know what I'm gonna do this what the hell I'm starting to believe I really am I'm starting to believe [Music] see [Music] there are still over a hundred lost ski areas in Colorado every day they fade more and more into the mountainside and with them an infinite amount of stories and memories are lost too we set out with a purpose to ski backcountry lines and maybe learn a thing or two along the way instead we live vicariously through the stories of those who skied before us and just like that these places felt alive once again and we found a new love for skiing but it was a nostalgic kind of love we found that unlike today in a world of mega resorts and $200 lift tickets that skiing once revolved around people instead of profits that skiing was not just a sport but a way of life that the snow that once was deep and the winners that once were cold are now threatened by man's effect on our climate naively we thought skiing would be a part of our lives forever but now we can't be so sure at least we were able to experience the rush of the downhill the sweet embrace of the mountains and the kiss of snowflakes on our cheeks we realized nothing done with love can ever truly be lost and maybe just maybe these places may never be forgotten [Music] welcome to time stop is on the climb hiking through the sunshine in [Music] the Fijian super-steep the snow is libel deep and I'm closing it Oh [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Road West Traveled

Views: 447,545

Keywords: Abandoned ski movie

Id: V0tp90jWEjA

Length: 23min 41sec (1421 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Superstylin1770]

Has anyone watched this? Is it worth watching?

OP, do you have anything to say about the documentary?

[u/house-is-life]

Such a happy dog

[u/justvistingforawhile]

Such a great film! Definitely worth a watch.