Brief by Allen Best
Recreation – July 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
A lodge at one of Colorado’s first ski areas is no more. As ordered by the Forest Service, the 30,000-square-foot building at Berthoud Pass was reduced to rubble recently.
The ski area, one of Colorado’s oldest, opened in 1937, but has only operated sporadically since the mid-1980s and not at all since 2001.
Many were saddened by the event, however. “It was a huge piece of history,” Ike Garst, a former owner of the resort, told the Denver Post. “It was a very viable operation when we had it,” Garst said, and he thought it could be again.
Emotions from people in the area ran high while the Forest Service considered demolition. But in this age of mega-resorts, the Forest Service saw no future for the ski area and worried that the shuttered building would become a public safety hazard. In its place the Forest Service plans a 5,000-square-foot structure that will include rest rooms but no commercial operations.
A group called Friends of Berthoud Pass found irony in the loss. “It’s ironic that after a decade of innovation in the ski industry we’re skiing the pass the same way our contemporaries did in the 1930s,” said Shan Sethna, the group’s executive director.
(But, of course, they’re now skiing with metal edges, which do wonders for control.)
Sethna went on to say that it was sad to see a chapter of Colorado ski history close, “but we are excited about any future projects which will preserve and enhance safe access for all users of Berthoud Pass.”
