Warm memories of skiing on Blue Mountain

I grew up spending my winter weekends at “the ski lift,” later christened “The Blue Mountain Ski Area” by the Forest Service.
It was a 15-minute drive from my front door, and my dad forked over $1 for a kid’s lift pass every Saturday, hoping I would acquire some athletic skill he could be proud of.
That weekly ritual ignited in me a craving that lives on — the thrill of sliding over a frozen mountain at speed with only gravity pulling me down the hill created a lifelong passion.
I have skied nearly every winter since, only missing years when I didn’t live near mountains or snow.
Monticello’s earliest skiers built the first mechanized means of getting up a hill in 1950 on the south slope of South Creek, immediately behind the number three tee box on the old golf course. (This is at the south end of the Hideout driving range.)
It moved skiers 300 feet up a 60-foot hill. As a teenager, I remember seeing those poles cut a path up the slope with rusty hooks that once held the pulleys for the rope tow’s return.
However, the joys brought by that first rope tow were short-lived. In 1955, a new ski area called Stoner opened on the Dolores River, an hour away.
The Stoner lift carried skiers over half a mile and a thousand feet higher. Built by members of a local ski club from Cortez and Dolores, it proved that a group of volunteers with vision unafraid of getting their hands dirty could make magic.
A short time later, people in Monticello formed a ski club that started the same process here.
That was in 1955. Four years later, in February 1959, the lift carried its first skier up the hill just south of Dalton Springs.
In a typical year, it would have opened in November, but the weather gods that year taunted everyone with a late snowfall. The lift was just under half a mile long and gained 900 feet.
Carving a ski area from the side of a mountain is a big job, even for a small one like ours.
Someone had to clear the trees, install the equipment, obtain the permits, and operate and maintain the lift.
Others were needed to serve on the ski patrol and oversee the warming hut — our version of a “lodge.”
Wyman Redd led the effort, while farmers like Marion Miller stepped up to learn about and help with the lift’s installation and operation.
After all, it wasn’t all that different from the farm machinery he used every day. In later years, Gene Schafer filled the same role.
A small army of other men and women came forward to do whatever else was needed, including Grant Bronson, Max Black, Dick Auble, DeVere Halls, Bert Odette, Cooper Jones, Ralph, and Dennis Robson, plus others too numerous to name.
For anyone new to the sport, J. Whitney Redd and his cousin’s wife, Sunny, stood by to teach them how. A job never arose that couldn’t be handled by local people.
We warmed up on cold days in a 15X20-foot hut equipped with a homemade wood-burning stove built from an old 55-gallon drum.
I can close my eyes today, think of that stove, feel its warmth, and smell a hint of wood smoke mixed with the scent of wet leather gloves and wool hats drying.
Ann Palmer and her daughter, Nancy Cahoon, were responsible for the hut and all lift ticket sales. One day, a couple of guys came in, flashed National Ski Patrol Association membership cards, and told Ann that those cards entitled them to ski anywhere in the country free of charge.
Ann looked the cards over, smiled, and said, “This area is operated by a community club and run entirely by volunteers, but even so, it takes money to make it all happen; you’ll pay just like everyone else. That will be $2.50 each.”
The boys quickly coughed up the cash.
I learned to ski, plus many more life lessons from first watching and later joining a group of men and women working together to improve the community and its families.
To my knowledge, no one involved ever received a dime for their service, yet the result was a treasure chest of memories, friendships, family ties, and respect that money can’t buy at any price.
I swell with pride when describing to friends not from here what it meant to grow up skiing at a small community-owned mountain with no paid employees, only volunteers.
If only we could bring it back.
My most cherished memory was watching Fletch Bronson ski. He took it up on that mountain at age 75 and lived 20 more years, proving that skiing adds years to life.