Lost ski areaColoradoFront RangeRocky Mountains
Apex
A weekend rope-tow hill with a lodge at the old mining town of Apex, north of Central City, that ran from 1947 into the 1950s.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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The ski area stood at Apex, a mining town about seven miles north of Central City that is now a ghost town. It opened in 1947 with two rope tows and a lodge and ran only on weekends.1,2,3
Read the whole historyTimeline
4 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Apex, or worked there?
Tell us what you remember, or what this page has wrong. Memories show here, credited to you, after we read them; facts are checked against a source before they change a figure.
Lost near Apex
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Closed 1986 · 4.8 mi away · ColoradoA small T-bar and rope-tow ski area below St. Mary's Glacier, past the town of Alice west of Idaho Springs, that last ran in 1986.
- Years not yet collected · 7.5 mi away · ColoradoA one-rope-tow ski hill at the old mining camp of Cardinal, off Caribou Road three miles west of Nederland, that ran in the 1940s.
- 1937–2001 · 11.9 mi away · ColoradoA ski area on both sides of the Continental Divide at Berthoud Pass, Colorado, that ran lifts from 1937 to 2001, though not every winter.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 3 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
The ski area stood at Apex, a mining town about seven miles north of Central City that is now a ghost town. It opened in 1947 with two rope tows and a lodge and ran only on weekends. Horace Hix was one of its owners and Dennis Longnecker a partner, according to Hix's widow, who also recalled an army half-track that hauled skiers uphill and a small log tow house. One skier remembered climbing the hill more often than riding a tow.1,2,3
The hill appears on a 1950 map and in the 1952 Ormes mountain guide as a rope-tow area. A Colorado Skier writer saw its single slope on a summer ghost-town trip in 1965 but could not find it again in the 1970s. The site is private land.1,2,3
Sources for this history (3)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Apex Ski Area
- 2Colorado Ski History (The Colorado Skier) · Lost Areas #7
- 3Colorado Ski History (The Colorado Skier) · Lost Areas #21
Photos
No photographs of Apex we may republish yet
Its old photos and trail maps live on the sites that collected them, and Google finds the rest.
Memories
What skiers remember of Apex, in their own words.
Facts
Location
39.8636° N · 105.5699° W · Colorado · Front Range
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
from 1947 · the year it closed is not yet collected
Closed for good; the year it closed is not yet collected. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 1all 1, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain