Baker Mountain

Baker Mountain rises at Muddy Pass on the east side of Rabbit Ears Pass, about 27 miles north of Kremmling on U.S. 40. Kremmling rancher Joe McElroy and his friend Willard Taussig built the ski area themselves in 1950: they had twelve children between them and wanted somewhere closer than Winter Park. An electric rope tow about 500 feet long served three runs, and the lodge was a hut with a woodstove. McElroy is also credited with coining the phrase Champagne Powder, which he later let Storm Mountain, the area that became Steamboat, use as its slogan.^1,2

Several dozen families from Middle Park and North Park paid $70 each for lifetime memberships, but the area lasted only three years and closed in 1953. Attendance was low, and the usual story is that it got too much snow: an army-surplus truck with a rotary plow could not always keep the three-quarter-mile access road open. The Sky-Hi News notes that accounts of the closing differ.^1,2,3

TodayBackcountry skiers still climb its open east-facing slope, which lies in national forest and is easily seen from U.S. 40. (2018)³