Grand Lake

The Grand Lake ski hill was on Shadow Mountain, across the lake from town. Grand Lake skiers formed a club in 1924, and Colorado Ski History's timeline dates the town's first jumping hill, still visible across the lake, to that period. The Sky-Hi News says the Shadow Mountain hill opened in 1931 with a jump on the mountain's northwest slope; the timeline has the Grand Lake Winter Sports Club building a new jump there for a 1932 winter carnival.^1,2,3,4

The accounts then part. Colorado Ski History says a rope tow 450 feet long, rising 150 feet, came in 1945; the hill ran from mid-December to April with slalom courses and jumps, and the tow was last listed by the Colorado Tramway Board in 1977, after listings in 1972, 1973 and 1975. The Sky-Hi News says the tow came before World War II and the hill was short-lived: in the mid-1940s the Colorado-Big Thompson Project created Shadow Mountain Reservoir, flooding parts of the base and runs. A plan in the early 1960s to rebuild it as a major resort was dropped, partly because of nearby Rocky Mountain National Park.^1,2

TodayThe old hill is on public land and heavily overgrown, and the East Shore Trail passes through it. (2018)²