Lost ski areaColoradoElk MountainsRocky Mountains
Montezuma Basin
A summer ski area with one tow on a 13,000-foot snowfield on the north side of Castle Peak, outside Aspen, run on and off from 1967 into the 1970s.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Montezuma Basin was a summer ski area on a snowfield on the north side of Castle Peak, southwest of Ashcroft and outside Aspen. Max Marolt of Aspen and Dick Milstein built it on mining claims, and by July 1967 a portable tow, a parking lot and a jeep road were ready; that first year the tow ran into October.1,2
Read the whole historyTimeline
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Memories
Skied Montezuma Basin, 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 Montezuma Basin
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1939–1952 · 13.7 mi away · ColoradoA club ski area on Cement Mountain south of Crested Butte that opened in 1939 with Colorado's first chairlift and closed in the 1950s.
- 1971–1974 · 18.2 mi away · ColoradoA one-chairlift ski area on Mount Daly above Marble, the first piece of a large resort and real estate plan that collapsed in 1974.
- 1960–1961 · 23.3 mi away · ColoradoA one-T-bar beginner hill at Redstone in the Crystal River Valley that ran for a single winter, 1960–61.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 2 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Montezuma Basin was a summer ski area on a snowfield on the north side of Castle Peak, southwest of Ashcroft and outside Aspen. Max Marolt of Aspen and Dick Milstein built it on mining claims, and by July 1967 a portable tow, a parking lot and a jeep road were ready; that first year the tow ran into October. The base sat at about 13,000 feet, with a couple hundred feet of vertical, and the Forest Service permit cost $25 a year. In 1968 permission was sought for a Doppelmayr double chair.1,2
Money trouble closed the area in 1970. Richard Rosen of Taos, New Mexico, bought it in 1971 and won a new permit at $48 a year, but ownership disputes leave it unclear whether the tow ran again; a reader of Colorado Ski History recalls Rosen's race camps on the snowfield in the summer of 1972. The Forest Service refused the permit for the 1977 and 1978 seasons. Colorado Ski History gives its years as 1967 to 1977, on and off.1
Sources for this history (2)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Montezuma Basin Ski Area
- 2Colorado Ski History · Colorado Ski History Timeline 1960
Photos
No photographs of Montezuma Basin 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 Montezuma Basin, in their own words.
Facts
Location
39.0181° N · 106.8566° W · Colorado · Elk Mountains
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
from 1967 · 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 2all 2, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain