Lost ski areaColoradoFront RangeRocky Mountains
Ski Trail Mountain
Ran 1968–1971. A small family-run ski area on Trail Mountain, west of Lake Granby between Granby and Grand Lake, open in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
Counting who skied it…
Timeline
3 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Ski Trail Mountain, 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 Ski Trail Mountain
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Opened 1952 · 7.4 mi away · ColoradoGranby's first ski area, a volunteer-built hill on Mount Chauncey west of town that the Middle Park Ski Club opened in 1952 and ran for only a few seasons.
- Years not yet collected · 7.6 mi away · ColoradoA steep ski slope at a guest ranch west of Granby, offered to winter guests for a few seasons in the 1940s.
- Opened 1931 · 8.4 mi away · ColoradoA ski jumping and rope-tow hill on Shadow Mountain, across Grand Lake from the town, used from the early 1930s; accounts of when it ended differ.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 3 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Ski Trail Mountain took its name from the 9,380-foot peak above it, west of Lake Granby and a little over four miles up County Road 41 from U.S. 34. George C. Carlson Jr. ran it as a family operation, open on weekends and holidays, on open, meadow-like slopes with about 450 feet of vertical. Lift records suggest it first ran as King Ranch.1,2,3
Accounts of its lifts vary. Colorado Ski History says it began with a rope tow, added a Mitey Mite, and had two Poma platter lifts built in 1968; one skier remembers a single rope tow driven by a bulldozer; The Colorado Skier listed two rope tows, and the Sky-Hi News a rope tow and a T-bar. Sources date it 1968 to 1971 or about 1966 to 1972. The owner said snowmobiles took its business.1,2,3
Sources for this history (3)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Ski Trail Mountain
- 2Sky-Hi News · LEFT BEHIND: Exploring Grand County's skiing past through abandoned hills (December 4, 2018)
- 3Colorado Ski History · Lost Areas #8 (The Colorado Skier newsletter, January 14, 1993)
Photos
No photographs of Ski Trail Mountain 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 Ski Trail Mountain, in their own words.
Facts
Location
40.1944° N · 105.9515° W · Colorado · Front Range
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1968–1971
Closed after the 1971 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 4all 4, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain