Cuchara ne Panadero to reopen(ish)

EMSC

EMSC

Well-known member
Finally reopening in Southern Colo?

I wish them luck. Hopefully they have a well thought out snowmaking plan though. It's at too low an altitude to get much natural on a consistent basis. They probably could have made a go of it in the past if they had built north facing terrain and gone up higher on NFS lands instead of concentrating on SE/E runs on the lower mountain.

I can see James visiting if they ever re-open the 'upper' lifts like lift 5.
 
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I've been paying attention to Cuchara ever since the extensive exercise that Tony and I went through in 2018 to update the FTO Google ski map and also this article from late 2019. Checking e-mails from the time, I mentioned learning that it had been owned by a series of Texas businessmen, including the guy who also ran likewise defunct Ski Rio in northern NM.

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No one but beginners is going there for the 300 vertical lift 4 they plan to open (9,200-9,500). Huerfano County which contains Cuchara has a population of 7,000. The two counties between there and the NM border have another 18,000. Pueblo County to the NE has 167,000. Pueblo - Cuchara is 78 miles; Pueblo - Monarch is 120 miles. In regional context this does not look good to me.

On Google Earth the primary exposure of cut trails is ENE. The cut trails (presumably the lift 5 in the article) go up to 10,700. The undeveloped ridge behind those trails goes up to 11,800 and is thickly forested.
 
Beautiful area, and I also wish them well, but yeah.. gonna be tough with limited snowfall and vert. Relying on beginner level skiers to sustain it is a gamble in itself.
 
As mentioned in that (long) article, Cuchara seems to be using Mount Ascutney in southern Vermont as a model. Check out the 3.5-minute video; it's an impressive story with extensive local volunteer support. For downhill skiing, instead of the HSQ that used to cover 1,700 verts, it now has a t-bar with 450 verts. Oddly enough, when I skied at Ascutney four times in the early 2000s (it was in a snow shadow with average precip in the low 100s, I believe, similar to Hunter in the Catskills), I hit paydirt with powder days.

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Lonnie visited Antelope Butte this winter. I don't know how much snow it gets, but it should preserve what it gets extremely well at 8,400 - 9,400 feet and mainly north facing.
 
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