Ski Cooper: Small and sweet

Ski Cooper offers magic without all the conveniences - and the crowds

By Deb Acord , Special to the Rocky

Published January 15, 2008 at 12:45 a.m.

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Photo by Photos by Steve Peterson / Special to the Rocky

Barbara James sets up Megan Lavell, 5, left, and Carson Farrett, 4, with some rental skis.

Manager Kelly Comer, left, and Lori Sullivan work the ticket office.

Sam Critchlow, of Leadville, prepares in the lodge for a day of snowboarding.

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The snowboarder wasn't going to be easily impressed. He was accustomed to the urbane, moneyed hustle and bustle of Colorado's largest ski resorts, where his family had gone for years. He and his brothers had their favorite haunts - sprawling back bowls.

But on a recent Friday morning, 21- year-old Ken Stave found himself at Ski Cooper.

Convinced by friends to give Cooper a try, he drove the 2 1/2 hours from Colorado Springs to the resort near Leadville, parked in the gravel parking lot, walked the few hundred feet to the lift and was carried away to 11,700 feet.

Hours later, he admitted to his friends that even though Cooper isn't Vail, it isn't so bad. He'd had a mountain's worth of fresh powder to himself, and at times he even had the chairlift to himself. The all-natural snow - soft, dry and untracked - had won him over.

Franci Peterson, 66, won't argue that Ski Cooper can compete with Vail (which is big enough to hold 13 Ski Coopers), but she's had a lot more time to try to figure out what it is she loves about Colorado's smallest ski resort. She says Cooper has worked its magic on her since 1987, when she took over the ski school.

"There's a spirit of peacefulness here," she says. "It's just a magical place."

Peterson is a member of the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame and a respected ski instructor who once worked at Loveland and who says she's been offered jobs at other places.

She declined. "I couldn't find this kind of experience anywhere else."

What is the experience at Cooper?

You won't find parking ramps or even paved lots, escalators or Magic Carpets, ski-in/ski-out condos, shuttle buses, ski valets, gondolas or high-speed, six-person lifts. There are no landscaped terrain parks or half-pipes, no uniformed ski ambassadors. There's no luxury lodge, no fancy menu, no coffee bar. Your gear, new a few years ago, won't look out of place, and your ski jacket, Gore-Tex but not new enough to have an MP3-player pocket, will still give you a fashion edge.

At Cooper, you park next to the lodge. If you want to stay overnight, you can choose from among a handful of motels 10 miles down the road in Leadville, which also boasts a historic hotel, the Delaware.

There's no need for shuttles here - you can see your car from the lift. Ski-school instructors can answer any question you can think of. The lodge has the requisite cafeteria, where a slice of pizza goes for $3.50 and a cup of coffee for $2 (with free re- fills). There are two lifts - a double and a triple - and a Poma lift on the learning area.

Catch a 13-minute lift ride up and cruise down through the trees, where most of the time you won't see another person. Reach the bottom and hop back onto the lift. Repeat as many times as your legs can handle. Do all this for - get ready - $28.

That's right. In a year when the priciest one-day lift tickets have topped $90 in Colorado, you can ski at Cooper for less than a third the cost if you buy your tickets at King Soopers ahead of time. (Buy them at the ski area for $39 or, if you have a Gems card, $31.)

The cost of a day of skiing at Cooper is part of its appeal, but there's more to it than that, says Cooper spokesman Bob Casey.

"For decades, we've been known as a family-friendly place. We get a lot of people who skied here when they were young, then grew up and brought their kids and then their grandkids," Casey says. "They tell us they love coming here because they can keep their families together and still enjoy the great snow."

Cooper's terrain appeals to families and those new to the slopes - 30 percent is beginner, 40 percent intermediate - as well as locals and people attracted to what Colorado skiing was like before the growth of the resorts.

The ski area is unique in that it's a nonprofit organization, Ski Cooper Inc., organized under a board of directors. Lake County holds the special-use permit from the U.S. Forest Service, and the area is surrounded by National Forest land.

Casey, who works out of the Ski Cooper office, a small Victorian house in Leadville across the road from the Dollar Store, says Cooper opened in 1947 and the area remained a backyard ski area for local residents until the 1970s. Today, it's famous for its history as the training ground for the 10th Mountain Division. The original trails were designed in 1942 for soldiers training for the brutal conditions they might encounter in the war in the mountains of Europe.

The 10th Mountain Division still cherishes Cooper, and its remaining members, most now in their 80s or 90s, still visit regularly. Another group loyal to Cooper: telemark skiers, who discovered the soft snow and uncrowded slopes in the early '80s, long before they began making tele turns at other resorts.

On a busy weekend day, Cooper might see 1,800 skiers, but on a weekday, the average is 300 to 500, Casey says.

Peterson says those are the days the magic happens.

"People come here because their friends tell them about us," he says. "And then when they get here, they understand."

Ski Cooper by the numbers

* 1.4 miles, length of longest trail

* 2 lifts

* 400 acres served by lifts

* 24 trails

* 28 dollars for a discounted lift ticket

* 35 miles from Vail

* 130 people employed in the winter

* 250 inches of snow a year

* 300 people you might share the trails with on a weekday

* 2,400 acres in Cooper's backcountry, Chicago Ridge, served by Snowcat

About Ski Cooper

* Location: on Highway 24, between Leadville and Vail, about 100 miles from Denver

* Terrain: 30 percent beginner, 40 percent intermediate and 30 percent advanced; second-highest percentage of beginner terrain in Colorado, after Buttermilk

* To get there: Take Interstate 70 to exit 195 Copper Mountain/Leadville, CO-91 (which becomes U.S. 24).

* Chicago Ridge Snowcat Tours. Backcountry ski tours on 2,400 acres along the Continental Divide. Slopes vary from 3,000 to 10,000 feet in length, with vertical drops up to 1,400 feet. Reservations required; $275 for full day, including lunch and apres-ski.

* Tennessee Pass Cookhouse. Fine dining in a yurt perched on Tennessee Pass; 1-mile groomed trail for diners to travel on cross-country skis or snow- shoes or by snowmobile. With four- course gourmet dinner. $70 per person; reservations required at www.tennessee pass.com/cookhouse.htm

* Tennessee Pass Nordic Center, offering cross-country skiing lessons, snowshoeing and equipment rental; www.tennesseepass.com/skiing.htm

For more information, go to www.skicooper.com or call 1-800-707-6114.

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