Six decades of
ups and downs
By Sandy Fails Then and now: Crested Butte’s ski area in the fall of 1970, and a current skier’s view of the base area.
Sandra Cortner
The Crested Butte Ski Area debuted in the winter of 1961-62. It has launched countless skiers and countless stories in its 60 years. In early winter 1961, a borrowed rope tow pulled the first official skiers up the slope of the new Crested Butte Ski Area. It’s been a rich and sometimes bumpy ride since then. In 1960, Kansas-born ski enthusiast Dick Eflin and college buddy Fred Rice had big dreams when they purchased the Malensek Ranch on Crested Butte Mountain and applied to develop skiing there. The U.S. Forest Service issued a special-use permit the following year, and the new resort opened to lift-served skiing for the winter of 196162 with a generator, a T-bar and a rope tow borrowed from the old Rozman Hill ski area. A J-bar soon replaced the rope tow. In what now seems like an ironic pairing, an early-1960s issue of Vogue Magazine described Crested Butte and Vail (which opened in December 1962) as two new “in resorts where everybody who’s anybody is going.” The accompanying photos showed svelte skiers in fashionable stretch pants. The two “in” resorts went very different directions because 10
Dusty Demerson
they came from very different roots. By the time Vail Village was built to support the new Vail ski area, Crested Butte had been a strong, feisty community for 80 years and multiple generations. The people who had settled here in the mining days, many from the Old Country, weathered tough circumstances through strength of character and community, and they passed on that legacy. Dick Eflin spent many hours around kitchen tables getting to know the people,
