It was during the management of Berthoud Pass by the Garst family that
snowboarding started to grow as a sport, and they are responsible for Berthoud
having a place in snowboarding's history. According to Ike, after the first
year of snowboarding his insurance company tried to have him ban boarders
on the mountain. After an agent came out from the East Coast the company
agreed to let him allow boards for the next year as a test period. The
accident rate did not go up and boarding was not banned.
Berthoud Pass was not only the first ski area in Colorado to allow snowboarding,
but they also built Colorado's first halfpipe in 1985-6. People were throwing
down to see who was best at Berthoud well before snowboarding hit the limelight
and before a premier snowboard event could attract thousands of spectators.
Many big name riders rode Berthoud when there weren't many other places
to ride and moved on to bigger resorts as snowboarding became accepted
in the mainstream.
The day Ike and Lucy were moving on from running Berthoud Pass a rock
fell onto a bus killing four people. It could be viewed as an omen for
things to come at the area. The next owner was some yuppie shmuck named
Peter Crowley who did not allow snowboarding. He was obviously not up to
the challenge of running a ski area and another tragedy occurred when a chair
from the charlift dislodged and slid downward onto a woman riding in the
next chair, crushing her legs. The next owner, Gary Shultz, went all out,
new lifts, new shuttle busses, and new marketing material. For a while
it was pretty cool. The wild men became the "death guides" and the area
was run with a go at your own risk, European style attitude. Oh yeah, boarders
were invited back too. But this operation didn't last past two years and
Berthoud remains today unopened.
I heard that ten years ago there were over 800 ski areas in the United
States while now there are less than 400. In Colorado the numbers have
gone from 54 to 26. With the little ones being the ones to go. I asked
Ike about this and he simply said that the small areas without all the
extras cannot compete. This is a shame to me, that skiing as an affordable
family sport was allowed to fall out of fashion. One really cool thing
about Berthoud is that while the snowboarding world has gone from non-existent
to huge and commercialized, the Berthoud Pass snowboarding scene has remained
very friendly and relaxed. If you are ever in the area and can't afford
to commit to the high digit lift ticket, give Berthoud Pass a try.
