A tiny chairlift in Leadville offers big opportunities for Colorado Mountain College and the ski resort industry

The future of Colorado Mountain College’s nearly 55-year-old ski area operations program is stacked neatly in a piney copse. And that pile of lift towers and platter chairs — Steamboat’s old Rough Rider surface chair — could be one solution to the ski resort industry’s growing workforce struggles. 

With a new used chairlift, a revitalized ski hill and an overhauled ski area operations program developed with ski resort partners, CMC’s Leadville campus hopes its student-run Dutch Henry ski area will expedite training for an industry laboring to retain lift mechanics, equipment operators and other technical workers. The school’s little ski hill could also grow into a community amenity and help groom a new generation of skiers in a town that has long supported the resorts in nearby Eagle and Summit counties. 

“We’re trying to serve the industry by educating people who are already in the job as well as training up new people,” said Ben Cairns, the dean of CMC’s Leadville and Salida campuses. “We can be both the education and recruiting arm of the industry. With higher ed, you cannot really divorce yourself from the needs of the industry you are working in.”

Colorado Mountain College just launched a fundraising campaign that hopes to expand partnerships with Alterra Mountain Co., Vail Resorts and Powdr to include employing CMC student interns as well as cash for the new lift installation. Alterra Mountain Co. in 2023 partnered with CMC on an expedited lift mechanic training program. 

Read more from Jason Blevins at ColoradoSun.com.

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