Rocky Mountain National Park's ski area is no more, but the fun remains

ESTES PARK • On a snowy slope in Rocky Mountain National Park, Robert Oubre is adjusting his professional-grade camera while careful to avoid kids flying down on sleds.

“I’m not used to shooting in the snow,” he says.

He’s not used to the snow, because he’s usually photographing his kids in the family’s home of Louisiana. His two boys are among the kids here now, sledding in the only place where sledding is allowed in Colorado’s natural crown jewel.

The family had vacationed to Rocky Mountain National Park before, but not in the winter. “It’s a different feel,” Oubre says.

And there’s no place quite like Hidden Valley, tucked behind a bend of the road, silent but for the hush of wind through the trees and, yes, the carving of sleds and those youthful screams of joy.

Hidden Valley is a place to make memories, Oubre’s family goes to show. It’s also a place of old memories.

“Lingering memories,” James Pickering wrote in the book “Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park Then and Now.”

Memories that “still haunt the slopes of Hidden Valley,” Pickering wrote, “its devotees reminding us of a time when it was said that ‘if you can ski Hidden Valley, you can ski anywhere.’”

It’s a line recalled by the sign posted here at the warming hut above 9,400 feet, amid the trusses and rafters preserved from the torn-down ski lodge that bustled here for three decades.

The sign tells of a chairlift here that carried skiers above treeline to a spot known as The Drift, “a steep area above Trail Ridge Road.” The descent was challenging enough to inspire that bold, local claim.

By the time Hidden Valley’s ski area ended in 1991, people were indeed skiing anywhere else. The ski area’s history is commonly traced to the lodge’s construction in 1955, just ahead of the resort boom along Interstate 70.

Those resorts seemingly enjoyed more autonomy than the last concessionaire of Hidden Valley.

“Although Hidden Valley was loved by locals, operating a small ski resort inside a national park posed many logistical challenges,” reads a guide to the park by James Kaiser.

But Hidden Valley still attracts skiers. One might take advantage of the slope dedicated to avalanche beacon and rescue practice. Or one might take to any of the “ghost trails,” as Kaiser calls them; the runs are still clear between young trees planted as part of the restoration project that started in the early 2000s.

Or one might set their sights higher — to that alpine place of The Drift. A backcountry skier from Golden, Adam Duster, is looking up there now.

“There’s a lot of places to ski in the park,” he says, “but this is definitely the most accessible.”

Which explains the crowds that pick up when conditions are right on the weekends. Hidden Valley doesn’t seem so “hidden” then.

But on this weekday, another vacationer from the South, John Moore, is enjoying the peace and quiet. He’s watching his young grandkids sled and experience snow for the first time.

Hidden Valley feels “low-key,” Moore says. “It’s out of the mainstream of everything.”

The ski area started in an effort to join the mainstream.

Rocky Mountain National Park was established in 1915, and “encouraging winter sports as a way to attract more visitors was high on the agenda of early park superintendents,” Pickering wrote in his book. He wrote it as a priority, too, for local business owners and outdoor enthusiasts who noted a development on the other side of the Continental Divide.

In Hot Sulphur Springs, Norwegian skier Carl Howelsen had built jumps and hosted exhibitions as part of what was billed the first winter festival west of the Mississippi. In Estes Park, local history points to Colorado Mountain Club-led winter outings to Fern Lake as a similar promotion.

But it wasn’t until the early 1930s when people around town found their ultimate place for downhill skiing. It would be Hidden Valley, where crews building Trail Ridge Road had been based. The job was done in 1932.

“From 1936 to 1941, skiing at Hidden Valley was driving up Trail Ridge Road and skiing down into Hidden Valley,” says Kyle Patterson, the park’s public affairs officer.

Park history notes three downhill trails during that time — trails in the place of skids from logging days in the early 1900s. Hidden Valley’s timber had been used to construct the Stanley Hotel.

Then came a new use: a rope tow in 1941, Patterson says, ahead of modernized lifts to be built in the coming years. The lodge built in 1955 would be expanded, along with a 500-car parking lot, paved over wetlands.

“The ‘70s saw more dramatic changes, including more vegetation manipulation to widen runs,” Patterson says.

The next decade saw a shift. The ski area’s concessionaire, Estes Valley Recreation and Park District, sought expansions and snowmaking to keep up with the industry beyond. That was deemed “incompatible with management objectives of a national park,” Patterson says.

In 1991, reportedly no concessionaire emerged to pick up the ski area’s permit. So began the national park’s restoration mission, which included tearing down structures and bringing back nature. Pavement was torn to return the wetlands and creek to daylight.

So began “kind of the new history of Hidden Valley,” Patterson says. The idea was “more of a primitive, wilderness experience,” she says. “That’s kind of how that area has morphed in the 2000s. And it’s really popular.”

Popular among “hearty souls,” she says, who skin above treeline to ski down into Hidden Valley — just as the first, pre-lift skiers did. The early claim lives again: “If you can ski Hidden Valley, you can ski anywhere.”

But Hidden Valley is more popular among families. Families who walk the nature trail, guided by signs on animals and habitat returning.

And families who stop for sledding. Families like Oubre’s.

He’s taking pictures of the kids to make the memories last.

“It’s something I tell my wife,” he says. “On our deathbed, I want to be able to say, Hey, remember that time we went sledding in Rocky Mountain National Park? That’s what it’s all about. You can’t put a price on that.”