Another part of what made Southwest Colorado special, affordable skiing in our backyard, will soon be no more. Hesperus Ski Area will remain closed through the 2024 to 2025 season.

Our paper published the voice of only one person, the corporate front who swears every effort will be made to reopen somehow, someday, if only a million gallons of spare water can be found laying around.

He says it is uneconomical to run, breaking even only in years with snowy Decembers. OK, but it raises the question, certainly, of why this group of capitalists bought the place if it has been such a marginal operation. Did they not think of securing water rights first? Or did they plan all along to remove this minor competitor to its hundred-dollar-a-day operation up the road?

These questions are left unanswered because they were unasked.

We get no skier, no community member, no employee – just the corporate spin. Today’s media: A press release to print faster than an Olympic downhiller, even when this day’s corpse has been a valued institution for tourists and locals and kids since the 1950s.

Well, newspapers are subject to the same forces as family ski areas. Not valuable enough to adequately staff, nor to operate with care.

A fun place to spend an evening. Sorry to see it go.

Glenn May

Cortez