Skilifts.org / SORT Forum

The Iron Mountain Ski Area is located on highway 88 about 20 miles west of Kirkwood. It closed in the mid-90s due to inability to compete with Kirkwood.

They had 5 chairlifts, with 4 others in the parking lot just before the resort closed. Apparently the lifts in the lot are still there, as well as a few on the mountain. I am hoping to take a trip up to the place in september. I though it was interesting as it was a pretty big area and it closed recently.

"Regarding Iron Mountain Ski Area... I knew one of the former owners of the area. It definitely closed due to bad management and lack of money... it would most likely still be open today if the right people had run it. It had great views, great ski runs and a good variety of terrain.

The owner, unfortunately, had a vision that the ski area should have a minimum of 10 ski lifts and that would get people to ski there. So, whenever he had the chance, he acquired lifts even though he didn't have the money to buy them.

The area had 1,200 acres of terrain and five ski lifts. The trail map you have on the website is from around 1989, I believe... newer ones in the early 90s had more runs that were developed.

The area opened as Silver Basin in the early 1970s with two chairlifts (chairs 1 and 2-- the beginner and intermediate chair right below the main lodge). It was later re-named Ski Sundown. They closed in 1978 due to a lack of skier visits. It was sold in 1979 and re-opened as Iron Mountain. The new owner built two more chairlifts (chairs 3 and 4 on your trailmap) and opened the area in 1982.

During the summer of 1984, they installed chair #5 (a triple chair) and opened for business on Thanksgiving day. However, that year, insurance rates skyrocketed throughout the ski industry and the owner was unable to find affordable insurance. The forest service forced the owner to shut down the area the day after Christmas because his insurance policy had expired (our family was staying at the motel for Christmas vacation and were told we had to leave because the resort was being closed down). This same insurance price-hike affected a number of other ski areas, including Echo Summit, that same year.

The area remained closed until 1988, when the owner was approached by the US Forest Service about re-opening the area. He leased the area out to a new operator, who ran it until 1990 when they walked away. They never had the money to run the ski area, so marketing was non-existant and the ski area saw visits plunge to the 20,000 per year range.

The owner of the facility opened the area for the 1991-92 ski year and sunk lots of money into marketing -- a move that paid off with the resort getting more than 37,000 skier visits for the year. That summer, he purchased two chairlifts from the defunct Echo Summit Ski Area and two more chairlifts from a defunct ski resort in New Mexico. Those chairlifts were delivered to Iron Mountain but never installed.... in fact, they are still sitting unassembled in Iron Mountain's old parking lot; the chairs being crushed by each winter's snowfall.

He ran the ski area for the 1992-1993 ski season, with similar skier visits... he had been expecting more. The area would have been profitable, though, had it not been for the purchase and deliver of the four chairlifts the year earlier. That summer, he was unable to meet his financial obligations and filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In 1995, he leased the ski area to three individuals from New Zealand that renamed the area Kit Carson Ski Area. They claimed to have the required cash to run the ski area, but in the end didn't. They opened Chair 1 the day after Christmas, and chairs 3 and 5 about a week later. Chair 2 (the beginner chair) didn't even have chairs on the cable and Chair 4 never operated. They abruptly closed the ski area and left the resort in the beginning of February.

The area has sat dormant ever since. An individual purchased the ski area during bankruptcy proceedings in 1997 or 1998 with the intent to re-open it, but they never found financing and filed for bankruptcy a year later. Another individual purchased the resort in 2000 and asked the Forest Service to allow him to run the area. Because the area had not been open for three years in a row, the forest service had taken away the special use permit for the area. They performed a study to determine the viability of a ski area in the region and decided that the Lake Tahoe area already had enough resorts and that it was doubtful if Iron Mountain would be successful since the previous owners were never successful.

I dropped by the area on Thanksgiving weekend 2003 and was told by a caretaker that the area had been sold again to an individual who was hoping to do a land-swap with the forest service to make the ski area land private property. ; If that happened, his plans were to develop housing at the top of the mountain and open it as a private ski area for home-owners only. The ski lifts are still there, but are in very poor condition. The day lodge and motel are also intact but heavily vandalized."
-Robert Drueckhammer

I found out about all this on WELSAP, a site for lost resorts over here on the west.

The guy over there is really friendly, so I'm going to try and help him out.

Here is an ariel photo of the place:
Link to Photo

]A link to the topo

And lastly a larger trail map. I can't wait to find out what kind of lifts they have over there.

OMG, check out what i found on Ebay today. Part of the actual Iron Mountain ski area including the lodge and chairlifts is up for sale. All we need is some money and Skilifts.org can have it's own private ski area. Hey wait a minute, were a non profit company, but only exist on the internet. If we turned skilifts.org into a real company, this could be a tax right off I think. B)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...4314864000&rd=1

Damn, thats such a good deal. I would be so happy if I could own that. Boy, down the street from me a 4 bedroom house is on sale for 1.6 million, and up in tahoe, cabins with small lots are around a million.

So Cameron, is that for reals? It would be so cool, damn. Ill keep it running.

Remember, this area needs a lot to get it back and running again. In order for a reasonable shot at success, one would need at least five million (if not more) to buy the area, get everything back into reasonable shape, and market it.

What became of the Echo Summit area?

It appears that the Feds have killed the area anyway, permanently.

Feds

I doubt that this ski area could ever reopen as a public ski area again with all the other competition from the near by Lake Tahoe ski resorts. This is the type of ski area you buy and and you keep it as your own private ski area. :)

Then we would need even more money if we were just to open it for ourselves. :---:

Not really. You would have to pay to renovate the lodge and cabins, and get someone to fix up the lifts (or it could be a skilifts.org project) and then you are pretty much set. If I were to get it (fat chance, but it would be the sweetest thing ever) it would be nice to get a snowcat as well as several snowmobiles to access the terrain from the old lifts as it has not grown in yet. The area is a bit low elevation wise, but this area consistently recieves the best snow in the sierra (kirkwood averages 500" a year and close to 700 isn't unusual), so this place would get around 300-350 most likely. Security would also be an issue, but if I was some mega superstar with millions of dollars, 3 or 4 million could get you some damn good mountain property.

You forget the costs of operation and maintainence. Within a short amount of time, without customers, we would be flat out broke and have no means of buying electricity or spare parts. That is not even to consider the costs of mechanics themselves.

It costs probably 15,000 to run a hsq a month, so a riblet double like this should be 2,000. We would have no lift operators, the maintenance people would be us, and all we have to buy is the fuel. Plus, we arn't going to be running lift #1 all month long.

Also remember it wouldn't be like a regular resort running 9-4 every day. It would be the days we are actually up there for the hours we would want to use it. Not nearly as much as a regular resort, so it would cost half of what cameron said at most.

ummmmmmm....

Damn.... dont' have that much.......

We don't have to run the electricity all that much, no staff or anything, and with about 150 of us now, if we all chipped in, we're in business. And remember that we can always sell tickets to raise some extra money when we're not using it

Don't forget about maintenance costs! Grease, bearings (CTEC/Mueller 2 per sheave @ $24), liners - both sheave and bullwheels (a Mueller BW liner is $1200, CTEC sheave liner - $100), sheaves themselves (CTECs are $600)... Just a few things... :) One thing I have learned about liftsis: everything is expensive, and heavy! The stop buttons we just bought were $84 each.

That's why if it was a private ski area, we would have less maintenance costs. The lift wouldn't run all the time and we wouldn't have to do maintenance every year too like a normal lift.

The LESS you use a lift, the MORE bearings you will go through - as water will get in them and damage them, alternatively you could grease them more often. Sheave liners are affected by UV rays... BW liners aren't replaced that often. The bores (the surface the bearings ride on) on the sheaves can be damaged beyond repair, even with little use.. And yes, line maintenance would have to be done every year. Same with grip relocation/inspection, ND testing, hanger head lubrication, spring pack inspection (if it's not a Riblet)... the list really does go on, even if you are a private resort you still have to follow manufacturer's recommendations, and lubrications schedule! :)

Yeah, what he said. I'd be willing to come out and do Riblet annual service for a small fee or free skiing, though...
Allan, you must have bought Allen-Bradley pushbuttons 'cause that price sounds awfully familiar. I replaced all of Baker's old Cutler-Hamer equipment in 1998, and I bought around 10 stop buttons and a dozen joystick-type controls for a cool two grand U.S.- not cheap!

We bought Moeller FAK's they're so shiny compared to our old UV eaten ones... seen here:

Wow... shiny... must pick up... (sound of slap) 'You must not give in to packrat tendencies!'
UV is a wonderful thing. It turns our red buttons pink, our yellow ones white, our green ones blue, and destroys all of our plastic and rubber things over time. But I get a nice tan out of it as well. B)

Haha! It's true... lift mechanics get great tans, well at least on the skin that's not covered :) Everyone asks me if I've been on vacation somewhere!