As described in an earlier post, the local crew from Terra Firma Forestry has been busy clearing the small dead standing trees out along Mirkwood Ridge.  The trees are not being removed but we are instead utilizing a lop and scatter technique.  This involves cutting the trees into smaller pieces and scattering them out on the forest floor.  This is…

We picked up our first snow of the season today.  The cold front moved in overnight and gave us a little taste of winter.  It looks to warm up over the weekend so this snow won’t last for long.  I know it’s only mid-September but it sure gets us thinking about skiing and riding!

One of our original lifts at Monarch was a T-Bar that topped out near what is now the top of the Little Joe ski trail.  This Contstam T-Bar had previously been used at the Tenderfoot Ski Area near the town of Victor, CO and was purchased by Monarch in 1957.  The foundations from this lift can still be seen along…

As you know, parking and shuttling has taken on a more important role in the Colorado ski industry over the last five to ten years. Even for the classic and smaller ski area operations like Monarch. What can I say? People just love to ski! As a business, we also have focused more on helping to get our workforce up…

Here is a look up from the bottom of Mirkwood. It’s deep with a mix of wildflowers and skunk cabbage right now. While we are addressing the smaller standing dead spruce trees in the Basin this summer, it’s clear to see that we still have some larger trees to deal with at some point in the future.

The top of the Garfield Lift is perched in a pretty spectacular spot. Particularly on a bluebird day. The Lift Maintenance crew has gotten the chairs back on the lift line after the rope replacement project and she’s ready to run again. Summer is cruising by and it won’t be long before its feeling like fall up on the mountain.

Here is an amazing shot from Pano Ridge yesterday morning.

Just add snow! The Mirkwood hike-to is just waiting for winter to show up again and for all of us to get our hike on. We have been up the ridge quite a bit this summer. There is a saw team from our local Terra Firma Forestry crew conducting some thinning work out in Mirkwood Basin. These efforts are focusing…

The Monarch team spent another day planting trees on the mountain. The timber crew at the Salida Ranger District lined up 1600 Lodgepole Pine and Engelmann Spruce saplings for us to plant around the mountain. Efforts were focused within areas that have been thinned out since 2018 as part of the MPVMP. For us, it’s like planting a garden in…