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…
No Name Basin. I haven’t sent out an update on this proposal since my last post on this topic back in February. The terrain expansion proposal is currently still working its way through the USFS review process. This involves a thorough analysis by a number of specialists and numerous steps to officially start the Environmental Assessment for this project. We…
Our lift maintenance crew once again teamed up with the pros from Knight Equipment for our rope splice project. This is a complicated and precise task that this multi-generational family business specializes in performing for ski areas around the country. The splicing process takes a lot of people to help weave the individual strands into place so that the Knight…
Our namesake Monarch butterfly makes its appearance in the area each summer. This one was recently seen feeding among the wildflowers next to the creek that flows through the ski area. The Monarch butterfly makes its way north and east during the spring and summer from the warmer climates of its wintering grounds of California and Mexico. It typically takes…
