Tenderfoot Hill Ski Area

Tenderfoot Mountain Ski Area near Cripple Creek, Colorado, sat beside Highway 67 about two miles north of town, in the gold mining district on the southwest side of Pikes Peak. Members of the Cripple Creek Ski Club picked the site and built its J-bar, and the area opened in 1948. A local paper greeted it as a white gold strike on Tenderfoot, which in a gold camp was the obvious headline.

The J-bar was not finished in time for the first winter, so a portable rope tow carried skiers that season. The rope tow stayed on afterward for extra capacity, and the area ended up with three surface lifts, the J-bar and two rope tows. The trail map, printed under the name Tenderfoot Hill, shows a 1,200-foot tow and a 700-foot rope tow, a practice and instruction slope, a ski shelter, a small jump and parking for 300 cars. It lists the lodge at about 10,000 feet. Most of the six runs were for beginners, and several took their names from the mining district, among them Cresson Shaft and Gold Road.

The area did not last long. Thin snow and a lack of expert terrain are the likely reasons it closed in the early 1950s. Its J-bar was sold to Monarch, which put it to work in the mid-1950s. A private owner tried to revive the hill around 1991 with a T-bar, but by one worker's account it never opened to the public because the snow came too late. The site is private land today. Photos from 2003 show the J-bar return terminal and old lift signs still on the hill.