Hesperus Ski Area's Real Problem Isn't the Broken Lift
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Ask around Hesperus why the ski hill hasn't turned a lift since the 2022-23 season and you'll hear the same answer everywhere: the lift broke and nobody's fixed it. That's true as far as it goes. The gearbox on the Bighorn, the double chair that's hauled skiers up Hesperus since the 1960s, gave out and a replacement runs close to $200,000. What that answer leaves out is why a company that operates several other ski areas across the Southwest hasn't written that check yet, and why the honest answer has less to do with money than with who actually owns the ground the lift sits on.
That distinction matters if you live here, because it changes what "someday it'll reopen" actually depends on.
The timeline is straightforward. Hesperus last ran lifts during the 2022-23 season. Not long before that, the resort replaced the haul rope on the Bighorn, a Riblet-built double chair old enough that replacement parts often have to be custom fabricated rather than ordered off a shelf. Shortly after that repair, the gearbox failed. Mountain Capital Partners, which bought Hesperus in 2016 and also owns Purgatory Resort up the highway, confirmed the hill would stay dark for a third consecutive winter this past 2025-26 season. No announcement has followed yet on whether lifts will spin this coming winter either.
A mechanical failure alone doesn't usually take three years to sort out. Purgatory's own new chairlift got delayed into 2026-27, but that's a permitting timeline, not a parts problem. Hesperus is different, and the difference is water.
"We know how much Hesperus means to local families and to Durango's skiing heritage. It is disappointing not to have the hill open."
That's Matt Ericksen, marketing director for Purgatory and Hesperus, describing a decision that isn't really his company's to make alone.
Hesperus needs snowmaking to open reliably before Christmas, which owner James Coleman has said is the single week that makes the hill's finances pencil out. Outside of Christmas and spring break, most Hesperus skiers are already season pass holders, so the holiday walk-up crowd is what turns a marginal season into a workable one. Without snowmaking, the hill depends entirely on natural snowfall arriving on schedule, which increasingly it doesn't.
Snowmaking needs water, and this is where the land question comes in. Mountain Capital Partners owns the ski area's operation and its equipment. It does not own the land underneath it. Any snowmaking project needs sign-off from the landowner and from local government, and three years in, that agreement hasn't been reached. This is not a fundraising problem. It's a negotiation between parties who don't answer to each other, and negotiations like that don't move on a fundraiser's timeline.
That distinction is why "just raise the money" stickers on a bumper don't actually shorten the wait.
Longtime Durango resident Matt Gerhardt, who learned to ski at Hesperus, started handing out #SaveHesperus stickers after the closure and has floated the idea publicly of a local co-op buying the hill and running it as community property instead of a corporate line item. It's a good story, and it's the version that spreads fastest online.
It isn't what's actually in motion. Reporting on the closure has been direct on this point: there are no conversations underway about the community buying Hesperus. The sentiment is real and the frustration is understandable, particularly for a hill Gerhardt and others describe as one of the last genuinely affordable, family-run ski areas left in the region. But sentiment and an active deal are different things, and right now this is sentiment.
The useful thing to understand about Hesperus is that almost none of its daily texture depends on the ski hill's lift status. A handful of institutions here run on their own clocks, closed hill or not.
None of that is a consolation prize for the ski hill sitting quiet. It's evidence that Hesperus was never a one-institution town, even for people whose winters used to revolve around the Bighorn.
As of the most recent reporting earlier this year, nothing had changed on either front. No snowmaking agreement had been announced, and no buyout conversation had started. Mountain Capital Partners hasn't given a timeline for reopening, and with Purgatory working through its own delayed lift project and Nordic Valley still working to rebuild a lodge lost to a 2024 fire as of last year's reporting, Hesperus hasn't been at the top of the company's list of active fixes. That doesn't mean it's gone for good. Small ski areas have come back from longer gaps than three years elsewhere in the country. It means the honest answer, if someone asks you this fall, is that the hold-up was never really about the lift. It's about water rights on land the operator doesn't control, and that kind of problem gets solved on its own schedule, not a ski season's.
Regents Real Estate Group is based just up the road in Cortez, and we work across this stretch of Southwest Colorado often enough to know that a place like Hesperus holds together through its restaurants and ranches and canyon roads whether or not the ski hill is running. If you're curious what any of that means for property here or nearby, from the Hesperus land itself to the wider La Plata County area, our Hesperus neighborhood guide and Hesperus homebuyer guide are good places to start. And if you already own a piece of this area and want to know what it's worth today, Get Your Free Home Valuation from a team that actually knows the ground here.
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