Cross Country Ski Resort High On Continental Divide Now Owned By Group Of Leadville Locals

Ty and Roxanne Hall were ready to walk away from the Nordic ski resort they spent three decades building near Leadville on the Continental Divide. Intending to retire, they put the Tennessee Pass Nordic Center, Cookhouse & Sleep Yurts up for sale last spring, keen on turning it over to “the next young Ty and Roxanne” to preserve its special spirit and vibe.

“It’s just that time of life for Roxanne and I to retire,” Ty said last March, “do some other things and enjoy ourselves.”

Saying goodbye wasn’t easy, though. They were too attached to the area’s unique character to risk it, so they found another way to accomplish their goals: Selling to an ownership group of local partners, including themselves.

The operation is now jointly owned by the Halls and five other local couples. The sale closed in December.

“It was really important for everybody in the group to try to continue and retain the same sort of feeling and community-backed business,” Ty said. “Roxanne and I are super excited, because we feel very supported. This group shares our vision and the love for the business and the love for the community, so they are able to keep that going.”

In 1993, the Halls bought a small, failing cross country operation adjacent to the Ski Cooper downhill area for $5,000. A year later they added a cookhouse, and they added two “sleep yurts” in 2013. Now there are seven.

Ty built the place from the ground up. There are 27 kilometers of cross country trails. The cookhouse is a one-mile trip on skis or snowshoes from the Nordic Center, with panoramic views of snow-capped mountains. The cookhouse, in a solar-powered yurt, serves lunch and candlelit gourmet dinners. The sleep yurts for this season were already sold out when the Halls listed the property last spring for $2.2 million.

There was no shortage of potential buyers, but none felt right to the Halls.

“They were all super nice, but it became apparent that if we sell to these people, it’s not going to be so much of a local business anymore,” Ty said. “Some of the people were like, ‘We’re going to own it and come up on the weekends, but not be here all the time in the community.'”

Another potential buyer asked, “How much do you think we could take out of the business and take home?” Another red flag.

Then their Leadville-based realtor, Heather Lindh, came up with an interesting and unusual solution.

“Heather was like, ‘Do you really want to do this? What if we got a local group together and we bought it as a collective?’” Ty said. “I was like, ‘That’s an amazing idea.’”

LIndh and her husband, who owns the Cycles of Life bike shop in Leadville, are one of the ownership couples. Another couple includes a local wedding planner who put on weddings at the Tennessee Pass operation as a contract worker. Her husband is a professor at Colorado Mountain College in town. Another owner, who owns a local construction company, helped Hall build some of the yurts.

For longtime general manager Erica Curry, it was the perfect solution.

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“I’ve done a lot of work to make this place what it is over the last 10 years,” Curry said. “This was by far the best option we were presented with. And, it’s the only way and I would have stayed. Everybody in Leadville is so excited. No one wanted it to change.”

Mission accomplished.

“It’s retained the same vibe that it’s always had, very family oriented,” Hall said. “Roxanne and I have made it our mission. (Guests) tell us, ‘I feel like you welcomed us into your home.’ It was super important that we keep that sort of thing going.”

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