The Outsider | Aspen Divas tap trust, harmony in forging synchronized skiing legacy in the Roaring Fork Valley

The synchronized skiing legacy of the Aspen Divas is anchored in trust

The Aspen Divas measure their distance from one another during practice at Aspen Highlands on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (Kelsey Brunner, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Since the late 1990s, a cosmopolitan team of Aspen ski instructors have dominated the ultra-niche sport of synchronized skiing, carving choreographed turns in criss-crossing concert.

The Aspen Divas team of eight women — with skiers from Argentina, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and Colorado — arc across corduroy in perfect harmony, reflecting a vibe in the Roaring Fork Valley that celebrates and protects skiing and the mountain landscape in a unified calling.

“It’s a real team sport,” Aspen Divas coach Russ Kauff told Sun freelancer Kelsey Brunner.

The storied Divas have harvested more than a dozen world championships titles in the last 20 years. In the last several years, a team of talented ski instructors have rebuilt the legacy forged by veterans. Kauff calls them “a new generation of Divas.”

Synchronized skiing is a sport many American skiers don’t know. It’s popular in Europe and South America but not as much in the U.S., where it’s mostly saturated with technically adept ski instructors.

“You commit a lot to train and then to ski so close to other people in such a high performance skiing level and speed, you really need to trust the person that is right next to you,” said former Aspen Diva Danisa Guardatti, who spent eight years skiing and coaching with the Aspen Divas before joining the Argentina demonstration team, which goes by The Argenteam.

Trust is key for the Aspen Divas. At the Telluride World Synchro Championships last weekend, the Aspen Divas stood atop the course and looked into each other’s eyes. They said “I trust you” before dropping into their symphonic ski performance.

“Ten years from now, when this group of women is running the ski business, they may or may not think hard about how they finish the competition this year,” Kauff said. “But they will remember how they feel about each other and the kind of environment that we create for each other. And if they bring that to the instructors that they train or the athletes that they coach or the schools that they run it’s a big, big win.”

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read Kelsey’s story

Powdr pulls Mt. Bachelor off the market while Eldora remains for sale

Skiers and snowboarders get off a chairlift at the summit of Eldora Mountain Resort on Nov. 4, 2019. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)

Utah-based resort operator Powdr last week pulled its Mt. Bachelor ski area in Oregon off the market. The company in a statement cited “numerous factors involved in evaluating a sale” in its decision to keep the ski area it acquired in 2001.

“After considering all facts and circumstances, Powdr has decided to retain ownership of Mt. Bachelor, indefinitely,” reads the company’s statement. “We’re excited to continue our stewardship of the resort and serve the Central Oregon community with truly one-of-a-kind skiing.”

A Powdr spokeswoman said the company’s Eldora Mountain Resort — which Powdr bought in 2016 — remains on the market, as well as the SilverStar ski area in British Columbia it acquired in 2019.

Powdr announced the sale of Mt. Bachelor, Eldora and SilverStar last year after it sold its Killington ski area in Vermont to a group of local investors. Powdr, which bills itself as an “Adventure Lifestyle Company,” last year moved into park concessions, taking over federal management contracts this year at Utah’s Zion National Park and Death Valley National Park in California.

The town of Nederland said it has enlisted “veterans of the ski industry” in an effort to buy Eldora Mountain Resort from Powdr and the town has been invited to make a bid for the 680-acre Boulder County ski area.

The town is “currently in conversations with private entities, philanthropists and impact investors” to build a partnership to buy Eldora. The town is telling residents it could use Enterprise Bond Funds to help raise the estimated $100 million to $200 million needed to acquire the ski area and revenues from operations “can be used for a variety of municipal needs,” reads a January update on the town’s website.

“This project is a bold opportunity for Nederland to reimagine its economic future while preserving the values that make our community unique,” the update reads. “By pursuing this acquisition, we can serve as a model for innovative town growth — balancing economic vitality with sustainability and community resilience.”

Nederland Town Administrator Jonathan Cain said the town has not heard anything from Powdr recently. Eldora president and general manager Brent Tregaskis this week announced he was retiring after 10 years at the ski area. The company declined to comment on the sale process beyond confirming that the Eldora ski area was still for sale.

Chris Porter, who led the effort in Bend, Oregon to buy Mt. Bachelor suspects that the federal budget tightening at the National Park Service may have triggered “some recalibration” at Powdr as the company questioned an over-reliance on federal contracts.

Porter said his group, Mt. Bachelor Community, Inc., had pledges from investors large and small that would have enabled the Bend group to buy the 4,300-acre ski area. The group was ready to spend as much as $200 million to buy Mt. Bachelor and invest in overdue maintenance. The community group enlisted institutional investors to put down as much as $75 million in escrow while they studied the resort and lined up funding through the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act — known as the JOBS Act — which would have including selling public shares of the ski area to buyers who could get discounted lift tickets and season passes.

The community group was competing against major resort operators and private equity investors, Porter said.

“Those big players we talked to, they were interested in our model,” Porter said.

The community group mirrored its proposed shareholder benefits off the cruise industry, which provides owners of stock special deals and credits on cruise trips.

The “enthusiast shareholder model” can bolster the sense of community around local ski areas, Porter said.

“It’s not just about the stock market and share prices. It’s about how communities can share in the economic viability of the ski areas next to them,” Porter said. “I think a lot of companies across the industry are seeing that communities need to play a larger role in their local ski resorts.”

Porter, a high school business teacher and accountant who previously built and sold businesses, said his group still hopes to work with Powdr on a joint venture that would give the company funding for capital improvements “and the company can focus on growth and recalibrating their exit plan.”

Porter and other members of Mt. Bachelor Community, Inc., are planning to meet with Nederland officials in a couple weeks to share any insights into how communities can negotiate for buying a ski resort.

“Communities need to be at the table in the ski resort industry and I think Nederland and Bend can build a new table, with a community-owned investment model that lets community members — not just institutional investors — buy in and have a say in their treasured ski areas,” Porter said. “I really see this as the next evolution for the resort industry.”

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Forest Service greenlights Mad Rabbit trails after seven years of planning

A new plan would develop nearly 50 miles of new mountain bike trails around the Continental Divide Trail in Routt County near Rabbit Ears Pass. (Matt Stensland, Special to The Colorado Sun)

It’s been 12 years since Steamboat Springs voters directed local lodging taxes toward trail construction and half that many years since the Forest Service proposed additional singletrack around the Continental Divide on Rabbit Ears Pass above town.

The Routt National Forest this month issued its final decision for that Mad Rabbit project connecting Rabbit Ears to the north with the Mad Creek draining to the south. The final decision wraps more than a decade of contentious discussion over where best to build trails funded with local tax dollars. (The project harvested more than 1,400 comments during the Forest Service environmental review that began in 2017. The final decision issued in early April by Routt Forest Direct Ranger Michael Woodbridge pointed to 1.9 million visits to the Routt National Forest in 2017, a 23% increase in five years and “heavy use” of forest trails around Steamboat Springs and a proliferation of illegal, user-created trails.)

“The project’s intent is to provide the greatest benefit to the public with the least degree of effect.” Woodbridge wrote in his decision. “The designation of trails will help focus use to areas that have been analyzed and determined to have the least impact on forest resources.”

The Steamboat Springs City Council in December voted to direct as much as $1.6 million of the city’s $2 million trails fund approved by voters in 2013 toward Mad Rabbit.

The local funding, along with lots of help from local trails groups and volunteers, is a critical part of the Forest Service plan for Mad Rabbit as the federal agency endures withering budget cuts and lost jobs as part of the Trump administration’s slashing of federal spending.

“One of the things working in favor of this project is the city council vote to fund most of the implementation phase and construction and decommission the user-created routes,” said Laraine Martin, executive director of local bike advocacy group Routt County Riders, which formed in 1991 and has been instrumental in pushing for the Mad Rabbit trails.

Martin said the Forest Service decision that lists a host of local partners and volunteer groups reflects not just the Forest Service scramble for outside funding but the community support for the project.

“When the community is included in the responsibilities and strategies, it increases community support and volunteer involvement and the positive vibe around the project,” Martin said.

The original proposal called for 79 miles of new trails and the final project allows 49 miles of new trails — 41 of which will be nonmotorized — and closing 36 miles of existing illegal trails across 127,124 acres of the national forest. The project also will impose seasonal wildlife closures of trails to protect elk-calving habitat.

The Forest Service plans to reconfigure or build seven trailheads to access the new trails. The agency decision says Forest Service trail crews, Youth Corps, trail contractors, partners and volunteers will help with the trail construction, with the initial phase of construction developing about 16 miles of trails and four trailheads while removing about 17 miles of trails. A second phase plans for 14 miles of new trails and a third phase calls for 15 miles of new trails. The second and third project require evaluation of use and the cost of monitoring and management as part of the Forest Service’s adaptive management strategy.

The success of the Mad Rabbit project relies heavily on monitoring and tracking progress involving both Forest Service officials and partners and volunteers. The Forest Service said it plans to spend $31,000 in pay for agency personnel to handle the management and maintenance of the new trails and volunteers will contribute about 1,000 hours a year in the management plan. The Forest Service also hopes to secure annual grants from the federal government as well as the Yampa Valley Community Foundation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the voter-approved Steamboat Springs trails fund.

The Forest Service estimates the total cost of the project — including building new trails, reclaiming old trails and developing trailheads spread over three to five years — at $1.9 million.

That is based on outside contractors doing the work, said Aaron Voos, a spokesman for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests. Costs could lower with volunteers, grants, and additional Forest Service funding, Voos said.

“We continue to work with our partners, value their work, and anticipate positive outcomes we can achieve together,” Voos said.

>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story

Could a 2021 critique of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riots have lost Kathleen Sgamma her shot to run the BLM?

Kathleen Sgamma, who has been nominated to lead to Bureau of Land Management, leans in during a panel discussion at SunFest, hosted by The Colorado Sun at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies on Sept.27, 2024, in Denver. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Kathleen Sgamma did not say anything publicly when President Donald Trump in February tapped her to run the Bureau of Land Management. The advocate for the oil and gas industry may have been concerned about a 2021 memo she sent to members of the Western Energy Alliance she has run since 2006. That memo — which watchdog journalism group Documented uncovered this week — blasted Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

“I’m disgusted that he discredited all the good work he did reorienting the judiciary back toward respect of the rule of law and construction by dishonoring the vote of the people and the rulings of those very same judges on his numerous challenges,” she wrote in the Jan. 7, 2021, memo. “I’m disheartened he besmirched his smart, well-intentioned people in the agencies who did such good work on important policies that advance the crucial mission of making life-sustaining, affordable energy accessible to all Americans, no matter their race, gender or political orientation.”

Sgamma was in D.C. this week for her U.S. Senate committee confirmation hearing. The White House apparently told the committee early Thursday, hours before her scheduled appearance, that Sgamma had removed herself from nomination to run the BLM.

As Trump thumps everyone who offered him anything other than full-throated support, it follows that a four-year-old critical memo — Sgamma titled it “Hope for a Resurgence of Sanity” — would raise the president’s ire.

— j

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