Arapahoe Basin closes for summer

The skiers are long gone. So are most of the workers. But at the gravelly base of Chisholm Trail, 44-year-old Lift Maintenance Manager Rob Ware parks an ancient Ford F-250 pickup and gets ready to lead his team into the loneliest, most unsung task of the summer: getting the lifts ready for next winter.

As Chisholm begins his ritual ascent up the mountain, he marvels at his old, reliable pickup, with its seat torn down to foam, its pearl paintyellowed and the broken dashboard, which falsely displays a modest 72,987 miles.

"It just keeps running and running," Ware says softly under the rumble of the Ford's second engine. Ware tilts his head back on faded leather and drives the slope up the near vacant mountain.

Arapahoe is always the last of the state's 22 ski areas to close for the summer. The winter's staff has been reduced from 230 to 53. Starting every June, all of the basin's lifts are inspected and worn parts are replaced until the basin reopens in mid-October.

"People always ask what we do in the summer," Ware says. "They really don't know."

Six quiet men waited for assignment as the climbing sun gets warmer.

Ware hired each of his workers. They are men like Ware in many ways, a collection of soft-spoken mechanics in blue fleece and worn jeans who have come to work here by chance.

Steve Zmugg, 33, had been working day care at the basin. Springs refugee Jeff Schimer, 28, never expected to be hired after all his begging. Ben Morton, 28, found himself here after a road trip from Dayton about a decade ago.

Ware has his own story about ending up here: a 4-year-old boy brought here by the father who lost a Broncos bet and swore to ski for the first time.

Together, for the next month, the crew's work lies up past Chisholm Trial, where a stream rushes down past gravel and dead grass breaking the mountain's usual silence.

This is Ware's favorite time of year, when the man who has worked Arapahoe's slopes since he was 15 can enjoy something other than snow.

As he drives equipment up the trail, his spindly body bounces, but his face reveals a blissful smile. Under his right arm, he braces a box of paperwork, which holds his primary duty - to sign and jot notes on a checklist of maintenance requirements.

Ware dislikes two things: surprises and office work. He tends to spend more time gripping the worn wheel of a pickup or wearing down the soles of his Red Wing boots than sitting in his office on the second floor of the basin area.

"Most of us say we wouldn't do this job anywhere else or for anybody other than him," lift electrician Rick Gustaffson said. "We have a lot of loyalty to Rob. He's not the kind of manager who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty. He prefers to get his hands dirty."

The Ford echoes at the hill base of the Norway lift, where only the cacophonous reception of two-way radios, pop music from a portable radio and dogs' barks resonate.
The men have brought dogs for as long as Ware can remember, and the men watch as the canines frolic on melting snow.

But work is always waiting.

Zmugg helps Ware unload the truck of safety equipment, sheaves, lubricant and tools, as Schimer assembles a work chair that looks like a steel booth.

Work is hard, dirty and dangerous here. As one man operates the lift, a pair will hang at almost 20 feet above the ground in specially installed maintenance booth, smaller than a hotdog stand. On the Norway they will inspect 17 towers and almost 200 sheaves that guide the rope, which guides chairlifts and the booth now dangling in the air.

Then repeat. On every lift, every summer.

"It's fun but it gets monotonous at times," Zmugg says. "I think we all take it for granted."

Slowly, the booth will reach the summit of Arapahoe; to the north they'll see Steamboat Springs, Vail out west, beyond Fairplay to the south, the Lenawee Mountain that blocks the eastern view. But on a clear day, if you look hard to the east, the sight will stretch out beyond Denver.

"It's amazing," Schimer says. "It's pristine. It's quiet. Only the sound of you, your buddy and the radio."

Of course, quiet here is a relative thing. Without the bustling crowds of winter, you just hear different things: the birds, the wind.

That relative quiet allows Schimer to concentrate on the lift, which carries 650 chairs, and the perils his coworkers can face - a burden to his job, he says. So the men tighten shifting wires, remove and clean seats, and inspect all seven lifts, sometimes two or three at a time - all to be written in Ware's paperwork.

Inspection is usually rote, but under the first tower's electrical cap. Schimer discovers a small wooden block and chuckles as he drops it.

Tools usually go missing, left behind in the tower's nooks, but almost everything forgotten in these towers will eventually be found, Ware said.

So Zmugg, who will quit work at the basin on Aug. 6, plans to plant a farewell note on a tower cap before summer's end.

"I'll leave it for one of us to find it," he says.

"They'll find it next summer."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Ware asks before he leaves.

As the Ford creaks down Chisholm's corners, Ware thinks back at Zmugg's idea and laughs. He expects it from the man he hired, who has plotted a 15-hour drive to Houston to leave his current life.

"I'll miss the camaraderie, the lifts and the mountains," Zmugg says, "but winter for eight months has gotten to be too long for me. It's not cool with me anymore."

At times even Ware wonders whether he'll ever depart from his routine. He might retire and golf in Arizona, he says, but for now this is where he belongs.

"This is the center of the universe," Ware says.

At the Chisholm trail gate exit, Ware puts the Ford into first gear, turns the wheel to a slant and steps out.

"Someday, I'm gonna go to a junk yard and get a nice new seat for the Ford," Ware says. "It deserves one."