Volunteering with Ignite Adaptive Sports at Eldora Mountain Resort used to involve more than serving long hours in sometimes numbing cold, snow and winter winds to help people with disabilities learn to ski and snowboard. It involved backbreaking effort, too.
The physical burden will be lightened this winter thanks to Eldora’s new Caribou Lodge, half of which will serve as the new home of Ignite Adaptive Sports. No longer will volunteers have to push adaptive athletes in sit-skis 300 feet up the mountain to reach the lifts that Ignite athletes use most often. An elevator to the third floor will take students and volunteers to a 100-foot bridge that directly accesses those lifts.
“By providing a dedicated space with direct access to lifts and trails, we’re removing barriers and creating opportunities for individuals of all abilities to experience the joy of winter sports,” said Hunter Wright, director of sustainability and special projects for Eldora Mountain Resort. “It also fosters greater diversity on the mountain.”
The new lodge, located at Eldora’s learning area about 1,000 feet southeast of the main base area, will house Ignite Adaptive on the first floor and a children’s ski school on the second floor. There is a kitchen on the second floor which will provide some food and beverage options. There are plenty of restrooms on both levels, which will be a great relief for all. Ignite’s old set-up was spartan in the extreme.
“They were two double-wide mobile home trailers that had been there for 20-plus years, and they were pretty beat up,” said Eldora marketing director Sam Bass. “There were two restroom trailers. Those were also very old and tired and not very pleasant. Everything here is such a major upgrade.”
The attractive, two-toned exterior of the building is finished with dark brown wood siding and gray rock. The sidewalk in front of the building is made of heated concrete to prevent ice from forming, as is a second-floor outdoor deck. The roof is covered with solar panels that provide all of the building’s electrical needs.
The children’s learning center includes a small sports shop, equipment rentals and a café. There is a large carpeted seating area, so inviting that Eldora general manager Brent Tregaskis refers to it as “the family room.”
Ignite is the only adaptive snowsports program in the Front Range. It started with 10 University of Colorado students who wanted to enhance the lives of classmates living with disabilities, and it is about to embark on its 50th season. Its new headquarters has a modern clubhouse feel with large TV screens, a spacious gathering area with tables and space for adaptive equipment.
“We’ve been working on this for just over nine years, and look at this place,” Tregaskis said. “They have 5,000 square feet. Compared to the little sheds that were over there for the last several years, huge improvement. What a beautiful facility to have down here in the beginner area.”
The message it sends is that adaptive athletes aren’t just accommodated or accepted at Eldora, their presence is also honored and celebrated. Conor Hall, director of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, saw that when he represented the governor’s office at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday.
“We need to provide more equitable access to the outdoors, and different modalities of enjoying the outdoors, including skiing,” Hall said. “That has got to be a right, and not a privilege. Programs like Ignite are incredibly important in that mission, and a building like this is a huge step forward in that.”
Ignite’s executive director, Carol Nickell, said the way the building turned out far exceeds what she hoped for or expected.
“We knew we were building a building, we knew it was a high-quality building, but this is so far beyond,” Nickell said. “It’s so hard to put into words what our volunteers do. They do 100% of our lessons, but they do more. They own this program. They change lives. And now, they don’t have to push people up the hill.”
More help is needed, though. Nickell said about 20% of the people with disabilities who wanted to take a lesson at Eldora last year could not be accommodated because there weren’t enough volunteers. Ignite currently has about 315 of them.
“We could probably use 100 to 150 more,” Nickell said. “That would help us provide everybody who wants a lesson with least least one lesson.”
