Woe is us. Yes, the millions of people in the Great American West who depend on the snowpack for 80% of our water. This year has shaken us to the bone.
Apparently, there was a warmer and drier year, winter 1980, that we are competing with. Oddly, more prominent in people’s memory was the terrible winter of 1976-77. People drove over Independence Pass until early January. Skiing, sans snowmaking, was very late in coming and was not good. Skiers, ski professionals (instructors and patrollers), local ranch and farm folks who ran lifts and snowcats … everyone suffered.
There was a significant difference between 1976 and 2025-26. Seventy-six was frigid! Residents in Redstone’s Osgood-era homes with dry-stack stone foundations experienced frozen water pipes up and down the Boulevard due to lack of insulating snow.
There was a bygone industry in all our valleys that perhaps not a soul alive experienced. Three doors down from the Redstone Inn and backed up to the Crystal River sits a small, two story blue building, which, despite its remodel, is clearly from the early 1900 building boom.
The Redstone ice house was the storage facility for tons of cubic meters of indispensable ice that chilled meat, milk and vegetables in every house in town. The building walls were insulated with dry sawdust that successfully preserved the ice for the entire year. People could buy ice on location, but home delivery was most common.
Such an essential commodity supported an industry employing many men at a time of year when work was scarce. Most every municipality had an ice house and a frozen water body to supply it.
The Redstone Farm, one mile south of town along the river, was the site of a pond where a busy crew sawed large blocks of ice in the cold winter months. Men used sharp irons to score an extensive geometric grid in the ice. Their ice saws had very large teeth and were seven to eight feet long. Pikes and tongs, conveyors and hoists facilitated the harvest.
The delivery wagons, and later trucks, were a common sight in towns into the last century. Homes had beautiful oak chests with multiple doors enclosing tin-smithed drawers to store the ice blocks and food.
Prospect Mountain Ranch in Marble Valley had the “luxury” of hydro-electric power, generated by an approximately five-foot diameter Pelton wheel mounted along an irrigation ditch. Used for irrigation all day, the ditch was diverted to the wheel at night when it supplied lights and refrigeration. Rural electrification gradually brought the amenities of electrical appliances to ranches and outlying residences.
Sources record some Colorado ice harvesting operating at scale until World War II. This cold, unique and often fun livelihood has now gone the way of the horse drawn buggy. Gone but not forgotten, there are still ice harvesting festivals to commemorate this essential industry.
About this time in Redstone history, another nascent winter economy arose. The Redstone Ski Area opened on Christmas 1960 with a short T-bar tow that operated just that year. The cute and colorful, short-lived lift still stands on private property. The T-bar was a far cry from the original grandiose proposal.
The vision was a tramway from Redstone to the upper basin of East Creek! Redstone is no stranger to extreme wealth. The developer was one of Texas’ first oil billionaires, Frank Kistler. Kistler bought the Hotel Colorado, the Glenwood Hot Springs and then moved up and bought the Redstone Inn. Kistler applied to the U.S. Forest Service for his ski development. Money was no object, but he was refused a permit. The reason was the lack of perennial snow in Redstone.
Newcomers will not remember the excitement of the Redstone Sled Dog Races. The late January event was Redstone’s answer to Aspen’s Wintersköl. Starting in the mid 1980s, the annual sled dog races started at the inn and ran right down the Boulevard to the Forest Service campground and back. The race spiced up winter doldrums, brought throngs to town and was coupled with ice sculpting and concessions. Rain, snow, warm … As popular for all as it was labor intensive for the Redstonians, the races lasted 25 years, until the vagaries of winter temperatures brought the event to an end.
Oh the joy that the Redstone Pillar brought everyone. Located behind the country store, the 30-feet tall, 15-feet wide azure blue tower became a Redstone tradition. Local climbers held an ice climbing festival for a couple of years, but inconsistent low temperatures exacerbated liability concerns making this festival short-lived.
Is it too late to save our winters? The Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association believes that, “weather” or not, only good things will come of a more conservative approach to resource management and a more diversified energy policy.
To learn more about the Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association and our mission please search www.cvepa.org or visit us on Facebook.