Colorado Mountain College’s Leadville campus is trying to inspire students to pursue jobs in the winter sports industry.
LEADVILLE — Vanessa Saldivar was introduced to skiing when she was 5 years old in a small town at the foot of Oregon’s Mount Hood. Her father, Pablo, took her to a local beginner’s slope even though he didn’t know how to ski, let alone how to teach someone.“He walked me up the bunny hill, set me down and let me go,” said Saldivar, who immigrated from Mexico with her parents when she was an infant. “We just did that, and I learned to ski.
Ben Cairns, dean of CMC’s Leadville campus, is also the volunteer president of Cloud City Mountain Sports, and he coaches the Lake County High School ski team. Before taking the CMC job last year, he was principal of the high school. Colorado Mountain College has 11 locations across the state with three residential campuses, once of which is in Leadville. Last year, CMC was designated a Hispanic Serving Institution by the federal government — a distinction awarded to colleges that have more than 25% Hispanic enrollment — which makes CMC eligible for additional grant funding. Many of CMC’s Hispanic students have parents who do not speak English.
“We’re surrounded here by world-renowned resorts,” McMurtry said. “The ski industry is a billion-dollar industry. With CMC and this tremendous human resource we have here in Lake County, working in the ski industry could be a wonderful career.”Jason Gusaas, assistant professor of Ski Area Operations at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, conducts a lecture before heading out to the field with students on March 1, 2022.
Erick Corral Parra commutes 40 miles from Edwards to attend Ski Area Operations classes in Leadville. On Tuesday morning,he had four hours of classroom instruction as part of a course called Terrain Park and Halfpipe Operations, followed by an afternoon outdoor lab where a dozen students built a terrain park by running 10,000-pound snowcats, raking and shoveling snow, building rails and other features.
“Right now, our ski team does not look like the demographic of Leadville,” Cairns said. “Our ski team is still largely kids who grew up skiing, who have parents who work in the ski industry. What we have learned is that it’s really hard to add ski racing as a school sport in middle school or high school. We have to expand our reach into a learn-to-ski program so a student who gets to sixth or seventh grade feels comfortable jumping into a race course.