Sunlight Ski Resort will bid goodbye to their 71-year-old trusty two-seater on the closing day this Sunday. After decades in service, it’s time for the historic Segundo ski lift to retire. Snow levels aren’t always high enough at this time of year to build the ramp needed for Segundo to run, but recent storms dropped enough snow to allow more people to take their final rides up one of the oldest ski lifts in the state.
The mountain held Segundo Day, a goodbye party of sorts, last Friday. After the rest of the resort closed down, Segundo kept running into the evening. The lift is historic and cherished, but no one would claim it’s a smooth ride. It doesn’t even slow down as you get on, but for skiers like Bailey Leppek, that’s part of the fun.
“That's what I love about Segundo,” Leppek joked as she remembered the number of times she’d lost a ski boarding the lift “and had to have an 8-year-old carry it up behind me, and it’s just part of it.”
The adventure starts even before you get to ski any runs.
“That thrill when it picks you up and just like, whoa!” Leppek exclaimed, her voice getting high and excited.
Yet somehow, it’s also the “slowest ski lift in Colorado,” joked Leppek’s friend, Blake Teter.
Well, it’s not actually the slowest, but after the abrupt boarding process, Segundo does take 12 minutes to cover less than a mile, about the pace of an elephant on a leisurely stroll. (And yes, I fact-checked that.)
For Neshay Evers, Segundo is a "meditative place,” despite whisking skiers several stories off the ground without a safety bar.
“It's an energetic vibe of the mountain. It’s not going to be the same when it's not here, honestly,” she said, wearing a Segundo hat and a T-shirt printed with an image of someone meditating on a ski lift.
Evers, a former lift operator, was tailgating in Sunlight’s parking lot in honor of Segundo. As she and her friends shared food and fond memories, it felt like a joyful wake for a piece of Sunlight history.
“We love this place. There ain't nothing better,” Mark Salerno said, flipping burgers on a portable grill. “Local little mountain.”
It’s a place where most people know him as the “Candy Man” because he gives out fun-size candy bars whenever he skis — which added up to 123 Sunlight days last season.
This season, Salerno can't take a final Segundo ride due to an injury. As a consolation, however, he hopes to buy one of Segundo’s chairs, so he can feel like he’s riding it forever.
“It's like a roller coaster,” he said, describing a point between towers 10 and 11 where Segundo takes skiers high off the ground. When it has to stop and quickly restart, “it's so much fun. Going to miss that for sure.”
It may sound strange to miss a massive hunk of steel, but not to anyone at the Segundo goodbye party on the lodge deck.
“You think of all the people that have ridden it and the ones that you wish could be here to see the new one,” said Mike Ferguson, a Sunlight ski patroller for 20 years.
He thinks of the people who built Sunlight and the likes of Gary Cooper and John Wayne, who probably rode Segundo during Hollywood’s golden age. Like many ski lifts in Colorado, Segundo had a previous life, originally installed up the road in Aspen. It moved to Sunlight in 1973 and has carried generations of Colorado families at the low-key resort since.
As Ferguson talked about how the newer, faster replacement lift will carry more generations into the future, a smiley 2-year-old in a puffy snowsuit toddled by. He said the kids are the future of skiing and why even smaller ski areas like Sunlight must keep evolving. “That’s the way I look at it: Who’s next, you know?”
One future skier, a baby named Oakley, was taking a nap on her mom, Emily Ipsen. She actually got married at Sunlight a few years ago.
“It’s got the family charm, and while it's being progressive and moving in a great direction, we're going to miss kind of the rinky dink nature that is the Segundo Lift,” she said, with a laugh.
Minutes later, she handed off the baby to her husband and skied over to the lift. As icy rain hit the jewels and sparkly makeup around her eyes, she said she was lucky to see Segundo’s sendoff.
“Bittersweet, that’s the word for it,” she said, as she watched Segundo chugging along for one of the last times. “It’s bittersweet!
