BEND, Ore. — Decades ago, there were multiple community-run ski areas in Central Oregon. After Mount Bachelor opened in 1958, those spots were slowly shuttered and began to fade away.
Steve Stenkamp, a retired Bend firefighter and avid skier of more than 50 years turned skiing historian, has been on the hunt to find Oregon’s abandoned slopes.
“I remember as a kid getting a brochure on all the areas around Oregon,” Stenkamp said. “Those eventually started to disappear.
“I thought this was a neat project to start,” said Stenkamp, who gave a presentation of his ski area research with the Deschutes County Library recently. “I envisioned I would be able to find history on 12 ski areas. I’m now up to 35 all in Oregon,” He said. “Not all had lifts, but it’s where people would ski.”
The 35 lost ski areas are from the Tomahawk Ski Bowl near Klamath Falls, Mary’s Peak near Corvallis, to the Little Alps in Baker County. The lost ski areas are peppered around the state. Naturally, several of the 35 slopes were found in Central Oregon.
In the early 1920s, Lava Butte was a popular ski hill. In the 1960s, ski jump competitions were on a 700-by-150-foot ski ramp held at Pilot Butte. But the butte on the east side of Bend would have to rely on making snow when the weather would not cooperate.
Skyliner Ski Club, with a pair of rope tows and a warming shelter, was founded in the 1930s along Tumalo Creek. Skyliner was considered the local ski hill up until the late 1950s when Bachelor — with more snow, better terrain and more opportunities — was developed.
“The Skyliner ski area was a community deal,” Stenkamp said. “The local business bought a bus where they would have volunteers drive kids up to ski. There is a real difference where they were community driven versus for-profit.”
While Mount Bachelor and Hoodoo are the prominent ski resorts in Central Oregon, there are not any ski areas currently that the Forest Service considers “lost.” Rather, the Tumalo Mountain Area and the Tam Rim in the Three Creek area of Sisters are common places where skiers ride outside of the resorts.
Those who chose to do so should proceed with caution, according to the Forest Service.
“We can’t guarantee conditions and avalanches. We have already dealt with people getting stuck on forest roads,” said Jean Nelson-Dean of the U.S. Forest Service. “People could still go up and ski, but they should put their safety first.”
Multiple elements kept these ski areas from gaining traction, Stenkamp said, of these ski areas that never made it because of lack of snow. While at places like Hand Lake, it was more than a half-mile walk through snow to get somewhere developed enough to ski.
“Some were established at low elevation and didn’t get enough snow,” Stenkamp said.
The lost ski areas were never giant resorts like Bachelor, or Timberline Lodge or Mount Hood Meadows on Mount Hood. Rather, they were small, often with one lift, to tow ropes to get up the hill, similar to Anthony Lake Mountain Resort, which is run by a nonprofit.
“Those are successful because they are not profit motivated, they don’t put a large sum of capital hoping they can make a profit,” Stenkamp said. Rather making small improvements if and when they can.”
Since March 2018, Stenkamp has been chronicling his finding on his Facebook page “Lost Oregon Ski Areas.”
“I like the digging and the research to find these places,” Stenkamp said. “Every once in a while, you find some old rusty stuff and that’s pretty cool.”
