Encour­aged by the results of a suc­cess­ful two-week tri­al run last win­ter to test a new con­cept in Col­orado ski­ing, own­ers of the Blue­bird Back­coun­try ski area have decid­ed to move for­ward this win­ter with a full sea­son at a new loca­tion with bet­ter snow and three times the terrain.

Tout­ed as Colorado’s newest ski area, albeit one with­out lifts, Blue­bird will be locat­ed near the foot of the east side of Rab­bit Ears Pass. It is geared for peo­ple who want to try back­coun­try ski­ing in a non-threat­en­ing, user-friend­ly envi­ron­ment where they can rent gear, take lessons and prac­tice what they have learned. Blue­bird is owned by co-founders Jeff Wood­ward and Erik Lam­bert.

“We love back­coun­try ski­ing,” Wood­ward said. “It’s just such an amaz­ing sport because you get real­ly good ski­ing, you get to explore, you have real­ly great times with your friends, and we want to share that. We like shar­ing the things that we love. That’s some of what dri­ves the pas­sion behind it.”

Back­coun­try ski­ing isn’t that hard to learn, but it usu­al­ly requires hav­ing an expe­ri­enced friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber to intro­duce the basics.

“You learn from a friend, and if you don’t have a friend who is will­ing to take you back­coun­try ski­ing, there’s no way,” Wood­ward said. “Or, you buy $1,000 worth of gear, pay $500 to take a four-day avalanche class, and only then decide whether you like the sport or not. We thought by pro­vid­ing a place where you can go for a day, rent back­coun­try skis and take a les­son, peo­ple will be able to get a sense of whether they like it or not. Hope­ful­ly they have a great time and keep doing the sport.”

RELATED: Back­coun­try skiers con­cerned about safe­ty after influx of novices dur­ing pandemic

As it did last year, Blue­bird will offer in-bounds ski­ing as well as guid­ed-only trips out­side the area bound­aries. Last year it offered about 450 acres in-bounds and anoth­er 1,100 for guid­ed-only ski­ing. This year it will have about 1,200 acres in-bounds — mak­ing Blue­bird 84% the size of Ara­pa­hoe Basin (1,428 acres) — and the guid­ed-only ter­rain will expand to 3,000 acres.

Wood­ward said Blue­bird attract­ed more than 1,000 pay­ing vis­i­tors last year over the 14 days it was open, which con­vinced him and Lam­bert that demand was suf­fi­cient to move for­ward with the project. Last year they oper­at­ed at White­ley Peak, about 20 miles north of Kremm­ling on U.S. 40. This year they will oper­ate at Bear Moun­tain, about 4 miles fur­ther north, because that area typ­i­cal­ly receives 45% more snow. It’s about a mile from the inter­sec­tion of U.S. 40 and Col­orado 14, where U.S. 40 begins to climb up Rab­bit Ears Pass.

“We had a cou­ple mas­sive snow­storms in Feb­ru­ary,” Wood­ward said, refer­ring to last year’s loca­tion. “Those dumped a lot of snow on Rab­bit Ears and east of there. A mod­er­ate storm will dump snow on Rab­bit Ears and Bear Moun­tain. A weak to mod­er­ate storm, espe­cial­ly if it’s com­ing in that north­west flow, will hit some of Bear Moun­tain but wouldn’t hit White­ley Peak.”

RELATED: Three dozen back­coun­try huts pause reser­va­tions for this win­ter while nav­i­gat­ing COVID-19 concerns

In addi­tion to three lev­els of back­coun­try lessons, Blue­bird will offer cer­ti­fied avalanche class­es taught by instruc­tors with cre­den­tials from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute for Avalanche Research and Education.

Last spring, ski shops that sell back­coun­try gear report­ed a crush of cus­tomers after Gov. Jared Polis ordered ski areas to close in March due to the pan­dem­ic, sug­gest­ing a lot of new­com­ers were sud­den­ly being drawn to the sport. That may con­tin­ue this win­ter because of the crowd­ing that can occur at ski areas, even with COVID-19 restric­tions in place, and that may work in Bluebird’s favor. Blue­bird will be lim­it­ing the moun­tain to 200 guests per day.

“It’s kind of a nat­u­ral­ly social­ly dis­tanced sport,” Wood­ward said. “Even before the pan­dem­ic, the No. 1 rea­son peo­ple want to go back­coun­try ski­ing is often to get away from the crowds. We’ve seen out­door sports where you can get away from oth­er peo­ple have a fair amount of addi­tion­al peo­ple doing them right now. It’s one of the less pan­dem­ic-risky things to do. We’re work­ing on things to sup­port that. Like, we’re hop­ing to put in an out­door check-in sys­tem this year. We’re doing as much as pos­si­ble on our end to sup­port the nat­u­ral­ly social­ly dis­tanced nature of back­coun­try skiing.”

Wood­ward began think­ing about the Blue­bird project four years ago after tak­ing his broth­er back­coun­try ski­ing near Crest­ed Butte as a Christ­mas present.

“He had an amaz­ing day,” Wood­ward said. “By the end of the day he was like, ‘Can I just buy these skis instead of nor­mal skis?’ It got me think­ing that he tried back­coun­try ski­ing and loved it. He nev­er would have tried it if I wasn’t obsessed with the sport.”

Bluebird’s ten­ta­tive open­ing date is set for Dec. 24, with an antic­i­pat­ed clos­ing date of March 28. Blue­bird will be open five days a week, Thurs­days through Mondays.

Sub­scribe to our week­ly newslet­ter, The Adven­tur­ist, to get out­doors news sent straight to your inbox.