Dave Gorsuch embodied the mountain life
It was a gorgeous winter evening as a young boy joined his father on the T-bar at Chalk Mountain outside Climax, Colo. When they reached the top at around 12,000 feet, a full moon was creeping up over the ridgeline. They looked back down at the majestic floodlit slope. After a moment, dad skied over to the lift shack and flipped a switch, turning off the lights and flipping on the moonlight for a father-son cruise down the backside of the mountain to their home.
Such was life for young David Gorsuch. His father, Jack, was one of those ski area pioneers who bootstrapped lifts onto mountains and introduced a passionate generation to the sport of skiing. Young David would go on to become one of America’s great ski racers and forge a lifelong relationship with the love of his life, skier Renie Cox, as icons of the retail ski industry with the Gorsuch brand.
Opening ceremonies for Beaver Creek were held on Dec. 15, 1980. From left to right: Brain Rapp, president of Beaver Creek Resort Company; Harry Bass, chairman of Vail Associates; unidentified Forest Service representative; Jack Marshall, president of Vail Associates; then-governor Dick Lamm; former U.S. president Gerald Ford. (Vail Resorts
Special to the Daily)
Editor’s Note: The Vail Daily’s Tricia Swenson has compiled this information from talks with longtime locals, her own experience as a Beaver Creek Children’s Ski and Snowboard School instructor and from books from the Avon Public Library.
The first known inhabitants of the Beaver Creek Valley were primarily the Utes as well as hunting parties from the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes. The Utes were called “Blue Sky People” by other tribes. They called the peaks that surrounded them “The Shining Mountains.”