While most ski areas in Colorado have colorful pasts as mining towns, logging sites, ranches, farms or homesteads, none can boast a prehistory like that of Snowmass.

Tens of thousands of years ago, mastodons, camels and giant sloths roamed what is now the ski resort’s base area. How do we know this? A 2010 excavation of a glacial lake in Snowmass Village unexpectedly uncovered the world’s most bountiful collection of mastodon fossils along with the remains of numerous other long-extinct animals – mammoths, giant sloths, camels and even an enormous bison. The animals roamed the area between 55,000 and 140,000 years ago. Continue Reading.