After spending three decades transforming a failing cross country ski operation on Tennessee Pass into a successful backcountry resort with an extensive trail network, gourmet cookhouse and overnight yurts, owners Ty and Roxanne Hall say it’s time to step aside.

It’s not that business is bad at the Tennessee Pass Nordic Center, Cookhouse and Sleep Yurts, 10 miles north of Leadville at 10,500 feet on the Continental Divide. For example, stays in the toasty yurts are already sold out for next winter.

“We’re selling because it’s that time of life,” said Ty, 59, who has spent more than half his life running the business with Roxanne, a Leadville native and former schoolteacher he met when they were students at nearby Colorado Mountain College. “I feel like my wife and I have taken it as far as we can at this phase of our life and our age. I would like to sell it to the next young Ty and Roxanne and watch somebody expand and grow the business even more.”

Candlelit multi-course dinners

The pair bought what was then a small, struggling cross country operation in 1993 for $5,000. With just a couple of trails and a trailer, the previous owner was on the verge of going out of business, they said.

A year later, the Halls added the cookhouse. In 2013 they erected two sleep yurts because cookhouse guests always seemed to want to lie down by the fire after dinner. Now they have six yurts with custom-made log beds, pillows and down comforters.

The trail from the Nordic center to the cookhouse is a brisk one-mile trip on skis or snowshoes, with panoramic views of snow-capped mountains. Housed in a solar-powered yurt, the cookhouse serves lunch and candlelit multi-course dinners in a space that includes a potbelly stove that warmed 10th Mountain Division ski troops at nearby Camp Hale during World War II.

“It took a lot of time, it took a lot of effort, and every time we got a little bit of money we’d put it right back into the business,” Ty said. “It’s funny, with the restaurant, when you need marketing or advertising the most, you can’t afford it, and when you don’t (need it), you finally can (afford it). It really was word of mouth.”

Jennifer Irey, a professor at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, loves the serenity she finds on their 25 kilometers of trails.

“Anytime we have some people come from out of town, it’s the first place we take them,” Irey said. “Once you get out on skis or snowshoes, it’s really transformative. You don’t get any cell (service) or WiFi up there, which is lovely. It’s fairly rustic. It’s comfortable. Once you get onto the trails, you encounter people, but you’re not jockeying for position. You just feel alone, in a good way.”

In 1998, Ty built a backcountry hut three miles away that was a separate business from the Tennessee Pass operation. He sold it five years later to the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association, which renamed it the Sangree Froelicher Hut. The Halls used proceeds from that sale to replace the old Nordic center with a two-story log cabin. Light lunches and a café are available there.

The Nordic center is adjacent to Ski Cooper, a downhill ski area with which it shares a parking lot, so downhill skiing is also an option for guests.

A recovering Leadville

Leadville is a very different place from what it was when the Halls began building their dream. When the Climax molybdenum mine effectively shut down in the 1980s, leaving only skeleton staff on site, thousands of miners lost their jobs. Roxanne was in high school then.

“It was pretty traumatic,” she said. “A lot of my friends had to move away because their dads or moms worked at Climax. When they shut it down, I lost so many of my friends, and I thought we were going to have to move away. I was just so scared that my dad would lose his job.”

He was one of the lucky few at Climax, kept on because he was working as a commercial artist for the mining company after having started as a miner. When Ty got to Leadville from Virginia in 1989 to attend Colorado Mountain College, he had his pick of places to stay. Buildings all over town were boarded up.

“I remember going to the realtor, and he gave me a sheet of paper with addresses and a handful of keys,” Ty said. “Every house was vacant. You could get whatever house you wanted. They wouldn’t even go with us. They handed you keys and said, ‘Go check it out, let us know which one you want.’ Now you can’t even find a place to rent.”

Bluebird mornings

The listing price for the Tennessee Pass complex is $2.2 million. The Halls have a realtor to handle the sale, but they’ve also used another tool to spread the word, announcing their retirement on Instagram in a Jan. 21 post that also appeared on their Facebook page.

“For the last thirty years, they’ve been caretakers and owners of Tennessee Pass, through late night snowstorms and bluebird mornings,” the post says. “They’ve built the business from humble beginnings into a thriving independent ski resort. It’s your chance to own an established alpine retreat with over sixteen miles of trails, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.”

The Halls figured that, since they had a loyal following, with many asking them over the years if they were ever going to sell, Instagram might be a good way to reach potential buyers. It was.

“It got a lot of response,” Ty said. “It just seems like a different time and age, a different way to do things than what has traditionally been done with selling stuff.”

While ready for retirement, they want to make sure they sell to buyers who will be good stewards of what they built nearly from nothing.

“It’s just that time of life for Roxanne and I to retire, do some other things and enjoy ourselves,” Ty said. “We’ve worked really hard at building the business and it’s turn-key. If someone comes today and buys it, it comes with sold-out reservations for next year. You don’t have to come up here and then try to figure out how to get customers to come. They’re coming, you just need to be here.”