If you are looking for a good weekend excursion hit the slopes in Vail for a great boarding weekend. However, before you head up the mountain get a little inspiration by visiting the Colorado Ski Museum on the third level of the Vail Village.

The Colorado Ski Musuem is full of the history of skiing and how the pioneers blazed a trail to the great recreation Colorado now encompasses. Here is a quick recap of how Colorado became one of the greatest ski and snowboard states:

It has been estimated by some historians that the State of Colorado would have taken another decade to settle had it not been for skis. The long runners provided a dependable way for the mail to get through when trains were stalled, when telegraph lines were down, and when drifts and avalanches prohibited travel on the primitive roads and trails.

The first documented use of skis in Colorado, as reported in Frank Hall’s History of Colorado, occurred during the winter of 1859-60 in a snow-locked mining camp along the Blue River near present-day Breckenridge.

The 10 men remaining in camp made themselves skis and traveled down-valley where they built a cabin and claimed a town site called Eldorado West.

The same history source reveals that the following winter all provisions were being carried over the range from South Park to Georgia Gulch by men on skis.

In 1880 there were over 50 skiing mail carriers in the state. They traveled fifty miles at a stretch over the mountains on skis with only a simple toe strap and heel block to keep the foot in place.

For the next 25 years Coloradans would ski to school; to work; to mend fences; but they would remain largely unaware of the improvements in equipment and technique being made in the Scandinavian countries and in the Alps.

None of these pioneers were aware of how their necessary form of transportation would become a recreational sport loved and modified by people across the globe.