Near the old railroad town of Minturn, across Tennessee Pass from Leadville, is a place called Meadow Mountain. It once was a downhill ski area, but the Forest Service got the property in a land exchange. And so locals used it for several decades as a sledding hill, with parents taking their small children to the hill on weekends for cheap, outdoor entertainment.
But as Vail's various suburbs grew, so did use of the hill. A few people became a lot of people, and by the late 1990s accidents had begun occurring, primarily because of sledders sliding into one other.
At first, the Forest Service tried to discourage long, out-of-control slides by erecting plastic fences. But after the agency was accused of negligence after an accident, it banned sledding altogether.
That was a couple of years ago, but now sledding is coming back - at a cost of $16 an hour. The Vail Daily reports that the Forest Service has given a private entrepreneur the right to erect a 275-foot lift, which operates much like a rope tow. Users will be staggered, and attendants will be stationed along the hill to prevent accidents.