1,978 m · since 1978
One machine, one basin, two generations
Powderhorn Basin started in 1978 with Gus Marchant, one snowcat, and a lease on the basin above Muleshoe. Nearly fifty winters later his daughter Ren owns and guides it, the cat has become four plus an A-Star, and the plan has not changed: small groups, honest terrain, and a fire going at the end of the day.
1978 · the founding
Gus Marchant and one snowcat
Gus grew up in Muleshoe, a silver-mining switchback town that had mostly emptied out by the time he was old enough to leave. He stayed. He knew the basin above town held cold snow long after the valley went to crust, and in 1978 he put a down payment on a used grooming cat, built a warming hut at the road, and started taking small groups up the old mine road to ski the bowls.
The first winters were lean. Gus guided, drove, cooked, and shoveled the road himself. What he would not do was pack the cat. Twelve people, no more, was the rule from the first season, and it is still the rule.
Muleshoe, BC
The old switchback town
Muleshoe was a silver town first: a cluster of buildings pinned to a switchback road, a headframe, and a few hundred people who came for the ore and mostly left when it ran out. What stayed was the road, the snow, and a handful of families who could not picture living anywhere flatter. The lodge sits on what was once the assay office lot. The switchbacks Gus drove his first cat up are the same ones the plow clears every morning now.
The family arc · Gus to Ren
Handed down, not sold off
- 1978
Gus opens the basin
One cat, one hut, one rule: twelve guests, no more. The first groups ski the bowls off the old mine road.
- 1986
The road and the lodge
Gus builds the lodge on the old assay lot and takes on a second cat. Winters stop being lean.
- 1994
Ren grows up on the hill
Ren Marchant spends her childhood in the lodge and on the cat; by her teens she is packing lunches and reading the wind.
- 2009
The A-Star arrives
The operation adds one helicopter for the high work, flown on contract, opening terrain the cats cannot reach.
- 2017
Ren takes the wheel
Gus hands the operation to Ren. She keeps the twelve-guest rule, the fire, and the 5:45 meeting exactly as they were.
- Today
Second generation, same basin
Four cats, one A-Star, and the same family reading the same mountain every morning.
Come ski the family basin
The story is real enough to build a site around. The trip, in this concept, is the one Gus started and Ren still runs: small, honest, and worth the drive up the switchbacks.