10th Mountain Division

10th Mountain Division. Camp Hale. , The 10th Mountain Division, created for alpine and winter combat during World War II, girded for battle on the steep, inhospitable terrain of Camp Hale (about twenty-five miles southwest of here). Built at an old railroad sheep-loading stop, the base opened in 1942 with 8,000 recruits, many of them veteran mountaineers. Their specialize training kept them above 10,000 feet for days on end, poling cross-country under ninety-pound loads. These exercises increased endurance and taught important wilderness and cold-weather survival skills; however, they also landed hundreds in sickbay with frostbite and hypothermia. Camp Hale housed 15,000 military personnel (and hundreds of German POWs) during the war; today the area serves thousands of civilian skiers, who glide down some of the old training slopes at Ski Cooper or make cross-country journeys on the 10th Mountain Division Hut System., Steeled for combat by the rigors of Camp Hale, the men of the 10th performed heroically in World War II. Under the command of Maj. Gen. George Hays, they fought through the Apennine Mountains north of Florence, Italy, in the winter of 1944-1945, leading the way for the Allied advance into the Po River Valley. Nine German divisions fell before this determined outfit, whose own casualties (over five thousand killed or wounded) attest to the grimness of their task. After the war, returning 10th Mountaineers applied their training to more peaceful pursuits, launching many major ski resorts across the country and generating improvements in ski equipment, safety, and instruction. For such achievements, nineteen former 10th Mountain Division soldiers were enshrined in the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame by 1999.