It is official. On Oct. 10, the BLM signed and issued a Land Use Lease authorizing Silverton Mountain to operate North America’s lone “all expert” ski area for a period of 40 years.

The lease allows Silverton Mountain to use 1,300 acres of Bureau of Land Management land for commercial use alongside the private land owned by Silverton Mountain, the ski area said in a press release.

The total combined acreage is 1,819 acres, which makes Silverton Mountain one of the largest ski areas in Colorado (larger than Telluride).

Silverton Mountain previously operated under annually renewed permits on the same BLM land. BLM Durango Area Manager Mark Stiles signed the lease after a lengthy and thorough review by the BLM which started in 1999 with Stiles’ predecessor at the BLM, Calvin Joyner.

“This is a real triumph for us being able to accomplish something nobody else has been able to do in the ski industry in more than 20 years, said Silverton Mountain founder Aaron Brill.

“Since we are a tiny ‘mom and pop’ area it’s nice to be able to succeed where the big corporations could not.”

He jokingly added “The bright side of the BLM process taking so long, is our 40-year term starts today instead of seven years ago, giving us essentially a 47-year term.”

Silverton Mountain is the first ski area to be issued a Land Use Lease by the federal government since Colorado’s Beaver Creek Resort in the mid-1980s.

Several highly funded large corporations had attempted to build new ski areas on USFS public land in Colorado (including Adam’s Rib Ski Area near Rifle and Stagecoach Ski Area near Steamboat Springs) after Beaver Creek but failed to get the necessary federal authorizations, Brill noted.