The Ski Rocking Chair for a Porch That Faces the Sunset
Every fall there is a stretch of about two weeks when the aspens go off like someone flipped a switch, and every year people drive up to the high country, pull over on the shoulder, hold up a phone, and get a picture that looks nothing like what they are standing in. The gold does not translate. The light does not hold still. So they come home a little wistful, and the season passes, and the wall stays blank and the porch stays ordinary. The Aspen Sunset Alpine from Colorado Ski Chairs is a ski rocking chair for a porch that keeps that two weeks all year: a hand painted aspen and sunset mural running across the backs of real retired skis, set on a compact Douglas Fir rocker frame, built to order in Colorado and shipped nationwide.
The Two Weeks You Can Never Photograph
If you have lived in Colorado for more than one autumn, you know the feeling. Somebody at work says the aspens are turning near Kenosha Pass, and by the weekend half the Front Range is idling on a dirt road trying to get the same shot. It is a good problem to have. But the reason the photos never quite work is that the color is only half of it. The other half is the low sun coming through the leaves, the way the white trunks stand out against it, the cool air, the fact that you are actually up there and not scrolling past it later on a small screen.
The Aspen Sunset Alpine does not pretend to be a photograph. It is a chair, and it is honest about that. What it does is take the two things people try hardest to capture, the pale aspen trunks and the sunset behind them, and put them somewhere you will actually see them every day. The mural runs across the ski backs in warm oranges and pinks with the trunks standing pale in front, and because the skis are all different widths, the trees land at slightly different spacings on every single chair. No two are laid out exactly the same. That is not a flaw the shop is apologizing for. That is the point.
You do not hang this on a wall and forget it. You sit in it. And a ski rocking chair for a porch that carries a Colorado sunset on its back tends to become the chair, the one people head for first, the one that ends up in the background of every photo taken on that porch for the next fifteen years.
What the Aspen Sunset Alpine Actually Is
Here are the plain facts, because a good chair should be able to stand on them. The Aspen Sunset Alpine is an Adirondack-style rocker built from real retired skis on a Douglas Fir base. It measures 45 inches tall by 30 inches deep by 26 inches wide with the binding cup holders included, which is the compact Alpine frame rather than the bigger standard build. It rocks. It has a repurposed ski binding cup holder set into the arm, which is the part guests always point at first, usually right before they ask if it is real. It is finished in high quality exterior oil paint so the sunset colors do not wash out by August, and it carries a 3 year hassle free warranty, with anything after that handled at materials cost only.
The mural is hand painted. That matters, so it is worth being clear about. The aspens and the sunset are painted by hand in exterior oils, brush on wood, which is why the trees follow the ski widths and why yours will not be identical to the one in the photo. This is a decorative scene, not a printed sticker and not a mass-produced panel. If you have seen furniture that claims to be hand painted and turns out to be a decal over a photo, you already know why the difference is worth caring about.
It ships as a Best Seller at 675 dollars, made to order in Manitou Springs, Colorado, and shipped nationwide. It fits under the broader chairs collection, alongside the other Alpine builds if you want to compare frames and paint schemes.
Real Skis, and How Many It Actually Takes
This is where a lot of people are surprised, and where the shop refuses to fudge the numbers. A single Adirondack ski chair like this one takes four to five pairs of skis. Not one pair. Not two. Four to five. The skis are cut and fitted into the seat, the back, and the visible surfaces, and it takes that many to build a chair with the right proportions and the strength to hold up outdoors for years.
People hear that and do the math on their own gear. Most of us have one pair of old skis in the garage, maybe two, rarely five. That is exactly why the standard Aspen Sunset Alpine is built from the shop’s own stock of vintage and retired skis. Colorado Ski Chairs has been collecting retired pairs for years, so a standard order does not require you to hand over anything.
If you do want your own skis in it, that is the Sentimental route, and the shop is straight with you about how it works. You send the one or two pairs that actually mean something, the pair you learned on or the pair from the last trip with someone you miss, and the shop builds those into the visible parts of the chair and matches the rest from its own stock of vintage and retro skis. If the meaningful pair is already long gone, the shop can source a close match by brand and era, and it will never tell you a stand-in pair is the original. That honesty is the whole reason people trust the Sentimental work in the first place.
So no, one pair does not become a whole chair, and one pair does not become two chairs. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling you a story. The Aspen Sunset Alpine is the real thing, built from real retired skis, in the real quantity it takes.
The Rocker Frame, and Why It Rocks the Way It Should
A rocker is easy to get wrong. Too shallow a curve and it barely moves. Too aggressive a curve and it feels like it wants to tip you into the flowerbed. The Alpine frame on this chair is the compact design, which means the rocker geometry is tuned for the smaller footprint, and it moves the way a porch chair is supposed to move: a slow, easy travel that you settle into without thinking about it.
The base is Douglas Fir, which is the same wood the shop trusts for its outdoor builds because it takes finish well and holds up to a real Colorado winter. The frame is built to live indoors or out. Put it on a covered porch and it will handle the weather. Bring it inside by the woodstove and it works just as well, though you will find it spends most of its life outdoors because that is where the light hits the mural best.
At 45 inches tall by 30 deep by 26 wide, the Alpine frame is a good fit for a porch that is generous but not enormous, a deck corner, a cabin entry, or a spot by the fire pit where a full-size build would crowd the path. It is compact without being small. A grown adult sits in it comfortably, rocks, sets a drink in the binding cup holder, and stays put a while. That last part is the real test of a chair, and this one passes it.
Where This Chair Belongs
The obvious home is a cabin porch in aspen country, where the painted trees answer the real ones out past the railing. That is the postcard version, and it is a good one. But the Aspen Sunset Alpine turns up in a lot of less obvious places, and it earns its keep in all of them.
It goes on decks in Texas and Arizona and Florida, bought by people who honeymooned in Colorado or spent a few good winters here and wanted a piece of the state on the porch back home. It goes in mountain-town short-term rentals, where it does double duty as a comfortable chair and as the detail guests photograph and post, which is free advertising the owner did not have to pay for. It goes in three-season rooms, by fire pits, in the corner of a covered patio where somebody drinks their coffee and watches the yard wake up.
Indoors, it works next to a woodstove, in a reading corner, in a finished basement done up in a mountain theme, or in a lodge lobby where the rocking motion invites people to actually sit down instead of standing around waiting. Wherever it lands, it does the same thing: it makes people stop and look, and then it makes them want to sit in it. Not a bad combination for a chair.
It also pairs. Buy two and put a small table between them and you have the porch setup people quietly envy, the one where two people can sit and rock and watch the light go without saying much. The Alpine frame’s compact size is what makes the pair work on a normal porch, where two full-size Adirondacks would take up the whole railing. If you are furnishing a rental or a lodge, a matched row of these does more for the room than any amount of framed art, because guests can use them, and used furniture with a story gets remembered and photographed in a way wall decor never does.
The Binding Cup Holder, and the Other Small Things
The binding cup holder gets its own section because it is the detail that tells you a real skier built this. Instead of routing a plain hole in the arm for a drink, the shop repurposes an actual ski binding and sets it into the arm. It holds a can or a mug, and it is the first thing guests notice and the first thing they ask about. It is a small touch, and small touches are what separate a piece someone built with care from a piece that came off a line.
The paint is the other one. Exterior oil paint is not the cheap route. It is the route that keeps a hand painted sunset from fading to a sad orange smear after one summer of direct light. The colors stay warm. The trunks stay crisp. The chair looks in year five roughly the way it looked the day it arrived, which is the entire reason to pay for real materials instead of a discount-store lookalike.
And because every chair is built from a different set of retired skis, the top-sheet graphics under the mural, the subtle differences in ski width, and the exact spacing of the painted trunks all vary. Yours is genuinely one of a kind. Not one of a kind the way marketing uses the phrase, but one of a kind the way a thing built by hand from salvaged parts actually is.
Made Yours, Down to the Sunset
The standard build is the aspen sunset you see in the photo, and most people order it exactly like that. But the mural is hand painted, which means it can move. Want the sunset warmer, more of a deep orange and red evening than a soft pink one? The shop can do that. Want the sky cooler, closer to the blue hour just after the sun drops? That too. Want the aspens denser, a real stand of them instead of a few, or a couple of trunks pulled forward? Say so.
The way to sort any of that out is the same way people have always sorted out custom work, which is a phone call. Call 303.775.7273 and tell them what you are picturing. That is the only number for the shop. If you are trying to match an existing chair, a room’s colors, or a specific view you love, that conversation is where it gets dialed in before anyone picks up a brush.
One honest note on branding, because business buyers ask. A hand painted scene like a sunset or a mountain range is fair game for the brush. A company logo is not. A logo is never hand painted, because a brush cannot hold a trademark’s exact shape and color the way a mark has to be held. If you want a logo on a chair, it goes on as a clean logo decal floated onto the painted background, with aluminum or plastic appliques as alternatives, and that kind of branded work is quoted on a call rather than listed at a fixed price. The sunset is art. The logo is a mark. They are handled differently on purpose.
An Award That Beats a Plaque
If you run a company or handle recognition for one, here is a use case worth sitting with. The standard thirty-year service award is a plaque. It goes on a wall for a week, then a drawer, then a move, then a landfill. Nobody has ever driven across town to show a friend their service plaque.
A ski rocking chair for a porch is a different kind of recognition. It is the gift a long career actually deserves: something the person uses, something that sits in their real life, something a spouse and a grandkid also get to enjoy. Hand it to someone at their retirement or their milestone anniversary and you are not giving them a symbol of the years, you are giving them a good place to spend the years ahead. For a Colorado employee, or anyone who fell for the state on a trip, the aspen sunset makes it personal in a way a generic gift never manages.
For the truly meaningful version, the Sentimental route ties in here too. If the honoree was a skier, you can build their own retired pair into the chair, matched with the shop’s stock, so the award literally carries a piece of their own history. Try doing that with a plaque. The lead time for a made-to-order build means these need to be ordered ahead of the date, so if you have a retirement or an anniversary on the calendar, the call to plan it is worth making early.
Ordering, Warranty, and the Honest Timeline
The Aspen Sunset Alpine is made to order, which means it is built for you after you order it, not pulled off a shelf. That is why it takes a few weeks rather than shipping same-day, and it is also why every one is a little different. Made to order is the reason the quality is what it is. It is not a delay, it is the process.
The chair ships nationwide from Manitou Springs. The 3 year hassle free warranty covers you for the first three years, and after that the shop still stands behind the chair, handling any repairs at materials cost only. That is not a throwaway line. A chair built from salvaged skis and solid Douglas Fir and finished in exterior oil is meant to be a decades-long piece of furniture, and the warranty is written to match that intention rather than to expire the week after you stop paying attention.
If you want to talk through any of it, custom colors, a matched pair, a Sentimental build, or just whether the compact Alpine frame is the right size for your space, the number is 303.775.7273. A real person answers, and they would rather get the details right on the phone than have you guess and hope.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pairs of skis does the Aspen Sunset Alpine take?
One chair takes four to five pairs of retired skis. The standard build uses the shop’s own stock of vintage and retired skis, so you do not need to supply anything. If you want your own skis in it, the shop builds in the one or two pairs that matter and matches the rest from its stock.
Is the aspen sunset really hand painted, or is it a decal?
It is hand painted in exterior oils, brush on wood. Because it is painted by hand across skis of different widths, the trees and sunset land a little differently on every chair, so no two are identical. A company logo, by contrast, is applied as a decal or applique rather than painted, so it holds its exact shape and color.
Can this ski rocking chair for a porch live outside all year?
Yes. It is built on a Douglas Fir base and finished in high quality exterior oil paint made to take indoor or outdoor life, so a covered porch or deck is a fine year-round home. Like any wood furniture, it lasts longest with some shelter from constant direct sun and standing water.
How big is it, and does a full-size adult fit?
It is 45 inches tall by 30 inches deep by 26 inches wide with the binding cup holders, which is the compact Alpine frame. A grown adult sits and rocks in it comfortably. It is a good choice for a porch or deck that is generous but not huge, where a full-size build would crowd the space.
The Chair That Keeps the Season
You cannot bottle a Colorado fall. Believe me, people try, every September, from every pullout on every pass. What you can do is put the best two weeks of the year somewhere you will actually sit, on a chair built from real skis by people who have stood in a lift line and watched those aspens turn firsthand. The Aspen Sunset Alpine is that chair. Have a look at it, or call 303.775.7273 and tell them how you want your sunset, and it will be rocking on your porch long after this year’s leaves have come and gone. See more like it in the chairs collection.
