Shadowcliff Mountain Lodge & Retreat Center

Name: Shadowcliff Mountain Lodge & Retreat Center
Address: 105 County Road 663, PO Box 658, Grand Lake, CO, 80447, US
Telephone: +19706279220
Price range: $
Rating: 4.9

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Grand Lake, CO
Shadowcliff Mountain Lodge & Retreat Center

A mountain sanctuary. We believe in healing, growth, hospitality, and community.
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For us, the word sanctuary means a safe place for personal and community retreat and renewal. We commit to be a part of the change that is necessary to live in harmony with the natural environment and this planet that we call home. Our workshops and educational opportunities at Shadowcliff grow out of this mission and our respect for Shadowcliff’s rich tradition of being a mountain sanctuary for r

etreat, renewal and change. Shadowcliff's tagline - inspiring the journey - suggests that whether guests come to Shadowcliff as individuals, families, or part of a larger group, we want to provide an atmosphere that inspires their personal or organizational journey, provides hope and inspiration for the future, and educates and informs us about the choices we make. We want guests to leave Shadowcliff believing that change and renewal is possible and that they are part of that change.

04/07/2026

Each summer, Volunteer Weekend marks the beginning of the Shadowcliff season. Before our guests and most of our summer staff arrive, we welcome the people who love Shadowcliff enough to travel from across the country to tend to it, some of whom have been coming since the beginning.

Volunteer Weekend is a long-standing Shadowcliff tradition and a true celebration of service. Volunteers of all ages and backgrounds gather in Grand Lake to help prepare the campus for the season ahead. Lodging and multiple meals are provided, along with opportunities to connect with new and familiar faces.

Whether you’ve been joining us for decades or are considering Volunteer Weekend for the first time, you are warmly welcome.

c small repairs, kitchen support, cleaning and organizing, chopping wood, trail maintenance, painting and staining, sewing, moving and hauling, and other hands-on projects.

If you’re planning to attend, please take a few minutes to complete the sign-up form so we can plan lodging, meals, and project assignments (link in bio)

If you have construction experience or other specialized skills and are interested in supporting specific facilities projects this summer, we’d love to hear from you! Send us a DM.

02/25/2026

If you’ve been to Shadowcliff, you know that one of the things that makes it such a special place is the people. Shadowcliff’s mission has always been held by the people who cook, clean the rooms and the cabins, repair our historic structures, listen to the stories our guests share with us, and care for one another. As we look toward Summer 2026, we’re beginning to gather the people who will help shape our next season.

Shadowcliff operates with a small but dedicated team whose work supports the heart of our mission: holding space for healing, transformation, connection, and community. Our summer staff play a vital role in supporting the daily operations of our lodging facilities and in embodying Shadowcliff’s values for guests, partners, and visitors.

We are now accepting applications for Summer 2026, with positions running between May and September 2026. Roles include:

👉 Compassionate Kitchen Cook
👉 Maintenance & Groundskeeper
👉 Hospitality & Housekeeping Lead
👉 Guest Services & Hospitality Assistant

We’re seeking people with open, curious attitudes who value collaboration, adaptability, and learning; who are comfortable living and working with people of differing views and backgrounds; and who are excited to contribute to a values-driven, nonprofit hospitality environment in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

If you know someone who might thrive here, we invite you to share this opportunity widely—and please let us know if you send someone our way.

Link to apply in bio

02/13/2026

We are delighted to introduce Dan O’Neil, who is joining Shadowcliff as our General Manager for the 2026 season.

Dan grew up on a farm in northwestern Minnesota, where he learned, in his words, “to drive a tractor, use a chainsaw, layer properly, and identify various star constellations.” He went on to spend a decade in New York City as a playwright, working with artists and organizations including The Little Opera Theatre Company of New York and NYU’s Tisch Dance Department.

More recently, Dan served as caretaker and property manager for a 160-acre, farm-based artist residency program in upstate New York, where he also worked as a historical interpreter and broom maker at The Farmers’ Museum. Most recently, Dan served as the innkeeper of a bed-and-breakfast in Amagansett, NY.

Dan brings deep experience in hospitality, operations, and people-centered leadership, along with a steady, thoughtful presence that aligns beautifully with Shadowcliff’s values. In his role, Dan oversees day-to-day operations and guest services, helping ensure that every retreat, gathering, and stay is held with care.

Please join us in welcoming Dan to Shadowcliff.

02/12/2026

This past week, I read a missive titled “Retreat Centers Were Built for These Times” published by the Retreat Center Collaboration. As I write from the quietude of Grand Lake — where the sky is blue, the sun is warming the ground, and the town basks in the glow of the Winter Carnival, but where there is also an undercurrent of anxiety about historically low snow fall — it’s hard not to feel the contrast with the broader backdrop of division, conflict, and uncertainty across our country.

And so I’ve found myself reflecting on those words: retreat centers were built for these times.

I accepted this position because I believe in the power and importance of human connection. I believe there is something vital about bringing people together to encounter one another, to witness each other’s shared humanity regardless of race, ideology, faith, means, or lived experience. I believe in the quiet transformative potential of simple acts: sharing a meal, exchanging stories around a fire, or sitting in shared silence. I believe in moments of wonder — watching a hummingbird alight on a feeder, standing beneath a double rainbow, or pausing to really notice the world around us.

It is with that belief that I enter this work with renewed urgency and care. I believe Shadowcliff can help nurture the conditions for universal flourishing, can tend to the wounds we carry as individuals and as a nation, and can offer a space for our collective growth and transformation. I believe this because I have seen and experienced it here.

Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing more about our plans for the season ahead — continuing to cultivate Shadowcliff’s identity as a place of refuge for all; revisiting long-held ideas that feel newly relevant; and introducing new programming and partnerships that reflect our commitment to creating conditions for mutual thriving.

Thank you for being part of the Shadowcliff family, for helping carry forward its legacy, and for contributing to its future resilience. As we navigate uncertain times together, I hope you, too, feel that Shadowcliff was built for these times.

- Alexander Thompson, Executive Director

12/30/2025

As this year comes to a close, we’ve been reflecting on what it means for Shadowcliff to endure.

What we keep coming back to is this:

Shadowcliff doesn’t endure by becoming something new. It endures by becoming more deeply itself.

For more than 65 years, Shadowcliff has been a place of retreat in the fullest sense of the word: a place to rest, to wander, to study, to heal, and to encounter one another.

That spirit lives on in the retreat groups, artists, community partners, and guests who return year after year, and in the care it takes to hold this place with intention.

As we look ahead to 2026, we’re continuing to welcome longtime retreat partners, expand our residency programs, and deepen connections within the Grand Lake community, all rooted in the belief that spaces of stillness, creativity, and connection are essential to collective flourishing.

If Shadowcliff has ever offered you rest, renewal, or belonging, we invite you to help carry this work forward.

Donate: shadowcliff.org/support
(Link in bio)

12/09/2025

This Colorado Gives Day, we are reflecting on the extraordinary season we shared with our 2025 Artist Residents and the six visionary practitioners who spent two weeks at Shadowcliff exploring, creating, and deepening their connection to their practice and community.

Their time here included a fire ecology walk with RMNP rangers, a field trip to learn about wetland restoration in the Kawuneeche Valley, shared meals in Rempel Lodge, and conversations with the Grand Lake Creative District about the past and future of culture in our town. The residency culminated in a public gathering where neighbors filled the Community House to learn about each artist and their practice.

At Shadowcliff, we believe that creativity and healing are possible when people have space to rest, reflect, and reconnect with the land. Your support helps us make that space possible for artists, retreat groups, hikers, and everyone who finds sanctuary here.

If Shadowcliff has nurtured you in some way, we would be deeply grateful for your support this Colorado Gives Day.

And, in the spirit of generosity we strive to cultivate,
if your heart leads you elsewhere, we encourage you to support our community partners who are doing incredible work in Grand County:

- Grand Lake Creative District and their Space to Create project ()
- Grand County Rural Health Network and their Community IMPACT Team, strengthening care, connection, and wellbeing across the county ()

Wherever you give, your generosity makes our community more resilient, creative, and connected.

Thank you for helping us hold space and nurture creativity and transformation

Donate: shadowcliff.org/support (link in bio)

12/03/2025

On this Giving Tuesday, we’re holding gratitude for the countless organizations doing essential, beautiful work in the world.

There are many urgent needs right now, and many causes worthy of support.

At Shadowcliff, we believe in the importance of building and sustaining places of refuge. Spaces that nurture healing, curiosity, community, and connection to the natural world.

If Shadowcliff has supported your healing, offered you sanctuary, or given you space to restore yourself, we would be deeply grateful for your support today.

And if your generosity is called elsewhere, we honor that and encourage you to give there.

At Shadowcliff, we strive to cultivate a spirit of dāna, the Buddhist practice of giving freely for the benefit of others. We believe generosity can be a transformative practice.

Whether you choose to support Shadowcliff or another meaningful cause, we celebrate your commitment to cultivating generosity and creating a more kind, loving, and connected world.

With deep gratitude for your generosity.

shadowcliff.org/support

11/28/2025

As we take a moment to reflect on what we’re grateful for, many things come to mind:

➡️ Our dedicated staff, whose care shapes the experience of every guest and retreat participant.

➡️ The volunteers who offer their time, skill, and heart to prepare Shadowcliff for each new season, and to close it down when the season ends.

➡️ Our friends and neighbors across Grand Lake who make this community feel like home.

➡️ The wildland firefighters whose courage protected our lodges during the East Troublesome Fire, and who continue to safeguard our town every day.

➡️ The forest and park service members who steward the lands and ecosystem that surround and sustain us.

Our thoughts also turn to our White River Ute, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne relatives, on whose ancestral lands we live, learn, and work. For many Indigenous communities, this is a time of mourning and remembrance. We join them in mourning the lives taken by violence and the forced displacement of Indigenous peoples in Grand County and across the country.

Shadowcliff is committed to holding space for healing. And healing requires repair. We are committed to that work of repair, and to practicing community care, taking responsibility for the land and people that make this place possible, and to tend lovingly to the structures, relationships, and histories entrusted to us.

As a nonprofit lodge and retreat center, only 65% of our annual revenue comes from guest and retreat bookings. The rest comes from donations that allow us to keep our rates accessible, work toward paying our staff a dignified wage, and care for our historic buildings. We are grateful for each of you whose generosity sustains this place.

If you would like to support our work of providing a place of refuge, of holding space for healing and transformation, you can make a donation at www.shadowcliff.org/support.

11/24/2025

We are hiring a General Manager for the 2026 Shadowcliff season!

If you or someone you know is looking for an opportunity to support a mission-driven lodge and retreat center and has the desire to help steward Shadowcliff’s guest experience, community programs, and retreat environment, we’d love to hear from you.

This role includes onsite housing and shared meals during the summer operating season, a supportive community of longtime guests and volunteers, and the chance to work with retreat groups, artists, and visitors seeking, rest, connection, and renewal.

- Seasonal full-time (mid-May–September); off-season part-time
- Rustic, beautiful campus nestled in the Rocky Mountains and overlooking Grand Lake
- Rooted in values of hospitality, healing, growth, and community
- A chance to help steward Shadowcliff’s legacy while helping to shape its next chapter

Full job posting and application link:
shadowcliff.org/jobs

Please share widely—you can help us find the right person to nurture this place.

11/20/2025

This summer, something beautiful unfolded at Shadowcliff. We welcomed Queen’s Legacy Foundation to launch our inaugural Groundwork Residency.

Queen brought a group of intergenerational leaders to Grand Lake to do the slow, hard work of healing and transformation.

She also brought a framework for resilience grounded in mutual aid, truth-telling, and community organizing.

Joining her were:

Christinia Eala, an indigenous elder from the Rosebud Reservation who works to advance alternative models of housing, energy, nutrition, and educational sovereignty for indigenous families.

Princess Mack, a systems navigator and connector working at the intersection of trauma, disability, kinship care, education, and advocacy.

LaQuetta Walker, a social worker, strategist, and organizer dedicated to ensuring that Black/African American children receive equitable education and that families have knowledge, access, and support across the full spectrum of the social determinants of health.

Together, they spent a week at Shadowcliff imagining community-driven solutions to food and housing insecurity, youth mental health, public health, and economic hardship.

The residency culminated in a powerful public event where they connected with Grand County residents to talk about mutual support, community resilience, and hope.

In 2026, we hope to bring another cohort of Groundwork Residents to Grand Lake.

But we can’t do it without you.

Help us hold space for work that heals, connects, and transforms.

Donate: shadowcliff.org/donate
(Link in bio)

Address

105 County Road 663, PO Box 658
Grand Lake, CO
80447

Telephone

+19706279220

Website

http://www.shadowcliff.org/, https://shadowcliff.org/support/

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