We know its coming. It happens every year. And yet it inevitably seems to comes early, or when we least expect it, and I swear it’s always on a Monday. I’m talking about the first snow. It happened this week (Sunday night) and by Monday morning it was official there’s snow on the mountains in Colorado Ski Country. (photo from Arapahoe Basin/Kimberly Trembearth)
One of the cool things about working at Colorado Ski Country USA is we’re like mission control, or command center, or central dispatch. We sit at the intersection of 1st and 1st, or the cross roads of the ski universe. We drive our desks in our little office in LoDo and we are the recipients of detailed first hand accounts of snow accumulation from across the state’s ski areas. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the emails in my inbox complete with photos and quotes and temperatures.
The first one came in from Arapahoe Basin. It read: Happy Last Day of Summer – It’s snowing up at Arapahoe Basin. 30 degrees this morning at 8:00 a.m.Snowmaking won’t be far away. Forecasters are predicting 2 – 4″ in the mountains today with highs in the 40s. (photo: Arapahoe Basin/Kimberly Trembearth)
The next one was from Winter Park. It read: The first real snow of the season has started to fall at Winter Park Resort today! A storm like this fills the air with excitement and evokes thoughts of what could lay ahead this ski season.While this weather pattern looks like it will linger through Wednesday, things will warm up just in time for our finalweekend of the summer, with activities open including Colorado’s longest Alpine Slide and Trestle Bike Park. (photo: Winter Park)
Winter Park’s announcement was shortly followed by Copper Mountain‘s: It’s snowing at Copper!Snow started earlier this morning and continues with large flakes falling from the September sky.Copper is scheduled to open for the winter season on Friday, Nov. 6 with Lift Off, movie premieres and more. Check out live streaming video from above treeline with Copper’s newest Snow Day webcam here: http://10.72.160.182. There’s lots of the good stuff up there. (Photo: Copper Mountain)
Always in the snow spotlight, Steamboat dropped in with this announcement: Well, Fall hasn’t even started and we awoke to the first snow of the season this morning.A bit of a surprise, but typically the first snow usually hits around this time of September. Sounds like forecasts are calling for a chance of snow today and tomorrow before warming up again. Snow was seen down to just below the top of Christie Peak about 8,000 feet with between a trace to half an inch as you moved up from the top of the gondola up to the summit of Mt. Werner. The Steamboat Ski Area opens for the 2009/10 season in 64 days on November 25, 2009. (Photo: Steamboat/Larry Pierce)
But the Mother Ship landed when this one showed up in my inbox from Loveland: Cold temperatures and natural snowfall have arrived earlier than expected allowing Loveland Ski Area to officially kick-off snowmaking for the 2009-2010 ski season.
Our Trail Maintenance department has been busy preparing the hill, and today started beautifully with all the necessary conditions to start blowing snow.
“The weather forecast for the next few days looks very favorable for snowmaking,” said Eric Johnstone, Loveland’s Snowmaking and Trail Maintenance Manager.
Loveland Ski Area has started making snow today on trails Catwalk, Mambo, and Homerun for Opening Day 2009. These trails form a top-to-bottom run of 1,000 vertical feet.
“Everyone at Loveland is just very excited to start the new ski season. The temperatures look good right now, the equipment is in place, and the crew is fired-up to make snow. We got together this morning and decided that today was the day.” said Bob Magrino, Director of Mountain Operations.
Snowmaking updates are available at www.skiloveland.com/snowmaking. The site will be updated continuously with pictures and reports of our snowmaking progress. (Photo: Loveland)
And there you have it, the countdown ’till snowmaking is over, but the countdown ’till Opening Day is underway. When will it happen? Who will it be? Will I actually get to ski it this year? All will be answered soonvery soon.
