Photo: Jayson Evans//Unsplash
Colorado isn’t the only place in the U.S. experiencing a slow winter in terms of snowpack, but new data proves what everybody’s been talking about: the state is on track for its lowest snow total on record. The news comes as multiple reports confirm the current snowpack is not only well below its seasonal average, but forecasters are also doubling down and reporting they don’t expect the trend to change within the next week. At that point the Centennial State will have stepped a full month into winter and crossed off a significant chunk of the typical snowy season.
According to Denver’s 9News, Colorado is at just 62 percent of its expected snow levels for this time, less than two-thirds of what should have fallen throughout the winter. That’s meant mixed results for ski resorts across the state that are all relying on a mix of snowmaking and normal snowfall to operate. At many of the marquee resorts that’s only amounted to around 50 percent of open trails. Aspen Snowmass is an outlier with 81 percent of the resort’s 366 trails open, according to On The Snow. But other big-name resorts like Vail (55 percent open), Keystone (50 percent open), and Crested Butte (52 percent open) paint a picture that’s representative of most of the state.
Arapahoe Basin, meanwhile, is getting creative in dealing with having opened only 22 of 147 trails thus far. Earlier this week the resort announced directed skiing initiatives (guided by ski patrol, essentially), which will give guests a chance to get on some trails that would otherwise by closed.
“This does not mean patrol is opening runs just for you. Patrol does important work around the mountain, and you do not want to get in their way of that,” the resort said, according to Snowbrains. That initiative came after the resort received about 20 percent of its total snowpack in one recent storm. “So it’s still low tide out there,” the resort wrote.
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