“You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling, Whoa, that lovin’ feelin’…”
There is a little bit of snow heading toward Colorado later this week and weekend, but first, let’s try not to lose ‘that lovin’ feeling’ from Monday’s powder day (hope you took my advice and got after it!) Quick video of my Case of the Monday’s here, and I apologize that we didn’t get better and deeper pictures…it was just too much fun skiing down the bowl to stop.
Special thanks to my Aspen “tour guides” for showing me the good stuff at Aspen Highlands. Ted Mahon (athlete and blogger extraordinaire from Aspen) took some pics, Tim Mutrie (ESPN Action Sports writer) led me through the woods, Art Burrows (telemark legend and designer) dropped his knees next to me in the bowl, and Neal Beidleman taught me about weather satellites on the ride up before schooling me on the way down (he’s 22 years older than I am…back to the gym for me).
The storm came in as expected on Sunday and Monday, but actually put down MORE snow than I expected in most areas. Here’s the breakdown showing my forecast and the actual totals. Summit Co. did better than the forecast, and Crested Butte “won” with 32″!
| Crested Butte | 32 |
| Wolf Creek | 27 |
| Silverton | 21 |
| Durango | 19 |
| Monarch | 19 |
| Aspen | 10-18 |
| Sunlight | 15 |
| Loveland | 13.5 |
| Telluride | 13 |
| Powderhorn | 12 |
| Steamboat | 12 |
| Vail | 11 |
| Winter Park | 10 |
| Abasin | 9 |
| Beaver Creek | 9 |
| Copper | 8 |
| Breckenridge | 7 |
| Eldora | 6 |
| Keystone | 6 |
Looks like some light snow (2-4″?) might whip through Colorado on Thursday evening and again on Sunday, but this snow won’t amount to much and it will generally stay north and east of Aspen (favoring Steamboat, Summit Co., and Winter Park). The next chance for a substantial storm is early next week - just in time for Christmas. I’ll have a full forecast on Friday morning…
Sunday and Monday were sick. Many thanks on the good call… A little too much wind compacted the pow at Wolf Creek, but honestly, I’ll take it any day over frozen granular man-made base. It’s clearly a storm chasing year.
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Cool site. Keep up the good work!
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Its nice to see Crested Butte get so much snow. Maybe they can get some blues open now.
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Prodigal Sun – glad you got after it. Too bad about the wind, but I agree that it’s better than a frozen base!
Pat C – thanks!
Skibum – hopefully CB can open more terrain. That place definitely needs a ton of snow to get the steep stuff open, but at least they are on their way!
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North Routt County picked up over 2 feet of snow from the last storm. Unfortunately our snowpack is an avalanche waiting to happen. Breaking trail on rabbit ears yesterday was as bad as I have experienced in over 10 years. Break through to the sugar and you are wallowing to your thighs. Settling, cracking, shallow and sketchy. It is gonna be an interesting season. Keep up the good work Joel.
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just want to give solid props for the forecasts and education on CO powder…
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Thomas – thanks for the snowfall & snowpack observations. The TOWER SNOTEL site seems to be a bit crazy lately, so good to have a report from the field. Avy conditions sound VERY sketchy…
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Quite the all-star crew for some amazing snow.
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CB did have blues and blacks open. they opened a lift to blacks last Thurs while I was there.
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awesome intro to the short film!
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Nice one Joel. When they opened the gate to Northwoods the next day it was pretty rockin’ as well. Pics to follow tomorrow.
ted
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Got to shred some untracked pow in the horseshoe and contest bowl at breck when they opened the t-bar on monday….my stoke meter was a little low on the season so far but sunday and monday boosted that a lot!
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Good call on the forecasting again man!!
Aspen area did ski very well this past weekend. Let’s hope this storm for next week pulls through.
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The new design works great on my Iphone
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Art – thanks! It’s a handy Wordpress plugin that’s perfect for the iPhone and iPod Touch. “WPTouch” is the name…
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Thanks for the great forecast, we had awesome Monday at Brec when they ran the Tbarrrr
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