Colorado 2016-17 Colorado Weather

[Guy in Shorts]

Just what is the difference between "nuking" and "puking" snow?

Volume - puking has a limited volume. Nuking is a chain reaction that seems to go forever.

 

[nay]

Bet high (up) as usual...

 

[nay]

And you know the upper mountain is on wind hold. T.i.T.S. would be good if it wasn't T.o.a.P for me...

 

[dean_spirito]

It snowed most of today in Breck. Heavy at times. If the wind dies down, tomorrow could be a pretty decent day. I'm expecting 6"-10" in the windblown areas around the mountains.

 

[Jerez]

We braved the wind at the Jane yesterday. Until I looked at my son and saw white patches on his nose and cheek so we high tailed it into the lodge. It was fierce. Nevertheless, 7 inches got battered in no time. Was thinking today might be great since Eagle Wind and Panorama were closed yesterday but even though the sun came out today the wind didn't let up and they remained shut down. Will make for interesting conditions when they do open.

 

[nay]

 

[nay]

Total sleeper day at Loveland. Mountain is wind buffed and the surface varied between winter and spring. Excellent.



Gonna be one of those years?

 

[nay]

Al also reported that The Spine wind buffed - I imagine it's getting chewed up some today, but that would have been seriously good yesterday like we found so much of at Loveland.

I love days like that - I'm actually kind of sore today because you can just rip the snot out of everything without thinking at all about what lies beneath.

 

[Monique]

Sounds like chalk / "groomed by God", no?

 

[Monique]

There's less than one week till my actual nine month post-surgery date, so I promoted myself to "cleared" today. (There's no doc checkup for the full clear - just the date.) It kind of felt like cheating - most of the upper mountain might as well have been groomed.

Several runs on Horseshoe, one on Shadow Canyon (should have stuck to Whale's Tail) to Vertigo, and even a run on King - I expected to be freaked out by the entrance to King, but nope.

True to form so far this season, my brain wasn't a limiting factor - my knee still was. After lunch, my knee was cranky, but I decided to ski Imperial bowl a couple of times. That wasn't so good, so I headed in and had a drink with friends out on the patio of the Quandry.

ANYWAY THE POINT IS SKIING IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

From blues all season to mostly double blacks (yes, easy ones) today. I think I get to pat myself on the back a bit.

 

[nay]

^^^^congrats!

 

[Monique]

^^^^congrats!

At the side entrance to Horseshoe from the upper traverse, I took a moment to gather myself. Two guys skied up, and the leader said I should go ahead. I said, no, this is my first run here after ACL surgery. He said I shouldn't be skiing it, then. I said, no, I definitely should be.

Anyway, they made their turns, and then I went. There were no bumps, just smooth, confidence-inspiring, supremely edge-able - okay, it was firm. But in a fun way. I made a couple of tentative turns, then fell into a rhythm and skied down confidently - ebulliently! I skied up to the guy and asked if I could give him a hug. I was just so happy!!!!!! And he, bewildered, allowed me to give him a hug.

 

[nay]

 

[Monique]

Watched big fat flakes in Breck while getting my AT boots punched.

 

[Chris Walker]

Great early April skiing day at Copper yesterday. Too bad it's only March.

 

[nay]

An inch of snow and transformed back to winter.





West Wall whiteout beer.



The boy.



Time to go hide on Pali if it's running. Was down for a cable alignment issue.

 

[Drahtguy Kevin]

@SBrown got a cool shot today of me picking my way down Union Peak. The soft, chalky snow was the T.I.T.S.

 

[UGASkiDawg]

Fascinating snow year in Colorado. I hear lots of comments around Summit County and in Denver about what a great snow year it's been. Vail is sitting at just over 50% of their average annual snowfall with 1 month left. No resort in Nothern CO appears to be headed for anything other than slightly above average snowfall to a pretty poor year at Vail unless it dumps 150 inches (which is possible) in the next 4 weeks. We have had but 40-50 inches total in most of Summit since Jan 23ish. My impression is that was a slow start but a pretty good year but that appears to based on memories of an epic 5 weeks. Meanwhile everywhere around us has basically been epic since mid Dec.

 

[Monique]

Yeah, I think an epic January (when January is usually dry) got everyone miscalibrated. I'm hoping we'll make up the snow deficit now that I'm cleared to play

 

[Ken_R]

Fascinating snow year in Colorado. I hear lots of comments around Summit County and in Denver about what a great snow year it's been. Vail is sitting at just over 50% of their average annual snowfall with 1 month left. No resort in Nothern CO appears to be headed for anything other than slightly above average snowfall to a pretty poor year at Vail unless it dumps 150 inches (which is possible) in the next 4 weeks. We have had but 40-50 inches total in most of Summit since Jan 23ish. My impression is that was a slow start but a pretty good year but that appears to based on memories of an epic 5 weeks. Meanwhile everywhere around us has basically been epic since mid Dec.

Humm. It was a really good December and January, that set a good base. After that there have been some good moments here and there for powder but plenty of upper elevation wind buff. Also, warm temps have been pretty common so every time it got cold again the refreeze made skiing not that enjoyable in most areas until it got warm again or the wind buffed the surface. The fact that all the snow in January fell day after day almost without pause and without warm days in between helped a lot.

But yea, in the past 6 weeks Vail has gotten what? 2 feet total?