This weekend my lovely bride (above) and I trawled the deeps of Summit and Vail Counties, hitting up Keystone, Breck, and Vail in awesome powder conditions. Every morning when we woke up, the snow report said there was between two and four inches, yet when we reached the steep trees tucked on each peak, we found anywhere from six inches to over a foot!
Here's what we didn't find: rocks, stumps, brown spots, open creeks.
The coverage is amazing! At least in the northern mountains, which have almost 200% of average snowpack. The San Juans are still dry, with only about a third of the snow they usually get. (This is after an record winter in 2004-2005 in which some San Juan spots got 250% of average snow fall).
Twice as much snow as usual means this is an epic year. There, I said it, epic.
This is the kind of year all true skiers have to make extra efforts to enjoy, both because the skiing is phenomenal and because then in the next dry spell you can get that faraway look and say "remember the snow in 2006? Remember that day in Blue Sky Basin with face shots all day through the trees? Remember how there was so much snow that they closed I-70?"
People are still talking about years like that from the early 1990s. Now it's time to update.
The snow is by no means slowing down. After a snowy weekend, the next storm rolls in today with a 70% chance of snow dumping at a rate of 1.5 inches per hour in Summit County. Tomorrow will continue the trend toward epic. Might be a good idea to be there. - Dave
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