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Colorado 2022-2023 Colorado Ski Resorts/Conditions/Meetups

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ski otter 2

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While I'm at it,
I wish the public could ski at the same time/days/slopes as the racers, fall and spring also.

I wish Copper would bring back the days when they only half closed the runs with world class race practice and course setups on them:
one could ski on the open, say, third of the run, right alongside the course, and watch the racers - maybe for half the time scheduled for the racers, since they started early, before the lifts opened to the public.

Copper also had the next slopes to the west open for both public and racer recreational skiing between their timed runs or practice gate runs.
That way one could ski almost alongside the racers doing turns recreationally, or ski right behind them, in my case.
I'd get on, say, my Atomic 188/30 W GS skis and do turns on the same slope as some of the world's top racers -
a respectful distance away from them, of course - what crazy fun.

(The men on their 193 GS skis would be about a football field ahead of me at the bottom if we started
near the top of the course at about the same time, me 20 to 30 yards behind them at first, out of respect.
With the women, mostly on roughly the same 188/30 spec ski as me, I'd still be close behind them at the bottom; again,
with enough distance so as not to bother them.

It was great for my enjoyment, skiing, and made those days really stellar.

Copper could do something very similar for the spring race program, leaving it open to the public in a similar, partial way, at least part of the time.
Gad, that would make Copper again have one of the great skiing experiences in the country for the race interested public.

Dream on. :cool:
 

Ken_R

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5"+ of RAIN in my house in Denver. This is just nuts. Thankfully the upslope was deep and looking at the cams A-Basin has gotten at least a Foot of snow from this and its still dumping up there. I cant make it up today though :(. Amazing may pow day for those who can.
 

nay

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5"+ of RAIN in my house in Denver. This is just nuts. Thankfully the upslope was deep and looking at the cams A-Basin has gotten at least a Foot of snow from this and its still dumping up there. I cant make it up today though :(. Amazing may pow day for those who can.
It started snowing at my place yesterday afternoon and I was worried we were in for huge tree damage with liquid slush falling from the sky. What stuck to the roads was literally see-through down to the road. But then snow levels went back up a few hundred feet and it was all rain. It wouldn’t have needed to be much colder at 7,400’ for this to have been 4’ of liquid cement.

IMG_5648.jpeg

Is this the end of the 23 year mega drought finally?
 

dbostedo

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It just never ends then.
I've always heard it will take several years of good precip to be fully out of a long drought. I guess it's about refilling lakes, streams, ground water, etc. Can that happen in one year in CO?
 

SBrown

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I thought they had discouraged the use of the word “drought” because that makes it seem as if it is a temporary thing, where it should be viewed as the new normal. (Don’t ask me who “they” is, exactly…)
 

coskigirl

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Abasin was a bit of a shit show because they lost power. All open lifts were running on diesel and loading half capacity at most. Lenawee was only loading 3 per chair and then only every other chair. Light was super flat and the snow was warm and heavy. I gave up and went home. But, I did ski another birthday.
IMG_0608.jpeg IMG_0609.jpeg
 

Ken_R

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Abasin was a bit of a shit show because they lost power. All open lifts were running on diesel and loading half capacity at most. Lenawee was only loading 3 per chair and then only every other chair. Light was super flat and the snow was warm and heavy. I gave up and went home. But, I did ski another birthday.
View attachment 203374 View attachment 203375

Happy Birthday!

And thats a win in my book! Looks great!
 

Ken_R

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It started snowing at my place yesterday afternoon and I was worried we were in for huge tree damage with liquid slush falling from the sky. What stuck to the roads was literally see-through down to the road. But then snow levels went back up a few hundred feet and it was all rain. It wouldn’t have needed to be much colder at 7,400’ for this to have been 4’ of liquid cement.

View attachment 203358

Is this the end of the 23 year mega drought finally?

This should significantly alleviate the drought or sustained dry conditions in a LOT of areas. Season Snowfall near the divide was okish not spectacular like other years but this storm and coolish weather will slow down the melt-off significantly. We will still be in a cooler (or close to average) and wetter weather pattern for a bit. We will have to look at the data to see which zones are in better shape than others. Its a big State.

The Front Range rain should be a fantastic boost for the growers in the plains.
 

ski otter 2

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Abasin was a bit of a shit show because they lost power. All open lifts were running on diesel and loading half capacity at most. Lenawee was only loading 3 per chair and then only every other chair. Light was super flat and the snow was warm and heavy. I gave up and went home. But, I did ski another birthday.
View attachment 203374 View attachment 203375
This. How neat.

I too was there today, though fortunately it now seems like a distant bad dream, mostly.
(Except for the great time I had catching up with friends instead of skiing much. )
The snow was deeper, but the conditions were very similar to yesterday, Thursday, when the lifts were running smoothly,
and the visibility was also hard to imagine.

We'd get off the lifts up top and find we couldn't see much of anything. For almost the whole run, on the upper mountain.
And the limited functioning lifts meant long lines, and no chance to come up with options to Lenawee.
No escaping the long lines at the bottom and midway. Beavers lift was not opened while I was there.

No reason to wish you were there: those of you who couldn't come were fortunate, considering.
The snow will probably be very good tomorrow; so if the visibility and lifts are good, that will be a good day
(except for maybe some rain forecast in the late afternoon).
Too bad it will be a paid parking Saturday.
 
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tball

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Pali is running, but most of the terrain has been closed, it seems, for a while. :(

Any thoughts if any of the terrain will reopen? It doesn't look like Al has posted about it.


1683997883250.png

 

ski otter 2

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If it did open, it would have to be now. It would have to be packed down.

But I doubt it. For technical reasons. They have that little station up fairly high where they watch for water flow starting -
ever since that bad avalanche there some seasons back. That " observable flow" result is what determines
whether or not they close the Palli face, etc.
Because water flowing there might mean release of a whole shelf of hard snow under some unlucky skier.
 

tball

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What a bummer that despite the great snowpack those unseasonably warm days in April messed up the rest of the season. :(
 

martyg

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Headed to Loveland tomorrow. It may be my last day skiing this season on this continent.
 

jmeb

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Last day of lift served for me this year. Impressive coverage thanks to the nice upslope storm for the front range. A few more weeks of choosing between human powered great corn, bike rides in the foothills and golf down low.
0949BB82-B34B-497D-B569-9913F38B665F.jpeg D13492AE-B389-435F-A016-93097F280C56.jpeg
 

nay

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I thought they had discouraged the use of the word “drought” because that makes it seem as if it is a temporary thing, where it should be viewed as the new normal. (Don’t ask me who “they” is, exactly…)

That’s the difficulty - 20 years is so long in our lives that we struggle to think of these things in the context of geological climate normality. But all southwestern U.S. megadroughts have ended, none ever persisted as a new permanent normal and some preceding anthropogenic climate influence are considered to have been worse.

The “worse in the last 1,200 years” is actually the largest percentage of southwestern North America to to be a top 5 twenty-two year drought severity period. Other periods well preceding the industrial age are understood to have been more severe.

IMG_0496.jpeg

The Great Drought of 1276-1299 is known to have caused the abandonment of native civilization sites. We have never experienced a megadrought in modern society…until now.

IMG_0497.jpeg

Lots to read up on well known historical drought events - we may not want to call them droughts, but I think that’s political because it can draw attention away from human activity and its amplification of naturally occurring events. But I still wonder given the incredible anomaly of the weather this year in the west if this megadrought is over.

 
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