ELDORA — Like many Colorado skiers, Megan Long’s planning brain is highly developed.
So early this week when the weather radar map lit up over the mountains, so did her prefrontal cortex.
“When you see snow in the forecast, especially a lot of snow, you start figuring out how you can get some of it for yourself,” the Boulder resident said. “It’s time to move those work meetings and find someone else to take the kids to school.”
Storms often peter out and skiers’ planning is rewarded with only a dusting of snow. But for the first time in decades, this week’s storm instead dashed powder dreams by delivering so much snow that three of the state’s favorite Front Range resorts — Eldora, Loveland and Arapahoe Basin — couldn’t open.
“When I got up here at 6 a.m. Thursday morning and was told the resort was closed because of snow, that didn’t even make sense to me,” said Long who was back in the Nederland High School parking lot Friday afternoon after being turned around from the same spot Thursday morning. “Too much snow to ski — is that even a thing in Colorado?”
Long was in line with her fellow powder seekers awaiting word resort workers had dug out from the 4 feet of heavy snow that buried lifts and made the road to Eldora impassible.
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Although Eldora’s website advised a Friday opening was “highly unlikely” and recommended skiers “reframe expectations,” locals had heard from friends on the ski patrol that the lifts would start turning around 1:30 p.m.
A line of vehicles filled with ski gear and anticipation formed, quickly filling the high school parking lot (that was empty because the storm had canceled school for a second day) and snaking back toward town. The sheriff had turned a couple dozen cars around earlier in the day, sending people back to wait at Nederland coffee shops or do more shoveling in their own driveways.
Henry Wood, behind the wheel of the fifth car in line, said he was feeling “pent-up” as he awaited the reopening. He and his teenage son slept in the back of their truck Wednesday night near Eldora hoping to catch the first chair.
Wood’s tale was a familiar one in the parking lot line, which was filled with powder hounds waiting to get at the 46 inches of snow that had fallen at Eldora in the 48 hours between Wednesday night and Friday morning.
All hands on snow shovels required
That 46 inches breaks the two-day record of 43 inches set for the Boulder County resort in 2003. The 2003 storm was the last time Eldora closed because of too much snow. The storm more than two decades ago saw a total of 63 inches fall in 72 hours — the most since they began keeping records in 1872.
While it’s common for resorts in areas such as Lake Tahoe to close after getting buried in feet of snow, Colorado closures for weather are beyond the comprehension of most local skiers.
While skiers waited, it was all hands on shovels up at the resort.
“We put a call out from all the department managers that anyone who could get here should come help us dig out,” Eldora marketing director Sam Bass said in a phone interview Friday morning. “For the past two days it’s been shoveling 24/7.”
About 20 employees answered the call on Thursday. About a dozen of those employees spent the night at the resort, sleeping on the lodge floor between shoveling shifts. On the runs, ski patrollers were busy with avalanche mitigation after a storm that left every slope of more than 25 degrees at risk of sliding.
Judging by the assortment of colorful plastic shovels, random gardening implements and even a couple of pickaxes seen at the resort Friday, employees brought their equipment from home to tackle the snow. In addition to hand shovels, the resort’s three snow plows and half dozen hand-push snowblowers were running for 48 hours nonstop — with new snow falling all the while.
“We had to dig out the road on our side of the gate, our parking lot, the lodge decks and entrances and the top and bottom terminals of all the lifts,” Bass said. “It was snowing non-stop, so the moment we shoveled anything out it would fill back in again. It was astounding, I’ve never seen anything like it in 20-plus years in Colorado.”
The resort and the roads to it were an unreal scene for local skiers who felt like they went to sleep in Colorado and woke up in Lake Tahoe. In Boulder Canyon the boughs of pine trees were folded by the heavy snow. In Nederland, feet of snow accumulated on parked cars during the day-and-a-half that snowmobiles were the only vehicles moving on local roads.
Access was the primary factor in the decision to close the three Colorado resorts Wednesday. Interstate 70 that carries skiers to Arapahoe Basin and Loveland was shut down for hours Thursday and the smaller county roads that lead to Eldora were plagued by avalanches and drifting snow. Loveland and A-Basin were able to reopen Friday morning.
Eldora skiers were schooled in the slow pace of road maintenance Friday as they refreshed the resort’s webpage again and again, hoping for word that the resort would open.
At 5:30 a.m. the resort posted that a county grader had gone off the road, further reducing the chance of a Friday opening. Most Front Range skiers followed the resort’s advice to put off a trip to Eldora until the weekend, leaving mostly locals lined up at the high school when Boulder County deputies finally let traffic head up to the ski hill.
Packed carloads cheered as they passed 10-foot-plus mountains of snow lining the road and surrounding the parking lot. The hooting and hollering continued as skiers and snowboarders loaded onto the dug-out lifts and intensified as they finally got their boards on the powder they had been dreaming about for days.
More water than powder
But it wasn’t the “powder” Coloradans are used to.
“This isn’t the light, dry snow we usually get,” Bass explained. “It’s denser and inconsistent. Also it’s so deep you can’t move on a gentle slope.”
Skiers and boarders quickly learned about the new type of snow, that became even heavier when the sun came out at Eldora midday. Even the most experienced were taken down by the snow and exhausted by digging out of it.
On the lift a group of CU students discussed how it wasn’t a day for turning, but rather keeping your skis straight and going “full send” until thigh-deep snow slowed you to a stop. Underneath the chair a pack of teens off school for a snow day attempted back flips as their friends cheered them on.
Whether their jumps were successful or not, there was a soft landing Friday for everyone.
In the trees and on the sides of the runs there were uncut lines to be found until last chair.
“This is the craziest snow ever!” shouted one woman as she floated down smooth snow protected from the sun by the glade of trees around her. “I’m so happy!”
Others had more complaints than compliments for the 4-feet of foreign snow, with one bedraggled skier asking, “For this I got up at 4 a.m. — twice?”
Any negative reports about the snow seemingly didn’t make it to the Front Range. All of Eldora’s lots were full by 9:30 a.m. Saturday morning. The resort groomed several runs for those not up to the challenge of the unusual snow.
“Maybe this wasn’t the powder day people were hoping for, but there is a silver lining to this storm,” Bass said. “All of this snow is going to make for an amazing remainder of the season.”
