Very Interesting

It could be kind of fun around here on Wednesday.

 

4 More Inches Of New Snow

So we reported 4 inches of new snow this morning, there are a couple more inches sitting on the snow stake now and we might welcome June with another 4-8 inches on Wednesday. It has been a beautiful morning. My buddy, Matt Renoux, of 9News stopped by. He was taking pictures of me and I was taking pictures of him. With Memorial Day being the unofficial start of Summer, we will enjoy a strong final week of snowy, sunny, Spring/Summer Skiing at The Basin.

Sunday, June 5 will the final day of the season.

 

Pride

A-Basin's first Pride Day was a big hit. There were lots of smiling, happy, dancing, skiing people in top form. A crew of employees and guests skied the world's largest Pride Flag down High Noon. There was a DJ led dance party on the Black Mountain Lodge deck. It was kind of a scheduling quirk that had Swimwear Day and Pride Day occurring at the same time. I think those two events are forever married. I look forward to hosting Pride Day again next season.

Lenawee Express

Parts and pieces of the Lenawee Express detachable six-person chair are starting to show up at The Basin. While some of the components are manufactured in Europe, most of the lift is being built in Grand Junction.

Lenawee definitely needed an upgrade in capacity to reduce lines and move people around the mountain more quickly. Current Lenawee has a design capacity of 1800 people per hour. Since the lift serves a wide variety of skiers, it starts and stops often and probably has an actual capacity of about 1200 people per hour. The new lift will be easier to load and has a capacity of 2400 people per hour. We will see a very noticeable improvement in lift lines, loading and riding.

 

Re-Opening Terrain

A few of you have asked why we did not re-open lifts and terrain following the storm. In the Fall and early Winter, we spend days and sometimes weeks getting terrain ready to open. While it would be fun to re-open, it is unrealistic for us to think we can reasonably re-open terrain in late May while maintaining an acceptable safety standard.

Most of the areas currently closed, have been closed for days or weeks. All of the safety equipment has been removed and stored. Most of our Lift Operators have moved on to vacation or other work. The Lift Maintenance crew has even started their off season maintenance work. Most of the closed areas had little or no snow especially at lower elevations. I know it looked great, but the closed areas were not up to our standard. As always with us, employee and guest safety comes first. Today the temps should get in the 50's again and many of those areas will be bare ground by day's end.

The amount of work it would required to re-open for such a short window of time with very questionable conditions is just not worth it. I love that everyone wanted to go skiing, but re-opening closed terrain was not a sensible option for us.    

It was a very good storm.

27 Inch Storm - Fun Weekend Coming

That was a great storm dropping 27 inches of snow since Saturday. It was a great bonus for conditions between now and our June 5 closing day. The coming holiday weekend  is going to be good fun.

Saturday will be a wonderful day to enjoy Spring and celebrate friendships. It will a combination Pride Day and Swimwear Day. Celebrate our LGBTQ+ community and bring your most colorful Spring outfit or bathing suit and have some classic A-Basin fun.

Sunday is Festival of the Brewpubs. Join a dozen of Summit County and Colorado's finest breweries for some A-Basin beer tasting. For more info and to buy your mug click Festival of the Brewpubs.

Lastly, Monday is the last day to ride the Lenawee Triple. While Black Mountain Express will remain open thru Sunday, June 5, Tuesday we start the removal process on Lenawee. The old lift is heading to Sunlight Mountain Resort to be replaced by the Lenawee Express, a high speed detachable six-person Leitner Poma lift.  

Another Late May Powder Day

We reported 5 inches of new snow this morning.  All of it fell overnight. If the forecast comes through, we might get a few more inches later today and tonight.

I took a few runs first thing this morning. It was absolutely beautiful with fun powder skiing. The weather is in that zone when the sun pops out followed by snowfall followed by a little blue sky with dramatic light. It was a good morning to ski. Tomorrow morning might be the same with maybe a little more sun.

The Family That Drives Snowcats Together........

 

Another Good Looking Image

Here is another good image from yesterday afternoon.

 

16 Inches New

It is kind of amazing when the biggest single day snow accumulation of the season occurs on May 21. The snow yesterday afternoon and last night was heavy. Of course it happened on a Saturday making for the Perfect Storm. Once all of the other areas are closed and we get a big storm like this, especially on a weekend, you can count on a lot of people showing up to ski. And they did. I heard from a handful that were bummed with the crowd and I talked to dozens of people that had a fantastic day. I though it was a beauty.

Office Window

 From my office window at 5:15 this afternoon.

Fun Storm To Watch

This is going to be a fun storm watch. It is going to snow a lot .........somewhere.  Will that land at The Basin or 5 miles to East. We shall see. It has been snowing all day and we have a few inches on the snow stake. The heaviest snow is supposed to fall tonight and tomorrow. This will be a good weekend.

 

Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast

I have a fantastic, fun place for you to visit online. Stuart Winchester has created The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast. The place is for serious ski geeks like me. He is an extraordinary researcher and exceptional writer. I love listening to his podcasts. He has interviewed a number of ski industry leaders including Mary Kate Buckley at Jackson, David Norden at Taos and Taylor Middleton at Big Sky. He digs deeps with his interviews and delivers a really special inside look at the business and its resorts. For my reading and listening pleasure, I put Storm Skiing right up there with liftblog.com and opensnow.com. He even did a podcast with me Al's Podcast.

You will like Stuart's work. Enjoy.

Consolidating Snow

I was out of town for the last week and fell a little behind on the blog. Sorry.

Spring has totally sprung. Yesterday, driving to work I saw the bighorn sheep. About mid-day I was standing in the Early Riser Lot and I saw a moose on the hillside just north of the highway. The animals are moving about.

The skiing yesterday was really fun. It was soft, slushy snow that wasn't sticky. Just a treat to slide on. The cat drivers have been very busy. As we move further into Spring and the water starts running, we start pushing snow around. We do that to keep snow deep in places we want to ski and to have areas where the water runs, free to facilitate runoff. The snow on Lower Sundance and Lower High Noon has been consolidated to the west side of the trail.

It is Spring and the skiing is everything you hope for. Of course, we might get a heck of a storm Friday night...........

 

Pali Closed

As I am sure you heard, Pallavicini Lift and terrain are closed for the season. Regarding the steep terrain, our snow safety team watches the snow pack very closely. Using instrumentation and physically looking at the snow, they observed water running through the pack. The snow was getting punchy. On top of that, there is definitely a link between rising stream levels and water running through the snow. Over the weekend, the flow of the Snake River tripled. With the weather forecast the next 10 days being fairly warm, we knew it was time to pull the plug.

We will start this all over again next Fall.

Dinner At Steilhang

Dinner at Steilhang Hut was as good as everyone expected. Last night about 75 people skinned up for some extended hours at our latest dining experience. The Steilhang team served the normal menu of brats and pretzels and European beer. A few clouds rolled in, but the sun kept trying to pop through. We will be doing this one again.

East Wall

East Wall is still looking good.

 

Back To Spring......Again

So we have had a snowy, wintry week with almost a foot of new snow. Tomorrow we head back to Spring. For the next several days temps should in the 40's with sunny and mostly sunny skies. I think it will be high quality A-Basin Spring Skiing. Saturday, in particular, looks quite fun with a Shakin' at the Basin Spring Concert, a Snow and Throw on-snow disc golf tournament. On top of that, Steilhang Hut will be open from 5-7 PM for skinners. Spring time at The Basin.

Measuring Spring Snow

Below is a picture from Wednesday morning about 10:30 AM.  Measuring new snow depth in the Spring can be really tricky. With the warmer temperatures and the warmer snowpack, the new snow settles out much more quickly than it does mid-winter. Yesterday, we probably had 5-6 inches of snow in morning and then 2-3 inches more overnight, but that settled to a 6 inch snow report this morning. It is still snowing right now.

I think the message on measuring Spring storms is, GO SKIING !!!

 

5 Hours and 45 Minutes

 This much snow fell from 5 AM until 10:45 AM Wednesday morning.

Enduro Podcast

A-Basin has entered the podcast world. Katherine and Jesse from the marketing team created our first podcast on the Enduro. My good buddy Kaileen Picket Heaps and I were interviewed for the piece. Katherine plans on producing more of them and, while I was interviewed for the first one, the intention is to introduce more Arapahoe Basin voices and more about the inner workings of the place.

I encourage you to take 18 minutes and listen - Enduro Podcast