This time last month I was in “home stretch” mode – those last few weeks of the season: April showers, spring skiing, birds suddenly appearing from nowhere, the smell of pine in the air, the tubing hill covered in mud and the anticipation of a long summer filled with outdoor activities”. Well we’re into 15^th innings of the home stretch it feels like – winter doesn’t want to quit even though we’ve been in spring from over 7 weeks.

I suppose I’m reminiscing about last year when, after an incredibly dry March & April, Pole Creek golf course was open before the ski area closed. No such luck this year. 60 inches of new snow fell in the first 3 weeks of April, and we’ve had plenty more since the season finished on April 21^st. It’s snowing heavily right now as I type. The official stats were 284 inches for the season – still substantially below average (about 20%) and if it hadn’t been for that 5 feet in April, we might have been talking about the “second worst season in history”, or third – something like that.

The popular, intelligent and maybe even profound thing to say at the moment is that “the moisture is good”. I have nothing against “good moisture”. It can rain for goodness sake – for the whole of May if it likes. But combined with sub-zero temperatures, it gets a bit old when you’re itching for things to dry out and the toys of summer are waiting patiently to be played with. Such is life living in the mountains.

Moving on, the summer events calendar is already out and as usual we’re heavily weighted towards music. The annual Jazz Festival, Blues Festival and (growing) Winter Park Music Festival return, but there’s other music to be had: at Cooper Creek Square on Fridays starting June 21^st and – my favorite – High Note Thursdays every Thursday from June 20^th through August 15^th at Hideaway Park. This really has turned into the community social evening of the week where families are there with their sunglasses, dogs, hot-dogs and beers and there’s so much chit-chat going on that the music is almost secondary to the occasion. Anyway, if you’re up here this summer, whatever you like to do, have fun doing it.

The start of February signals the halfway point of the ski season and for some the start of the countdown on remaining ski or snowboard days– for others it’s a case of enjoying the days getting longer and maybe warmer temperatures. As I’m sure you know, on February 2^nd 2013, The Groundhog predicted an early spring – for only the 17^th time since 1887. Remember, however, that last year the Groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of winter and – according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University – January to June 2012 was the warmest seven-month period since records began in 1895. Serves us right for listening to a marmot. For those interested in perhaps acquiring a Groundhog as a pet (aren’t we all?), here’s an interesting quote I read on Wikipedia that I’ll leave you with, and promise not to mention Groundhog Day for at least another year:

Doug Schwartz, a zookeeper and groundhog trainer at the Staten Island Zoo has been quoted as saying “They’re known for their aggression, so you’re starting from a hard place. [Their] natural impulse is to kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. You have to work to produce the sweet and cuddly.”

Moving swiftly on to current snow conditions and more reliable forms of weather prediction, I’ve mentioned meteorologist Joel Gratz and his website OpenSnow.com on numerous occasions, and how much credence I place on his forecasts. Formerly known as ColoradoPowderForecast.com, this site doesn’t just give you a 2-sentence guess at how many inches we’ll get. You’ll get paragraphs of weather data interpretation, images, graphs and then Joel’s all-important “what this will mean for us and will it be a powder day?” predictions. He even keeps track of his accuracy on his “Keep Me Honest” page “because it helps me to be a better forecaster and publishing the data shows you that we’re fully transparent and try our hardest to make the right forecast”.

So, first the stats for January, and then where we might be heading. Until January 29^th, we didn’t get a whole lot - 18 inches in fact: a barren spell that replicated the start to our season. Fortunately, a combination of very cold temperatures and expert grooming on-mountain, meant that our slopes remained in pretty good shape. In the “Discussion” portion of the Winter Park page, someone commented that “A buddy of mine skied Breck, Copper and WP three days running last week and said WP had the best snow and coverage by a long shot.” The Resort needs to do a better job of capitalizing on these comments.

Since then, we’ve had some decent, regular top-ups; nothing incredibly deep, but enough to freshen the trails on a frequent basis – almost 3 feet in the last 15 days. According to OpenSnow, from Wednesday night through Friday midday, we could get anywhere from 7 to 16 inches, with regular helpings (sorry, “stormy pattern”) for the rest of the month. Today’s information is excellent – 7 images with supporting explanations. People coming in for President’s Day weekend should have excellent conditions – the drive home Monday will be less than excellent, or “horrific” as Joel says.

So, that should set-up March, historically the snowiest month of the year, but last year we got a miserly 18 inches that month which effectively killed our season. I’m betting against the hedgehog.

Snow, glorious snow!
What wouldn’t we give for
That extra bit more –
That’s all that we live for
Why can’t we be fated to
Do nothing but play
On snow,
Magical snow,
Wonderful snow,
Marvellous snow,
Fabulous snow

A subtle adaptation from the lyrics of Lionel Bart’s song in the musical “Oliver” kind of sets the tone of how we’ve been feeling since Friday night.

It’s a good job I delayed my blog post to today instead of writing it on Thursday last week – I might have started it “I regret to inform you I am still wearing shorts”. And I was. But I was pontificating that this very act – as well as informed opinion from my new favorite weather forecasting website – would signal a change in the weather pattern and we would start to get snow. Not just a few flakes, but possibly over a foot.

And so it turned out. We had a “warm-up” storm that started early Friday evening and continued into the night, and then another one on the back of it on Saturday. Combined, the official recording was 14 inches. It seemed like a lot more, but that was probably because we had been starved of snow (since the 2010-11season) and those magical flakes of crystalline water ice truly seemed like manna from heaven.

I have to mention Joel Gratz’s website again, http://www.opensnow.com/location/winterpark for giving everyone renewed hope – if not for the season then at least very much improved early conditions. Up until December 6^th, it had been very bleak. Only 2 recorded inches had fallen since the ski area opened on November 14^th, so only 4 trails of man-made snow were open. However, on Sunday December 2nd, aside from predicting the following weekend storms we’ve just had, Joel has forecasted a change in the storm track that should give much more favorable snow for Colorado. He’s predicting cold and snow from two storm tracks – the one we’re in through December 15^th, and then another one December 16-23^rd – possibly – as this is a bit too far out to be 100% about.

The ski area is slowly opening up more terrain. As of today, we’re now at 19 trails, predominantly beginner, but also including the cruisers of Cranmer, White Rabbit and Jabberwocky. This should jump to at least 25 by tomorrow (Thursday 13^th December) as the Resort is set to open 6 trails on the Mary Jane side. With more snow set to come in this weekend, I suspect that number will grow “nicely” in the days leading up to Christmas.

I remember my first opening day at Winter Park Resort, fresh from 10 years of skiing in Europe (actually, 2-3 weeks every year for 10 years), and the ski gear to match.

I had arrived in town October 29th 1991, on a Greyhound bus, full of excitement and nervous apprehension as to whether I would get a job which would enable me to stay and ski for the season. Two days prior to this, I was down in Denver seeing the sights in t-shirt and shorts enjoying 70 degree weather. Overnight, temperatures dropped some 80 degrees, and I saw the same sights the following day in my ski jacket, hat and gloves, with the snow dumping down around me. It was then that a kiwi friend of mine Phil and I decided to head up to Winter Park on the recommendation of the lady that ran the launderette which was next door to the youth hostel where we were staying. The reason – Winter Park also had a youth hostel – so we could stay relatively cheap and job hunt at the same time.

We found jobs relatively quickly but managed to hang out at the youth hostel until we started. The snow which had started falling in Denver on October 28th was replicated 5 times over up in the mountains, and didn’t stop. While it meant for hard labor at the youth hostel, the ski area was being nicely set up for a great opening day. In fact, an amazing 50% of the resort was open, and we were skiing such runs as the Drunken Frenchman, Sterling Way and Phantom Bridge right from the off. Trouble was, my European experience hadn’t prepared me sufficiently for such conditions, not just under ski, but attire, so my ray-ban sunglasses and Bad Kleinkircheim headband didn’t quite do the trick.

However, today – 21 years on – they would probably work. We have blue sky, sunshine and I still have the sunglasses. Unfortunately, we only have 4 trails open for skiing, predominantly comprised of man-made snow, so all eyes are on long-range weather forecasts and the rest is down to hope and prayer for those who indulge. Anyway, the season is 159 days long so plenty of time to play catch-up.

If you go to Google and start typing “Obsession with weather”, all-knowing Google will offer up a couple of options for you to select (rather than have you finish typing “weather”), one of which includes “British obsession with weather”.

Being British, having lived there for the first 28 years of my life, and still calling home regularly to talk to my Dad, I can attest that there is indeed a large degree of truth in this. The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that the British use talking about the weather as a social prop – an icebreaker. Supposedly 70% of British people check the weather forecast at least once a day.

However, the first result in Google, “7 Reasons The British Obsession With Weather is A Myth” – while it doesn’t really do anything to de-bunk this theory – is worth reading because it made me laugh, and we (I) could all do with a lot more of that these days. There’s some strictly British references there you’ll need to understand to get the jokes, but #1 is worth it on its own.

When you’re in an industry which to an extremely large extent is dependent on the weather, talking about snow, the next storm, how much we’ll get, how little we just got, why we haven’t had enough when there was forecast to be so much more……………(you get the snow-drift), really does become an obsession.

Last season, we had an excellent year for snow. Started off strong – 144 inches by December 31, 396 inches by season-end which was 10% over our 10-year average. That was the year of La Nina and – supposedly – we were going to have another La Nina season in 2011-12. So, we all got excited about getting huge portions of snow, and what did we get? Sunny blue sky days, the occasional dusting of light snow (measured in hundredths of an inch such was the paucity of the amounts involved) and a perception that conditions on mountain were dreadful and it wasn’t even worth bothering to come up and see for yourself. Might as well go to Denver and play golf in 67° temperatures.

In some respects, all that was true – although all things considered as far as our mountain was concerned, the groomed trails were holding up very well indeed. It’s the tougher stuff that was closed, which in reality only 10% of the skiing population can ski anyway.

We had a great storm yesterday – I was surprised it only delivered 7½ inches, but on top of the 15½ we’ve had in the last 10 days, things are certainly turning around – rapidly. We’re now at 81” for the season, 91 trails are open and – with it being mid-week – I fully expect we’ll top 100 trails by the weekend at our Winter Park Ski Resort.

So what went wrong with the “La Nina Part Deux” forecasts? Well, apparently it was happening, but much further north than anyone anticipated. I’m sure the Northwest Territories loved it. However, as pointed out by my colleague on our Vacations Inc Facebook page on January 13, as from yesterday, the storm track is substantially further south and – as a consequence – we’re going to see storms we haven’t seen the likes of since – er – last season. Snowforecast.com reckons we’ll get 1 inch Wednesday night, 2-4 Thursday, a trace Friday and 2-4 Saturday. Lovely Jubbly.

With 96 skiing days still left in the season, now is probably a good time to make those Winter Park lodging reservations that have been put on hold pending better conditions, and take advantage of some great (and I mean great) discounts we’ve rolled out for the rest of the season. Buy one, get 50% off the second, and free night deals on stays of 3 nights or more. Go to our specials page for more details on Winter Park CO packages and ski Winter Park!