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Vail tops 200 inches so far this season with Saturday’s classic Back Bowls powder bonanza
Vail’s Back Bowls on Saturday, Feb. 17 (Vail Resorts photo).
With more than a foot of snow Friday and Saturday, Vail topped 200 inches of snow so far this season and served up some fairly ideal ski conditions over the busy Presidents Day weekend.
Beaver Creek saw even more snow over the same timespan, tallying 18 inches in the past week and rapidly approaching the 200-inch mark at 186 for the season.
Forecasters are calling for more snow this week and possibly a much bigger dump toward the end of the month.
“Sunday will start dry then wind up with snowflakes in the air as a storm tracks across northern Colorado during the afternoon,” Opensnow.com meteorologist Joel Gratz wrote on Sunday morning.
“Monday and some of Tuesday may be dry, and then a few waves of snow could bring some powder from later Tuesday to Friday morning,” Gratz added. “After that, Friday afternoon through Sunday will be dry before a stronger storm arrives early the following week (Feb 26-28).”
At Vail on Saturday, untracked snow and sunny skies brought out big crowds of snow riders but lift lines in the Back Bowls rarely topped five or 10 minutes. And untracked snow remained in the front side trees until late in the afternoon. Still, Vail is looking to the future by outlining major new lift upgrades with its landlord, the U.S. Forest Service (check out the excellent Storm Skiing Journal for more details).
A ski season that started slowly in terms of snowfall has now turned into an average to even above-average snow-riding season after multiple large storms since the first of the year, including massive dumps now over MLK and Presidents Weekend.
Here’s a video of the author on Rasputin’s Revenge on Saturday:
David O. Williams
