Vail – As puzzles go, the seasonal opening of Colorado’s ski resorts is far from metaphorical. Every winter poses its own multidimensional conundrum, a moving target of many parts, some predictable, others utterly arbitrary, amassed annually to form a mountain-sized Rubik’s Cube. The wizardry lies in how they are ultimately pieced together.
It’s easy for skiers and snowboarders to take the slopes they slide for granted. It’s winter in the Rockies, after all. And it’s snowing. What else do you need to know?
The short answer: a lot. Weather alone must be considered as a combination of snowfall, temperatures, wind and sun. Only a few undulations in the terrain can delay a halfpipe from opening for days. The effects of elevation are sometimes good, sometimes bad. And, yes, size matters.
“The challenge is just how much time it takes. Or, I should say, how little time can you take to do a good job of getting it all ready,” said Brian McCartney, vice president of mountain operations at Vail. “This place is just so darn big, which we love, but because of its size, we can only move so fast.”
With last week’s opening of its signature Back Bowls and Blue Sky Basin, Vail offers more ski terrain than anywhere in America so far this season. More than 4,000 of the resort’s nearly 5,300 skiable acres were opened to skiers and snowboarders in the three weeks since the lifts were turned on Nov. 17, thanks in large part to a stack of storm cycles that has dropped 7 feet of snow on the slopes this fall. Shortly before its opening day, however, warm temperatures and dry skies had mountain officials predicting a less auspicious unveiling.
“Obviously, a lot of our opening strategy is weather-driven,” McCartney said. “If we hadn’t been so fortunate, we’d be going in a whole different direction.”
The other side of that coin, of course, is the ability to react to the scenario as it unfolds. It’s neither economically prudent nor operationally feasible to open an entire ski area the size of Vail on the first day of the season, but the idea is to get as much of the mountain safely open as possible. And that takes effort.
“We were initially told we were only going to open (three lifts) because that’s all we had snow for,” Vail Patrol manager Billy Matteson said. “Then we got a big, 16-inch dump and we opened (eight lifts) in one day. We brought everybody in and had a dispatcher doling out work projects and had people skiing around with bamboo on their shoulders all day to get all that terrain open and set up some huge closures. I’m always amazed at how fast they can get it done, but these guys have been doing it for a long time.”
Earliest openings eyed
The effort involved in opening a sprawling resort such as Vail comes down to distance. Spanning a width of more than 7 miles and half as deep, patrollers have a ton of terrain to cover before it’s deemed safe for public use.
Tower pads on 34 chair lifts are spun back into proper position from their shaded summer resting spots (to protect from UV damage), bamboo is posted above countless gullies, rocks and stumps to warn of early-season hazards and overhanging cornices are dropped to the ground with close to 100 explosive charges. Toboggans and first aid equipment are moved to the various outposts in anticipation of accidents, and rope closures are established above terrain deemed not yet ready for skiers.
For that reason, most resorts across Colorado are eager to open as much of their mountains as early as possible. It actually reduces their workload.
“Once the whole mountain is open, it makes the job a lot easier,” said Matteson, noting that it’s impossible for people to break the law by skiing closed runs when they are all open. “Plus, getting open earlier helps compact the snow and keeps it from rotting out. That’s something we always talk about, that we have to get some compaction back there before the snow goes bad.”
Mountains across the state offering steeper, avalanche- prone terrain – Aspen Highlands and Silverton Mountain, for example – take an even more proactive approach to the compaction concept, getting a jump on the task before their ski areas are open.
“As soon as the first significant layers of snow are down in Highland Bowl, we start boot-packing it, usually around Nov. 1,” Highlands mountain manager Ron Chauner said. “We also put together what we call a ‘powder posse,’ an invitation-only group of local athletes we call up and escort in to make tracks on new snow to help it settle down. Those people get a nice treat, but it serves a purpose at the same time.”
The vertiginous Highland Bowl serves as the signature slope at Aspen Highlands, and, as with the Back Bowls of Vail, mountain officials are eager to open it as soon as possible. Through the efforts of about 40 hikers stomping down the snow eight hours a day for 30 days, a large portion of the bowl – along with similarly steep terrain elsewhere on the mountain – was waiting for skiers on their Dec. 8 opening day.
Compatibility at Copper
Similarly, areas such as Copper Mountain and Breckenridge – renowned for their terrain parks and superpipes – focus much of their energy on fabricating the features necessary to attract the new school of skiing and snowboarding. Although quick to note the Main Vein superpipe didn’t open at the expense of any other terrain at Copper Mountain, officials there are even quicker to point out that Copper has had the first ‘pipe open in North America for two consecutive years now. Breck followed with its own last Friday.
“It gives us some name recognition, but not at the cost of opening other terrain,” said Mike Unruh, Copper’s mountain operations director. “We built the superpipe in a manner that doesn’t take away from other snowmaking capacity.”
Copper’s base elevation at about 9,700 feet gives it an advantage over places such as Vail (8,150 feet) when it comes to the colder temperatures necessary for snowmaking, and grading improvements to eliminate undulations in terrain beneath the superpipe have helped the resort create a world-class feature post haste. But the high elevation can create problems of its own when it comes to managing snow and opening terrain on the mountain’s upper reaches.
Natural snow coverage on the rugged, high alpine terrain that lacks snowmaking capacity still remains lean in several areas, forcing Copper patrollers to utilize a technique known as “directed skiing” in order to compact the snow. Select expert runs are opened briefly with ski patrollers in position to offer advice to the public on safe routes and how to avoid potential hazards. Lucky skiers sample soft snow between the rocks until a base is established and slopes are opened on their own.
“The better you can manage your natural snowfall, the more quickly and safely you can open the terrain,” Unruh said, adding that he personally tests the snow on a regular basis. “It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.”
Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
