Tens of thousands of skiers and snowboarders are bound for the Colorado high country for the first big weekend of the season, with a sunny, warmer break between winter storms.
Telluride, Aspen Mountain, Snowmass and Ski Cooper opened Thursday, joining Beaver Creek, Crested Butte, Steamboat and Sunlight, which opened Wednesday.
Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort opens today.
Loveland opened Oct. 24; Arapahoe Basin on Oct. 25; Wolf Creek on Oct. 30; Copper Mountain and Keystone on Nov. 5; Breckenridge on Nov. 12; Winter Park on Nov. 17; and Eldora, Vail and Heavenly on Nov. 19.
Other resorts have announced tentative opening dates: Echo Mountain on Wednesday; Howelsen and Silverton on Dec. 4; Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk on Dec. 11; and Powderhorn on Dec. 16.
“I’d venture a lot of our in-state skiers are heading up to the mountains this weekend,” said Jennifer Rudolph, spokeswoman for the trade group Colorado Ski Country USA. “This is the first major blip on their radar.”
Temperatures are expected to warm into the 30s under sunny skies this weekend before another Pacific storm moves in. The northern and central mountains could get another 4 to 8 inches of snow by Monday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.
Rabbit Ears Pass in Routt County has 39 inches of snow, McClure Pass in Pitkin and Gunnison counties has 15 inches, and Trappers Lake in Garfield County has 16 inches, according to the Natural Resource Conservation Service.
While the Front Range and southern Colorado are below average for snowfall, the Colorado River basin is at 138 percent of its 30-year average, the Yampa basin is at 139 percent and the North Platte is at 153 percent, according to the NRCS.
So far this month, Denver has received 1.5 inches of snow, nearly all of it Nov. 15. If the city gets no more snow through Tuesday, the month will just miss the top 10 least-snowy Novembers on record for Denver. In 1971, the city received 1.4 inches. The least-snowy Novembers in Denver were in 1884, 1899 and 1901, when the city received just a trace of snow.
