Skiing / Snowboarding
Record Snow Week and Year for Vail Colorado
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For the last 27 years, the Vail Colorado locals tell tales of the Great Winter of 1983 – 1984, and if you are lucky enough to be a local living in Vail today, you will be able to tell the same tale.  This has been the snowiest winter in Vail and Beaver Creek Colorado since 27 years ago.  As of yesterday, Beaver Creek Colorado resort recorded 426 inches of Snow for the season, with only two days left until the mountain is officially closed.  On top of the total inch record, the current base at the midpoint of the mountain in Beaver Creek is 100 inches and the last time that has happened is well over 15 years ago.   Vail likewise will end up having its second snowiest winter ever on record, it recorded 450 inches on Friday and it also will close this Sunday, April 13^th.

The irony Colorado skiers with this record amount of snow is that both Vail and Beaver Creek started out the ski season, which officially opens Thanksgiving week, worrying about the bad snow conditions. Bad being that in Colorado there wasn’t any.  The gorgeous fall weather lingered a lot longer than normal and Vail businesses were worried that this was going to be a sign for the rest of the season.  It got so bad, that both Vail and Beaver Creek Mountain had to delay their openings for a couple days until more snow could be made, which meant the mountain opened with manmade snow. Now Colorado has some new records.

But once the snow started in December, for Colorado there was no end to it and both December and January ended up being record setting months.  Usually by March, Vail is buzzing with the talk of Spring skiing which means slushy snow, rocks coming through the snow and people “downloading” on the chairlifts due to the lack of snow towards the bottom of the mountain.  But this year, there were very few slushy days in March, no need to download at all when you have 100 inches at the base of the mountain, and definitely no need when in April you are getting to ski with 13 new inches of powder in a couple days.  These are conditions that are more commonly referred to as mid-winter conditions and not Spring skiing. What is even more incredible, is that if it does snow in April, you may get a day here or there, but this year, the last week of the mountain being open is seeing powder every day. We are talking about 17 new inches in a night.

Both locals and local business are upset about the mountain closing early this year.  Vail Resorts says it is closing early due to Easter being so early and a general feeling that most people stop skiing shortly after Easter.  Also, Vails international workers, which make up a large population of Vail Resort employees, are having to return to their countries due to the expiration of their Visa’s.

So in a winter that started out very slow, the 2007-2008 ski season in Vail and Beaver Creek will go down in history as one of the snowiest on record and one of the best ever.  For the lucky ones who got to experience it, you can now tell the tale of one of the snowiest winters on record.