Wolf Creek, CO March 21-23

[johnnash]

Once again, as in early January, my wife and I were planning a week trip to the Summit/ Eagle County area of Colorado, but decided at the last minute to go to Wolf Creek for part of the week. This time our decision was due to the fact that the Summit/ Eagle resorts got 1- 5 inches from the latest storm (mainly Sunday and Monday) – which seemed just enough to put some dust on the crust -- whereas WC got 17 inches, sufficient for a good re-surfacing. We flew in a day too late to really get the full benefit, but we figured the surface should still be skiing pretty well for at least a couple of days.

This trip we stayed in South Fork, instead of Pagosa Springs (these are the only choices if you’re skiing WC), since as we discovered on our January trip South Fork is a closer drive from Denver and the Summit area. Staying at Pagosa Springs as we had in January adds about 40 minutes each way to the drive. South Fork is also at least 10 minutes closer to WC on less curvy roads, plus the drive from South Fork doesn’t require going over the pass, so it might also have an advantage when road conditions are an issue. We stayed in Wolf Creek Ski Lodge, a place that just re-opened under new management last November (after big renovations) and which had gotten very nice reviews online. This turned out to be a great place to stay – very amiable and accommodating owners; clean, comfortable rooms and beds; new hot tubs, a convenient location, and a very attractive rate ($61 a night, including tax). If you look for them online, be sure not to confuse them with Wolf Creek Ranch Ski Lodge.

Day one: The perfect bluebird day \/
Our first day skiing was Wednesday and the conditions were perfect. The temp in the morning was around 20 F. and it was a bluebird day. There wasn’t any untracked left, at least not where we were skiing. (Perhaps there was some still in the steep bowls and glades off the Alberta lift, or the Waterfall area, but I doubt it. Things looked pretty tracked out.) But the surface was in great condition – loose or packed powder everywhere. The one exception I found was the Alberta Face, which had some wind-affected hardpack at the very top. But even there, once you dropped down 10 meters or so, it was loose powder. The base was better than in January – no rocks or other obstacles that I saw anywhere – so some lines were skiable now that had not been in January. I won’t (and can’t!) give a run by run description of the day, but suffice it to say that we skied a few runs off every lift. The ungroomed runs in more heavily trafficked areas had bumped up nicely, while in some other areas the moguls were just starting to form. But with this nice surface, it all skied very well for most of the day. By the end of the day, however, the full sun and warming temps (forecast said high of 31 F., but it really felt warmer) were showing some effect. I had pretty low expectations for Thursday.

As an intermezzo here, let me say a word about the food at WC, provoked by the discussion of food service options started by Evren’s trip to Alta. Our general strategy has been not to eat on-mountain, where the food even if it’s good is ridiculously over-priced. So we bring a sandwich or rent a ski-in, ski-out condo and eat lunch there. (If I save $50 a day on lunch, that’s $50 more I can pay for a condo.) But WC has such reasonably priced food ($4 for a generous slice of pizza, $7 for a large and very good Reuben sandwich), that it’s not worth the trouble to bring our own. It’s hard to compare, and a couple of other places we’ve visited have relatively reasonably priced food (Brighton and Bachelor come to mind), but I think WC gets the prize. And 2 weeks ago they opened a new place on the second floor of the lift house at the top of the Raven lift, where you have a great view of a little terrain feature that seems irresistible to inexperienced skiers and boarders. It’s so small that they can’t hurt themselves, but they can really put on a good show trying. One thing to note is that the eateries at WC only take cash. There’s an ATM at the base, but not at Raven’s nest. On the subject of food, I should also mention that we ate at 2 very good and very reasonably priced restaurants in town. For BBQ, pizza, and burgers, The Shaft is great, and they have a very decent bottle of wine for $11! The Silver Fork is more upscale, with some truly innovative cuisine, and equally reasonable prices for what you get.

Day 2: The (Bluebird) Hangover
Thursday was much warmer than Wed., and just as sunny. The surface conditions were not as bad as I had expected, but were far from ideal. Groomed runs skied nicely from 10 (when we started skiing) til 1:30 or 2:00. After that, the flatter runs got sticky, but some of the groomers that don’t get a lot of traffic and are a bit steeper continued to ski very well until late afternoon. The ungroomed runs were still too stiff to enjoy until around 11:00, then softened and were skiable. By mid-afternoon, however, they were really too soft – not exactly mashed potatoes, but getting there. I may be wrong about this, but it seemed to me that at WC, most of the runs have a pretty similar orientation, so the timing of softening was fairly uniform across the mountain. What seems to matter a lot more than exposure is pitch (steeper runs don’t absorb as much solar energy), traffic, and altitude.



Day 3: The (Bluebird) Hangover, Part II
Pretty much more of the same as the day before. Although the forecast was for temps to be a few degrees warmer, it seemed to me to be not quite as warm. (But maybe that was because I had taken the liner out of my jacket :lol: ) We skied groomers in the morning, then had an early and quick lunch (beautifully grilled ahi tuna steak sandwich for $8.50) since things were getting good around mid-day, and we wanted to get back on the mountain. Sarah stayed on the groomers in the afternoon, and said they stayed in pretty fair condition til around 2:00. I went over to the Alberta lift and did a couple of the blue glade runs, which by then generally had very nice surfaces. Then I went back to the Treasure lift and skied Alberta Face a few times (very bumpy and a bit too soft), Holy Moses, and -- what turned out to be my favorite run of the day—Treasure Falls (a short black with a nice pitch that for some reason was very lightly skied) followed by Treasure, a nice blue bump run. Treasure Falls by early afternoon had developed a kind of semi-soft surface – but not mashed potatoes -- which was a lot of fun to ski. Maybe this is ‘’corn snow’’; I’ve never really understood that term, but it seems to be a good thing. Anyway, once I discovered this run, I kept doing it, and the surface stayed like this until my last run at 4:00, when it began to stiffen a bit as things began to cool down. My guess is that this will stay pretty good for at least another day or so. All in all, even in less than ideal conditions, this trip cemented Wolf Creek in our minds as a definite possibility for multiple visits in the future. And they apparently have big expansion plans for the future (their website has a video presentation), although as I understand, it’s pretty long term. Frankly, considering global warming, if I were an investor, I would hesitate to put money in a 20-year project in a ski area this far south, but -- who knows? -- they may manage to pull it off.

Day 4: Epilogue
On Saturday, we drove back to Summit, with a side trip to Creede, about 20 minutes from South Fork. We went mainly to see the underground mining museum, and were disappointed to find that in the winter it’s closed on weekends. A tourist attraction that closes on weekends – go figure! But as it turned out, we weren’t sorry we made the drive, because it takes you though the Rio Grande National Forest, with some spectacularly beautiful scenery. Wikipedia calls the San Juan Mountains ‘’rugged’’, and you can really see why. But next visit, we’ll try again to see that museum, which we heard was very cool. And we did stop by the National Mining Museum and Hall of Fame in Leadville, which didn’t have the atmosphere of an underground museum, but was still pretty interesting.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Frankly, considering global warming, if I were an investor, I would hesitate to put money in a 20-year project in a ski area this far south

The issue with warming temperatures in ski areas is altitude much more than latitude. Precipitation does not necessarily change, may even increase, but at some marginal elevations there may be more rain and less snow. Wolf Creek, with a base elevation of 10,600 feet, would be one of the very last ski areas I can think of to be negatively impacted by rising temperatures.

When does it ever rain in Colorado ski areas in the winter? Essentially never. Wolf Creek is exposed to the Mexican fall monsoon season, but after October 15 most of that precip is snow. Thus they have skiable natural snow by the end of October as often as any ski area in North America.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The issue with warming temperatures in ski areas is altitude much more than latitude. Precipitation does not necessarily change, may even increase, but at some marginal elevations there may be more rain and less snow. Wolf Creek, with a base elevation of 10,600 feet, would be one of the very last ski areas I can think of to be negatively impacted by rising temperatures.

Does that hold true for Ski Santa Fe, whose base is in the same neighborhood (10,350 feet), but is even further south?

 

[johnnash]

Frankly, considering global warming, if I were an investor, I would hesitate to put money in a 20-year project in a ski area this far south

The issue with warming temperatures in ski areas is altitude much more than latitude. Precipitation does not necessarily change, may even increase, but at some marginal elevations there may be more rain and less snow. Wolf Creek, with a base elevation of 10,600 feet, would be one of the very last ski areas I can think of to be negatively impacted by rising temperatures.

When does it ever rain in Colorado ski areas in the winter? Essentially never. Wolf Creek is exposed to the Mexican fall monsoon season, but after October 15 most of that precip is snow. Thus they have skiable natural snow by the end of October as often as any ski area in North America.

It's true that what's going to happen to precip is very unclear. The global circulation models are inconsistent in their predictions even on which direction this will move in many geographic areas. But I don't think it's the case that higher altitudes will warm less than lower. ( I haven't seen any literature suggesting that, but would be interested in references.) So, at any given latitude and altitude, more precip will fall as rain, and snow will melt sooner. Also, I think there's wide agreement that precip events are likely to be more extreme overall. What this suggests to me is that there are likely to be bigger dumps followed by longer droughts. For all latitudes and altitudes, spring will come earlier and winters will be milder -- so fewer days of winter conditions and more spring skiing. It seems to me that the resorts that will be hurt less, or may even benefit commercially, are those where current conditions are uncomfortably cold for a good part of the winter, and so will become more attractive and competitive. With what seems to be WC's current customer base -- mainly Colorado and neighboring states within driving distance -- who aren't flying in, I would expect that they'll continue to be competitive. But I wouldn't bet on their being able to attract the kind of fly-in destination skiers that I guess they hope to have with their big expansion. But of course, I wish them the best. I love the place!

 

[Tony Crocker]

So, at any given latitude and altitude, more precip will fall as rain,

This is the most important issue, as already demonstrated during the warming period of the 80's and 90's in places like Australia and the lower European base elevations. Patterns of precipitation, droughts vs. bigger dumps, etc. are much more speculative.

So do we worry about places like Wolf Creek that even in the current plateau of temperatures are never getting winter rain? I'd worry a lot more about places like Fernie, which despite its northern latitude already gets rain at its base with some regularity and to the top 2-3 times per season.

Does that hold true for Ski Santa Fe, whose base is in the same neighborhood (10,350 feet), but is even further south?

In terms of rain, I would say it's of little concern in New Mexico, where nearly all base elevations are over 9,000 feet. But snowfall averages in New Mexico are lower than Colorado. Taos at 262 inches is the highest and that's a very average number in Colorado. I doubt anyone else in NM is much over 200 and several are lower than that. Volatility increases somewhat as one moves south in the Rockies. That's manageable most of the time at Wolf Creek which averages 396 inches. But if your average is only 200 the low years are going to be marginal for skiing regardless of temperatures, as demonstrated by several bad seasons in NM since 1999. The source of those bad seasons is the low average and moderately high volatility, not the warming trend which mostly occurred before 1999.

Also, I think there's wide agreement that precip events are likely to be more extreme overall. What this suggests to me is that there are likely to be bigger dumps followed by longer droughts.

Zero evidence of that in my snowfall stats. I have 25 areas with an average of 40 years of data and compared 1993 and later to 1992 and earlier. Average snowfall is 7% higher and standard deviation is 7% lower for the later time period than the former. That's not statistically significant but note that both numbers are in the opposite direction from conventional thinking, so there is no evidence whatsoever that snowfall is declining or becoming more volatile at North American ski areas.

This type of exercise is influenced by outlier seasons. As noted elsewhere 2010-11 was the best season in my database and the only one over 120%. There are 4 seasons under 80%, 1976-77, 1980-81, 1991-92 and 1986-87. This year was on pace to join the latter group in mid-January but now looks likely to come in at least at 85%. 2 regions, Pacific Northwest and western Canada, are far above average and the bad regions are less extreme now than 2 months ago.