Guardsman Pass open Park City to Big Cottonwood

[Evren]

I was up there today and it was a pleasant surprise to see the PC to Midway segment open and clear. The road up to Guardsman proper still has a thin ribbon of snow up top, thanks to packing by snowmobilers (what are they good for, really?)
Last year, the Ragnar people paid to have it plowed so they could have their race. The rest opened in mid-July.

 

[Evren]

As of today, Park City to Big Cottonwood is also open. Though, for some reason UDOT shows both segments closed (this, despite PC-Midway being open for 10+ days). I don't know who else gets as excited over this but -- for me it's 20 min vs an hour to drive to PC plus having access to the Wasatch Ridge bike trail. Unfortunately, the trail is not ready for biking; hiking, however, is very doable. See pictures below.

First a couple of pictures from the top of Jupiter, where PCMR takes its snow measurements. Bear in mind, the front side of PCMR has been snow-free for a month or so.
Hiking up to Jupiter from Guardsman:

Okay, there is a bit of lying with pictures there. Step back a little and:

There's also some primo corn on the BCC side for the die-hard skier:

The ridge itself is sort of pathetic-looking:

The bike trail is dry and perfectly fine for the most part but then you come across these:

Some pictures from Guardsman. Bear in mind this had to be plowed in mid-July last year:

...and the parting shot towards Brighton and LCC, beyond:

 

[Tony Crocker]

Tioga Pass between Yosemite and Mammoth opened May 7, the earliest since 1987. The January 17 closure at the beginning of the snow season was the latest ever. Complete records here: http://www.monobasinresearch.org/data/tiogapass.htm

What's interesting is that the average opening date for the entire decade of the 1970's was May 8. That decade averaged only 85% of normal snow at Mammoth and contained the lowest and 3rd lowest snow seasons on record. Nonetheless I think somewhat more effort may have been put into getting Tioga open then, since the early June opening dates in 1969, 1978 and 1980 are earlier than in more recent big snow years.

 

[EMSC]

Trail ridge road in Rocky Mountain Park opened 3 days ago on 5/14 for this year (it's the highest paved through road in the US - it goes above 12K feet). Surprisingly that is only 2 weeks earlier than normal; though I suspect that in addition to the early time frame the plowing itself was probably much easier this year.

Independence Pass over by Aspen also opened a couple weeks early on May 11.

For some unknown reason the 14K+ altitude road to Mt Evans is not opening early this year. Still planned for memorial day weekend.

 

[Evren]

For some unknown reason the 14K+ altitude road to Mt Evans is not opening early this year.

Here in Utah, it is as much a question of getting all the parties involved to agree on getting machinery up there at the same time. For Guardsman, it's UDOT, Summit County, and Wasatch County. Last year, from what I could gather, it was Wasatch County that was dragging its feet. So I called the guy responsible. He called back but his answers weren't to my satisfaction. He claimed something like $70-80K to plow couple of hundred yards on his side of the pass. Then, I put up flyers at both access gates with his name and phone number
Later, they did open it two weeks before what was indicated on the Web. I don't know if the two are related but I 'd like to think so!