Vail 2/11 13"?

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Well Vail claimed to have 13" of fresh this week, which I found suspect since it was more than any other Colorado resort: most i70 mountains got an inch or two at best. Figured it was worth a shot though so we pulled up around 9:30am. Riding up the quad from Lionshead the snow looked good but the woods looked bad. A fleet of 8 groomers was cruising up the liftline while the trail was open, an interesting approach to grooming which worked out in our favor because we strapped in just as they passed us by and got fresh courderoy on what felt like a nicely refreshed base.

We poked around a bit, dropping into sun down bowl which was hard cruddy bumps even in the 40 degree temperature. This seemed to prove my intuition that this foot of fresh snow was probably less than half that in actuality. Wound up in game creek bowl as usual and found some great trees which hadn't nearly been skiied out - probably around half a foot of pow. Rode those until the last lift ride out.

Anyway it was obvious Vail had fluffed up their numbers quite a bit this week, so don't believe everything they say.
 
This is not that surprising to me as Vail historically gets much more snow than Summit County, and sometimes storms get as far as Vail but don't get over the Gore Range at all. The Gore Range is the snow magnet, so within Vail the sections farthest east (China Bowl, Blue Sky Basin) get the most snow, and the Lionshead area the least. Vail's snowfall measurements are taken at a relatively snowy location within the ski area near the top of Chairs 4, 5 and 11, but I have no reason to believe they are artificially inflated.

Since Colorado's tree line is so high, most areas are able to get their snow measuring plots very high on the mountain. Therefore quoted numbers tend to reflect something like the snowiest quartile of terrain within the ski area. But I firmly believe that Vail does have a substantial edge in snowfall over most of its Colorado competitors. This season that edge has been less than normal.
 
Does vail and other nearby resorts still actively practice cloud seeding? I remember reading an article about it a number of years ago
 
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