November has been much more reluctant to give in to Ullr as October was so long ago this fall. Nearly 3 weeks of dry and seasonally warm weather have shrunken the valley’s white winter coat and chased it back into the forest and mountains that surround the valley. The...
The storms of October and a deep early chill left their indelible mark on our landscape as fall quickly morphed into winter. The snowy covering over the land has thus far resisted the attempts of the weakening November sun to erase the premature hold on most of our...
The thermometer is reading single digits at noon on a day that the calendar is still claiming its hold on October. The ground is white in all directions with a couple of new layers added over the past week. Winter has arrived early and unannounced, and has been...
Wow! What a start to the season! Several autumnal storms have lined up in relatively quick succession to drop-kick October into winter. This abrupt transition has left us with 7 inches of white, with more falling on the trail as of this writing. Relatively warm...
By now most folks living in the valley are ready to move on to the next season of activities, but with snow cover transforming to mud and muck, in order to get out for decent hiking and biking, one has to get out of town. For those rare individuals who can’t get...
All across this grand country, most people have made a transition to spring and summer activities, while we have to plow soccer fields just to give our next season a jump start. Local ski touring centers are winding down if they haven’t already, and even the local...
The two powerful spring storms that ushered in the month of March have successfully buried the trails and left a heavy flocking on the trees that remains in protected evergreen stands. Some signposts are completely buried by the extraordinary depth that we are seeing...
Spring is a time of change, and now that the spring equinox - super full moon has passed, change is the prevailing characteristic of the snowpack. Things morph by the hour during this period, as the daily rise of the sun brings more and more warmth each time we turn...
You might say March come in like a lion, with a storm that left us with 22” of new heavy snow that was the most significant disturbance of the season thus far for the Colorado mountains. It resulted in historic avalanches that closed interstate highways, and left us...
Daylight savings is upon us, and the freeze-thaw cycle that had begun to develop last week, causing trails to go from slush to ice, and putting a thin crust on the snow surface, is now buried under 2 feet of heavy wet blanket. The furthest points of packed trails are...
