Vail Mountain extends hours as daylight saving, above-average snowpack and spring break collide
John LaConte/Vail Daily
Visitors to Vail Mountain can now get in an extra half hour of skiing and snowboarding in the afternoons. Mountain management changed its operating hours on Sunday to shut the front-side lifts down at 4 p.m. rather than 3:30 p.m.
The move coincided with the “spring forward” daylight saving time change on Sunday, as crews also changed clock times at loading stations like the digital display at the Eagle Bahn Gondola in Lionshead.
Vail Mountain, as of Saturday, reported 2 feet of new snow during the previous week, bringing the total to a cumulative 239 inches according to the resort’s daily recordings.
Those recordings are taken from Vail Mountain’s mid-mountain snow stake, where a camera is fixed and the public can view it at any time.
The snowpack recording sensors at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s snow telemetry (SNOTEL) site on Vail Mountain are located next to Vail Mountain’s mid-mountain snow stake, and currently show Vail’s snow-water equivalent to be 17.7 inches, or 106% percent of the 30-year average from 1991 to 2020.
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6-12 inches forecast
More snow is forecast for this week, with the National Weather Service’s Grand Junction office issuing a winter weather advisory to begin on Tuesday at 6 a.m., lasting through 6 a.m. Thursday.
The Grand Junction office said “a weak disturbance” will bring light precipitation overnight on Monday.
“Snow accumulation will be from a dusting to maybe an inch for the central and northern mountains,” according to a hazardous weather outlook issued Monday. “Cool, unsettled weather returns from Monday night onwards as several systems impact the region. A strong cold front brings the best chance for widespread precipitation Wednesday and Thursday. Preliminary guidance projects 6 to 12 inches of snow for the mountains with a few inches of snow in the higher valleys.”
Spring break upon us
The above-average snowpack was enjoyed by crowds over the weekend, with Saturday seeing more cars in town than the parking structures could accommodate. A total of 173 cars spilled out of the structures and were allowed to park for free on South Frontage Road, according to town of Vail records.
For some school-age visitors, Saturday was the first day of spring break, a week-long vacation that many families celebrate by visiting ski towns across the country.
The Bradley family, visiting from Texas, said they have been coming to Breckenridge for the past six or seven years, but decided to visit Vail this year because they heard there were more trails on Vail Mountain.
“We got a late start today,” John Bradley said on Monday. “So we’ll take that extra half hour of skiing.”
Jack Phillips, 16, and David Hayes, 17, are juniors in high school in Springfield, Missouri, and are enjoying their first-ever trip to Vail this week.
They said they started at 8 a.m. and planned on riding all day on Monday, taking advantage of the extra half hour the mountain is now offering.
“We’ve never done a spring break snowboarding trip before,” they said. “It’s awesome here.”
