First Snow!

First snow of the season viewed from Loveland Pass on the Continental Divide.

This past week it snowed a few nights up in the mountains. As we drove up on Saturday, we took a few photos near the great divide. Arapahoe Basin ski area already has the snow guns out to get a trail ready for the season!

Click HERE to see a larger slideshow.

"Blizzard"

So, Denver thinks it has a blizzard on it's hands. Granted, 10+ inches has fallen today in the Metro area, but I was used to that at least once a week in Breckenridge, so I don't see what all the fuss is about. Work closed at 1 p.m., along with every other business. So, instead of a 40 min drive home, it took me two and a half hours! The Governor declared an emergency, highways closed down, schools were not in session and there were hundreds of accidents. We had a about 9 inches at the house. In the long run, the storm is good. Denver has had about 7 inches of snow all winter and barely any rain. So we are dry as a bone and need the precipitation, wet or frozen.

Powder Day!!!

It was a powder day at the Basin on Sunday!!! We headed up to the mountains on Saturday evening and found much different weather than in Denver. At the tunnel the roads were snowpacked and once we made it to Keystone, it began to snow harder. In the morning we headed up to A-Basin with Erich and Julia and enjoyed 23 inches in two days (they are now up to 35" in the past 3 days!!). The top of the mountain was not open yet due to winds topping out at 80 mph!!

But there was plenty of snow to enjoy lower on the mountain. Patrol opened some glades skiers right, but the terrain was not steep enough on the first time through as we sunk to our mid thighs and had to walk our way through most of it. As more people rode that terrain it got much easier to get enough speed to have fun.

Melissa and I were going to head out around 1 pm to watch the Patriots back in Denver, but we ended up sitting in traffic for two hours without even making it to I-70, and it's ony 6 miles away!!! We ended up turning around and heading back to the condo in Keystone. Instead of waiting in 6+ hours of traffic to Denver, we enjoyed a dinner at Kickapoos and a brew at the Wolf Rock Brewery in River Run Village. The bad part was we had to get up at 4 a.m. to drive back home for work.

I think it was all worth the early season pow turns!!

See more from Arapahoe Basin HERE.

Finally!!

Living in Denver is much different than Breckenridge when it comes to the first snow. Breck got it's first weeks ago. Here in Den, the weather guys have been talking about snow the past week, but it never happens. Each morning I wake to green grass while Breck is blanketed under powder.

Finally this morning the grass was no longer green. It had a fresh white coating on it and the flurries were still dropping as I drove to work. Winter is here, for a few hours. It will soon be all gone as the temps rise into the 60's and 70's.

Guess it's time to head up to the mountains for some skiing!!