Storm cycle brings fun, work and headaches

“Chaotic calm in a helluva storm…”

By Kendra Walker, Katherine Nettles and Mark Reaman

The local airport shut down for a time, dozens of cars were towed from Crested Butte streets, the winds made driving hazardous at times all over the county and the ski resort recorded a whopping 48 inches of snow that resulted in the opening of some extreme limits terrain, all during the recent storm cycle that finally brought a major amount of snow to the valley.

Given the constant snowfall for almost five days, Crested Butte chief marshal Mike Reily described the storm cycle as “chaotic calm.”

“We saw it coming so were pretty prepared, but that was a ton of snow,” Reily said. “Over the course of the storm cycle there were 42 vehicles towed in Crested Butte. We have to do that to keep up with the plowing in order to keep streets passable. For the most part people were very understanding and apologetic.”

All of Colorado was impacted by the winter storm but Crested Butte was one of the big winners in terms of skiing. While 48 official inches of powder were recorded at CBMR, Vail received 37 and Keystone got 29 inches.

CBMR representatives said that thanks to the nearly 50 inches of new snow in the last week and the hard work of ski patrol and the mountain operations team, the ski area opened some extreme terrain favorites, including the North Face Lift T-bar on Wednesday. 

Just in time for the MLK holiday crowds and weekend storm, the High Lift T-bar opened to the public last Friday, offering access to Headwall and Big Chute. That resulted in some stout lift lines, but no one was complaining. On Saturday, the rope dropped on some front side extremes including Flatiron, Peel and Forest. 

“We now have over 1,000 acres available for skiing and riding, and it has been amazing to see the stoke and energy on the mountain over these last few days. Several visitors and locals alike have shared with us that this is the best snow they’ve ever skied at CBMR,” said CBMR communications manager Julie Block. “Patrol is working hard to keep opening terrain as quickly and safely as possible following all this snow.”

Big winds and flight issues

“That was one helluva big storm,” admitted Gunnison-Crested Butte airport manager Rick Lamport on Tuesday morning in an update to Gunnison County commissioners. Even last week was what Lamport referred to as “an interesting week operationally speaking,” with a broken plane sitting on the ramp all week, one flight canceled and at least a few others delayed until the following day. Lamport said the storm was tough, with constant clearing of the runway as snow kept blowing back in.

“It has to be bare pavement, with no snow berms or anything,” he said.  

According to Gunnison County public works director Martin Schmidt, the county plowed for five days straight in the Crested Butte area because of the heavy wind that preceded the storm. 

“Our crews started between 3 and 4 a.m. and ran about 10 hours most days and then the CB night shift took over and ran until midnight,” he said. “The Sunday storm was long-lasting in the entire valley, resulting in many plows having to run their routes two or three times on Sunday and most operators were on duty for 12 hours straight. In addition to the snowfall, the wind was one of the biggest challenges. We then plowed Monday, removing wind damage and overnight snowfall. Tuesday we ran most routes, pushing back berms and performing general snow cleanup.”

Schmidt said while it was an intense period, the county does budget and plan for such storms. 

“All the weekend plowing was on overtime, but we use data from previous years to estimate an overtime budget for the year, because overtime plowing is expected in Colorado. Our operators are skilled professionals and performed extremely well during a challenging storm cycle,” he said.

Snow melt issues in Mt. CB / A full crew in CB

Mt. Crested Butte town manager Carlos Velado commended the town crews during Tuesday’s town council meeting. “I want to give a shout out to our maintenance and parks crew for getting out there and keeping the roads, rec path, and people safe during a storm like that,” he said.

Velado also noted there is a leak in the snowmelt system at the transit center at Mountaineer Square. 

“If you were on any of the buses, you noticed the rocky road through the transit center. There were leaks in the snowmelt system where it was not functioning properly. With the temperatures melting and freezing, it caused a lot of challenges in the transit center. (Maintenance supervisor) Bobby (Block) got in there with the grader and picked up that ice to make it a smoother ride.”

Velado shared that it’s possible the Mt. Crested Butte Town Center Association (TCCA) will not be able to fix the issue until the spring. “We plan on meeting with the resort later this week to game plan for those types of things,” he said.

Crested Butte Public Works director Shea Earley said from his perspective the storm did not present any major issues. One likely reason was that his department is fully staffed for the first time in a while. He informed the town council at the January 16 meeting that for the first time in four winters, the snow removal crew is at full strength. “Our operations were able to keep up,” he confirmed. “It helps to have a full streets staff!”

When asked how the crew was doing after three days of nonstop snow, Earley said, “Day three—no problem. Circle back when it is day 33!”

Even Gunnison dealing with big snows

In Gunnison, the unusual amount of snow led to plows creating some temporary berms along Main Street for a few days, but according to Gunnison public works director David Gardner they were removed for safety reasons.

“We worked two crews on 12 hour, back-to-back shifts and then a few hours later we did an eight-hour shift on Monday. Then Tuesday we hit the ground at 6 a.m. to start removing the berms. We used employees from all public works departments to make this happen,” said Gardner. He reported on Wednesday that crews were using six trucks and two blowers to finish the work. 

And buses all kept rolling

The regional bus services all seemed to fare well during the storm. While some of the schedules were impacted, people got up and down the valley in a major storm cycle. “There were no big issues this weekend, but it was challenging to be driving out on the highway during this storm,” said RTA executive director Scott Truex. “Visibility was an issue at times, and I was very impressed with the RTA drivers’ ability to keep the buses moving safely during the storm.”  

Truex said there were several full buses during the storm, and he knows some people probably got left behind, “but I hope that they were able to catch the next bus and that it wasn’t too inconvenient for them.”  He said there were times when the buses got behind schedule due to the traffic and road conditions, but even with all of the challenges, the drivers were able to keep 84% of the buses departing within 10 minutes of schedule during the storm cycle.

“I haven’t seen the passenger numbers for the weekend yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we set a new daily record on Saturday,” Truex said. “Our current record was just set a couple of weeks ago on New Year’s Eve when we carried 1,821 passengers. Like everyone else, we’ve been hit by the crud and we had a few drivers out of commission this weekend, so we did miss a couple of round-trips on Friday and Saturday, one on Sunday and several on Monday.” 

Alpine Express and the RTA are bringing six new drivers out of training this week, so the bus system will have more options to cover shifts going forward when there are illness issues.

“I’d like to express my gratitude to all of the RTA drivers, supervisors, dispatchers, mechanics, technicians, and the entire team for providing safe and reliable transportation to our valley during this storm,” Truex continued.

Getting people between Crested Butte, Mt. Crested Butte neighborhoods and the ski area on Mountain Express also went well despite some driver illnesses. “Mountain Express had a great weekend getting people where they needed to go,” said Mountain Express managing director Jeremy Herzog. “Ideally we would have had two more buses out for the après ski rush on a holiday weekend, but with multiple team members out for both long and short term illness, we did the best we could. The weather and traffic definitely slowed us down. As a result, the line to get on the Town Shuttle was about 30 minutes long at the end of the ski day, but everyone was patient and understanding.”

“The FirstTracks system also put out an extra van and kept moving, with little disruption,” Herzog added. “The system is also receiving great customer reviews. There were no major issues to report across our entire system for the storm cycle. I won’t have any concrete data until early next month, but my guess is that the buses carried their usual MLK volume, and the FirstTracks program continued its stellar performance over the previous bus routes. Kudos to the MX drivers, supervisors, mechanics and ambassadors for being the true pros they are! Thanks as well to all the road crews who kept it all passable for our team and community.”

After a bluebird day Tuesday, a winter weather advisory was in effect until Thursday, January 18 at 5 p.m.