New Year’s crowds fill mountain despite some flight cancellations

Paradise Cliffs, part of Headwall opening Saturday

By Alissa Johnson

If you’ve noticed an upswing in the numbers of people and the energy level around Elk Avenue and the base area, it’s not your imagination. Despite a few canceled flights, the ski area is expecting to top 6,000 daily skier visits toward the end of the week as visitors ring in the New Year in Crested Butte.

Thanks to last week’s snow and the hard work of ski patrol, the extremes begin to open this weekend as well. The High Lift will start running, with access to parts of the Headwall and Paradise Cliffs.

A busy week

According to Erica Mueller, Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s director of innovations and relations, the holiday season has been comparable to last year. Month to date, December is up 4 percent in skier visits and during the holiday timeframe, each day’s skier visits have been within one to two percentage points of the same day last year.

Mueller says New Year’s will be noticeably busier than Christmas week. Visitors tend to arrive between December 26 and December 28, and by New Year’s Eve, resort lodging will be 100 percent full.

“The 29th 30th and 31st are our biggest days occupancy-wise and we’re anticipating over 6,000 skier visits for Wednesday and Thursday,” Mueller said.

That could change if flights into the airport continue to be canceled. According to airport manager Rick Lamport, four Dallas flights were canceled over the weekend and two Denver flights were canceled Christmas week.

While one of the Denver flights was canceled due to fog and snow conditions in Gunnison, the rest were affected by conditions elsewhere, including severe weather moving through the southern part of the country.

“The majority of our delays were caused by weather in the south. It doesn’t have anything to do with Gunnison’s weather. Yes, it was snowing, but our runway was perfect and the approach window for the weather here was still within the limits to make the approach and land,” Lamport said.

Flights weren’t able to depart from Dallas, either because of a backlog due to a large number of delays or because of a lack of available planes since they weren’t able to land in Dallas. The delays and cancelations were massive across the country.

Lamport said on Sunday, December 27, 6,437 flights were delayed across the United States and 1,637 flights were canceled. The following Monday, there were 2,973 delays in the U.S. and 1,773 cancelations.

“These are the chances you take when you winter travel,” he said, noting that weather in the Midwest may affect flights from Chicago.

While the loss of flights may affect some lodging, Mueller says it won’t be largely noticeable on the hill. Once the resort hits 6,000 skier visits, it’s all hands on deck.

The general busyness will carry over into the weekend, but Mueller expects skier visits to drop back down to the 2,000 to 3,000 range by Monday.

Opening the extremes

While ski patrol has its hands full with so many skiers on the mountain, the sounds of control work have echoed through the valley over the last few days. Mueller says anyone riding the Silver Queen will see the signs of hand charges and ski cutting, and ski patrol has been dropping charges on the Head Wall and the North Face. Work is also ongoing in Teo Bowl, the Peel and Flatiron.

That work paid off as the High Lift opens Saturday, January 2 with access to parts of Headwall and Paradise Cliffs. That date was initially a moving target—the recent snowfall was a welcome turn of events, but it doesn’t always mean the extremes are ready to go right away. The size of the storm created extremely unstable conditions, with a significant amount of new snow placing a lot of weight on a very weak, unsupportive base layer.

“There has to be a gut check,” Mueller explained.

 

“Yes, it was a great big, awesome dump and we love that. But what it has caused from the patrol’s standpoint is an extremely weak layer.”

Access to the extremes was marginal before the Christmas storm. Afterward, unstable and dangerous conditions meant that it took a few days before patrol could access it.

“It’s a common misperception that we have snow and can ski it in the backcountry, so we should be able to ski the extremes as well,” Mueller said. “We’re operating where we have to control for the least common denominator. Our patrol has an incredible safety record and we want to keep it that way. We do tend to be on the conservative side, but it’s a side we’re pretty proud of when it comes to that record.”

Mueller explained that the typical progression is to start internally, getting Horseshoe, Keystone Ridge, the gladed areas in East River, Bushwhacker, and Hot Rocks open. From there, as with this year, the High Lift opens next depending on weather conditions.

“Being the highest point on the mountain, there’s a little more snow there with the elevation and how the wind blows,” Mueller said.

In general, after control work is completed, boot packers will go in to break up the snow and compact the new layers onto the old to create a stable surface. Once snow conditions are considered stable, patrol will set up ropes (often miles of it) and other infrastructure, and coordinate with departments like lift ops and lift maintenance.

So the take-home message for other parts of the extremes?

“The snowpack is gaining strength, but there are still weak conditions out there in a lot of areas,” Mueller said. Add the demands of 6,000 skiers in a day and opening the extremes will continue to be a work in progress. When the conditions are safe and the infrastructure is in place, more terrain will open up.