People come to Las Vegas for all kinds of reasons – conferences, gambling, golf, vacation, or just to experience the excessiveness that is the Las Vegas strip. 

But what about skiing?

I’ve been in Las Vegas for the last six nights and after staring at a snowy capped mountain visible from the strip all week, I decided to Google “Las Vegas skiing.”

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In a good year we can expect about 60cm of base at Blue Mountain in Collingwood, Ontario which usually means they can push around enough snow to have a few runs open until Easter or early April (which ever comes first).

After another 30-50cm of fresh snow pummeled southern Ontario this past weekend, we are now up to a remarkable average base of 150cm! This is actually more than double what Tremblant is reporting in Quebec!

Over the last two weekends I’ve been teaching & course conducting a Level 1 CSIA Ski instructor course at Mount St. Louis Moonstone.  This past Sunday was exam day where students were assessed one last time on both their teaching and skiing abilities to see if they had achieved the Level 1 standard.  After a few warm up runs I decided to take the class over to the Moonstone side where we found untracked runs all around us.

Needless to say we extended our warm up a few more runs.

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Last year the entire world was suffering from one of the warmest winters in memory. Global warming had apparentely arrived and the evidence could be seen at glaciers and ski resorts around the world.

World Cup races were being cancelled due to a lack of snow and athletes trained on roller blades in the rain… well accept for our Canadian athletes who benefited from skiing on our own Farnham glacier

It seemed like every mountain or resort not named Whistler was suffering from a brutal season.

This season thankfully started off with lots of snow and enough consecutive cold days for Eastern resorts to make millions of gallons of snow to compliment what mother nature sent to us.  As a result many resorts opened in late November and had substantial terrain open by the first week of December – including Blue Mountain in Ontario which bounced back from a brutal holiday season last year. As a result, you can expect planned resort upgrades to the Orchards to begin this summer.  

Thanks to the early season snow and snow making, Eastern resorts are well prepared for the January thaw that hit us last weekend. If you are planning a trip to your local hill or mountain this weekend, you can still expect great coverage and nearly all the terrain to be open.

The longer term forecast is calling for colder weather to roll in starting Friday of this week and continuing into next week.

Our season has been saved by the early snow and cold whether. wOOt!

In the midst of a brutal start to the ski season last year, my friend Pete Partington extended an invitation to visit him in Alta, Utah in time for some New Year’s celebration.

Besides finding good snow and good company, we met Kristen Ulmer who used to star in Warren Miller movies in the mid-nineties and was a pioneer of extreme and big mountain skiing. As it turns out, there are many current and former ski heroes living in and around Park City.  

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