While resorts across Colorado are reporting far below normal snowfall and paltry percentages of open terrain for the peak holiday period, one ski area is managing just fine because its mountain operations team has figured out ways to make a little go a long way.
Monarch Mountain, adjacent to Monarch Pass on the Continental Divide between Salida and Gunnison, has no artificial snowmaking apparatus. It has received only 47 inches of snow so far this season. Its settled base stands at just 15 inches.
Even so, 54 of its 80 trails are open (67%), at a time when most Colorado areas have less than a third of their terrain open for skiing and riding. Only Wolf Creek in far southern Colorado, which also is located at a mountain pass on the Continental Divide, has more terrain open by percentage (100%).
How does Monarch do it? Location and elevation are factors for sure. But Monarch’s managers have perfected strategies that preserve snow when it falls. They also move it where it is most needed when snow cover is thin and prepare slopes in the summer months so that even relatively thin snow depth can be skiable.
“First and foremost is just our location,” explained Scott Pressly, Monarch’s director of mountain operations. “Being perched on the Continental Divide, we’ve got high elevation. Our parking lot is at 10,800 feet, so we’re not seeing the same problems that a lot of ski areas with an 8,000-foot base are having.”
The turnoff from U.S. 50 into the ski area is less than two miles from Monarch Pass. The Continental Divide ridge within the ski area hits elevations of 11,800 to 11,900 feet.
“When you turn the corner and head into the ski area, you’re approaching 11,000 feet in elevation,” Pressly said. “So that snow line, it’s just a little easier to retain, not just at the top of the mountain but all the way down to our base area. I think that’s a big plus for sure.”
Most of the Monarch’s terrain faces northeast, which means it doesn’t get a lot of afternoon sun, another factor in snow retention. But Monarch also takes proactive measures to keep its slopes skiable.
In the summer months, crews remove rocks, clear trees and grind up vegetation on their trails to clear away low-lying debris and hazards as much as possible.
“There’s a lot of mountains, say a Crested Butte or an A-Basin, where they’ve got a lot of talus (broken rock),” Pressly said. “They are rocky mountains. It’s tough to get terrain open until you have a deeper base. A lot of our trail corridors, particularly on our green and blue trails, are fairly grassy slopes, so we can open those with a thinner base without having a lot of boulders protruding through the snow.”
Monarch has brought in teams of sawyers every summer since 2018 as part of what it calls a vegetation management project.
“We try to get everything really low,” Pressly said. “Any trees that are hung up or leaning, or if there are any high stumps, our saw crew will go in there and get that stuff cut with chain saws to get it as low as we can to the ground.”
Monarch also uses an extensive network of snow fences to catch snowfall and divert it onto ski trails.
“Being on the Continental Divide, it’s a blessing and a curse sometimes, because we do get some wind on the ridge,” Pressly said. “We try to use that to our advantage. We’ve built a whole network of permanent wooden snow fences along our trail corridors, and we’ve got another 100 or so temporary snow fences, portable fences that we can move around.”
Snow fences near the top of the ridge on the west side are effective when upslope storms blow snow from ski terrain on the east side over the ridge
“When the westerlies (prevailing winds) or southwesterly winds kick back in, that slow blows from those fence fields on the windward side to the leeward side,” Pressly said. “It creates little piles, and our snowcat operators can move that snow to trails.”
Pressly argues that not having snowmaking is actually good for Monarch and its guests.
“A lot of (resorts) really rely on that, but in my mind, the natural snow is just a better product, even in these types of situations,” he said. “It holds up better. We’ve got a fantastic crew of (snowcat) operators that are really good at blading and trying to spread things around, maintaining stuff the best we can even in these thin starts.”