Our snow reporting team got to take a mountain tour and check the snow depths at several different locations. We wanted to share the photos to give you a clear picture of where our snowpack stands as we head into a string of clear, dry days.

It’s hard to get down to the raw statistics without taking a moment to appreciate how stunning the snow-covered mountain looks against the cerulean blue sky. This may be my absolute favorite color combination. Gorgeous!

As for the tour, we’ll start at our absolute lowest elevation, the base of the Bear Chair and Centennial lifts. Our measurements show between 8-10″ of snow at this elevation, depending on where we sink the stick. The snow down here is pocked because the end of the last storm system brought us some VERY wet snow at this level.

From here, we go to mid-mountain, near the top of the Bear Chair.

You’ll notice the smoother surface here, where the snow remained a bit drier. You can also see there was some wind pushing it around.

Our average measurement at this elevation was approximately 16 inches. So how does that translate to the slope surfaces? A little bit further up, you can see the middle stretch of 45th Parallel needs more snow to cover the brush.

This shot gives us a view of the saddle where Upper Temptation meets Lakeview Ridge.

The top of the Lakeview Lift has a slightly deeper snowpack. I find this to be one of the most revealing spots to measure, because it’s less wind-affected than the top of the BlueBird.

As you can see, we’ve got 23 inches at this point.

As most of you know, we tend to get a LOT of wind at the top of Centennial.

You can see the effects of that very clearly. Just 10 inches of snow at this summit location.

Things balance out a bit at the top of the Blue Bird Quad.

We saw a WIDE variety of readings around the summit, but 22″ was a fair average.

As we’ve said before, there is no ‘magic number’ of inches. The wind and water content of our snow play a huge role in when we can open. We generally need between 18-24″ in the base and 24″-36″ on the summit. It looks like we’ve got a dry week ahead. We’re hoping the temperatures stay low and allow us to hold on to this base until another snowmaker heads our way and takes us the rest of the way on our journey toward opening day.

– April & Cory