Where's the Snow?

Impatiently Waiting For First Flakes

By Carson Bennett, 11-12-07

Patience, when it comes to snow, is not a virtue I can claim. Since the last leaves exploded yellow on my street and fell like sparks into the gutters, I have been watching the sky for the first flakes. For me, fall is just one step closer to winter.

In New Mexico it’s been in the seventies. There’s only been one overnight frost, and that was six weeks ago. Last weekend I tailgated at a UNM football game in shorts and a t-shirt and got sunburned. In my garden, the tomatoes and peppers are green, loaded with fruit, and still flowering. I don’t know if this is global warming or an extra-dry fall or something about prevailing winds and ocean currents, but I know that snow does not fall in the desert when it’s seventy degrees outside.

Where in the world is the snow? Apparently it’s dumping in Austria. The Himalayas will be dusted consistently over the next ten days or so, and the Southern Andes have been blessed with three and a half feet of fresh powder. But what good does that do me? Last week I had my skis waxed and tuned, I bought a helmet and new gloves, I spent hundreds of dollars on a new radiator and water pump in my aging (but loyal) Subaru…and then my home mountain, Taos, bumped their opening day back to December 14th. Now, with no more money in my bank account and no snow on the ground, I have a month of eating ramen and checking the snow reports to look forward to. The skis are by the door, and the Subaru’s various liquids are all topped-off. I’m ready.

Many of my favorite ski areas seem to share my impatience. They just couldn’t wait for mother nature to do her thing, and as soon as it was cold enough, broke out the snow-makers. Arapahoe Basin, one of the highest altitude ski areas in the country with a summit elevation of 13,050 feet, opened a month ago, on October 10th. They currently have five runs open on eighteen inches of man-made groomed snow. Breckenridge opened on the 9th, also with eighteen inches at the base, and Wolf Creek in Southern Colorado’s San Juan mountains, home to the deepest snow in Colorado (eventually), on the 10th.

Do not lose heart, my friends. Sure, we’re half-way through November and only a handful of Colorado and New Mexico mountains have opened. Sure, for those of us skiing at any of these places right now, we better strap on our rock skis. It’s not snowing yet.

Yet.

According to the Farmer’s Almanac for 2007-2008, New Mexico is going to get hit with its first snow storm late this month, between the 24th and 27th, around the same time that the resorts in Summit County, Colorado, will see their first major storms. Right now, in the Northwestern states, a cold front is making its way inland and south. The snow is coming.

Every season I start checking the snow reports as soon as the weather’s cool enough to wear jeans, and every season I get impatient enough to send nightly prayers to Ullr, the Norse God of Snow, to freakin’ hurry up already. Every season I think, “I’m just going to sell these darn skis on EBay and find a new sport!” But I don’t, because every season it snows. And, every season, I ski my impatient little ass off.

Patience, my ski-bum brethren, patience.

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