Bill Jennings: Don’t give up on winter yet

A friend of mine just returned from a mountain-hopping trip through the Colorado Rockies.

He had quite an adventure and the skiing and riding there is of an epic scale. But there’s a catch. The epic mountains attract so much attention from Colorado’s exploding urban population that getting there and back is as stressful as a daily commute.

What’s more, a day ticket at Vail Resorts, the megaconglomerate with tentacles that reach out from Summit County to Whistler-Blackcomb and beyond, is a larcenous $209 this season. For a few dollars more, you can ski and ride all winter long around here. Just buy your season pass for next year now.

After all, once you get on the snow, you get most everything resorts like Vail and Beaver Creek have to offer, on a human scale at a humane price. There are things you must live without, such as routine vertical drops of 3,000-plus continuous vertical feet. But you can also live without traffic jams, expensive parking garages, runs teeming like anthills and $15 pints.

You can expect carving on wide-open spaces in the Inland Northwest as the season plays out. Winter beat a remarkably hasty retreat last week as our prolonged arctic siege released its grip. When the snow goes away down below, many people move on to golf courses and gardens. But our deep freeze and historically productive late-season snowfall have set us up for great spring skiing.

This mountain snowpack will be resilient. Each layer laid down tends to maintain the temperature of its particular snowfall. Rain or melt that soaks into the strata of this cold snow quickly refreezes.

At the bottom layer next to the ground, the temperature of the snowpack is nearly always 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Working up from there, the temperature in the snowpack gets colder closer to the surface because of the cold temperatures of those February and early-March snowfalls.

However, spring weather will eventually equal out those differences in temperature. When temperatures at night stay above freezing, the snowpack continues to warm until it reaches what is called an “isothermal state”: right at freezing all the way from the top to the bottom. This is a fragile condition that makes the snowpack prone to rapid melting.

Rain can penetrate an isothermal state and add heat quickly. Eventually, a melting cascade begins as the snowpack is overwhelmed with heat. The key to its continued survival is freezing overnight temperatures. There have been some relatively balmy nights in the mountains recently, but freezing lows are back in the forecast this week and will continue at least through this weekend.

Conditions should promote the “corn cycle.” Melt water seeping between snow crystals in the top layer of the snowpack will freeze overnight into frozen granules. Should the warmer days and freezing nights continue, the granules and crystals consolidate into a nice bed of corn snow. Grooming at the end of the day before the surface refreezes produces another fresh crop of spring corn the next morning.

A properly managed corn cycle with our healthy snowpack should allow us to finish the season strongly. But don’t bother getting up too early.

Give the corduroy some time to cure into silky velvet. Wait for the bumps and crud to soften. But don’t wait too long. The window for a great carving surface closes just as quickly as it opens. It doesn’t take long for the afternoon sun to turn the snow from slippery corn to grabby slush.

Spring has sunk its hooks into me. I’m looking forward to running and riding, but I’m not done sliding. Most local mountain resorts are open until the first weekend of April. Lookout Pass will be open until April 22. Silver Mountain continues to operate on weekends until either the sliders stop coming or the snow goes away, whichever comes first.

I’ll be giving the season a fitting sendoff by riding my edges through spring corn under blue skies and sunshine for a few more weeks. Then I’ll set up my cheap season pass for next year and hit the barbecue deck.