After a long and difficult off-season, the guides and patrollers of Monarch have returned to Mirkwood. As always, there is much work to do to prep this terrain for opening. There will be battles fought with Orcs, the wind will be fierce and at times it will be a total war on snow. Troll’s nose is always a tricky wind…
The logging conducted on Monarch Ridge this fall now has a blanket of snow on it. It looks so different than it did with a dense forest covering the entire ridge. These photos were recently taken from the Breezeway side of the mountain. The more dense areas of trees that remain standing are located in wet areas along the ridgeline.…
Our Cat Skiing team ventured up to Mirkwood on Monday. The MCS operators were able to use snow caught by our temporary snowfences to establish the over the snow road from the top of Breezeway to the top of Mirkwood. This is always a big step branching out into this terrain. Once these snow roads are established, we can really…
Our Ski Patrol and Slope Maintenance Teams worked extremely hard these last few days to open up some more terrain. Pano Ridge is open wall to wall with the exception of Zipper. I got out and skied this newly opened terrain today. It was nice to ski some steeper stuff! As you would expect, it is still a bit thin…
It’s been 257 days since we have had lifts spinning at Monarch. We are finally ready to do it and will be opening tomorrow. Things will look different this year with new COVID protocols and signage in place. It will take ALL OF US to pull it off this season. But, if we can work collectively, we will all be…
After a few days of stormy weather, the skies went bluebird today. The mountain is looking pretty solid after this storm. A few thin spots, but some nicely loaded areas too. No official word yet…but it is that time of year to get your gear together and throw a wax on those skis. Just sayin’.
Tuesday’s storm came in nicely and things are looking better out there. Our Slope Maintenance crew will be out the mountain today track-packing, conducting some light grooming, and evaluating the trails. Stay tuned.
We had a few more inches of snow over the weekend into the start of the work week. There is more on the horizon for tonight and around the Thanksgiving holiday. Here’s to hoping we can outperform the forecast this week and get this thing going.
It’s a mixed bag of conditions based on aspect and elevation. Some of our north and east facing slopes look good and are primarily covered in snow with a settled base of around a foot. Other areas are a bad mix of thin or patchy conditions and some are downright ugly with bare ground exposed from wind, sun or both.…
I was hoping that the weekend storm would deliver more than was originally forecast. Instead, it was spot on with a storm total of just 4″ of snow. I admit that the mountain appears to be covered in a deep blanket of snow. It looks good from afar, but in reality it’s far from good to go. I have been…
