Pano Ridge Terrain

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…

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Opening Friday

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…

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Gone Blue

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’.

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Good, Bad & Ugly

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.…

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Good from Afar

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…

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Sunset Tour

I got out at the end of the day after work to tour around the mountain. As suspected, our track-packing has set up nicely but we are definitely in need of additional snowfall before we can get into tilling any slopes on a regular basis. It looks like we received a few inches overnight and it is going to snow…

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Good Start

We are off to a good start after the weekend storm. Our Slope Maintenance crew has made progress track-packing several trails on just about every aspect on the mountain. The higher density snow from the storm is setting up nicely as a solid base. We received about an 1 1/2″ of water out of the storm. I got out today…

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Prep Work

With the latest round of snow, we now start turning our efforts towards doing the things we need to do to open the mountain. The game now is to save what snow we have while prepping for more to come. Ahead of the storm, our patrol crew set up temporary snowfences around the mountain. These help to capture wind drifted…

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