{"id":106181,"date":"2016-03-16T15:12:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T21:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/skier-visits-up-across-colorado\/"},"modified":"2016-03-16T15:12:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T21:12:16","slug":"skier-visits-up-across-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/skier-visits-up-across-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Skier visits up across Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Skiers
Skiers flock to Purgatory Resort in early January. Colorado Ski Country USA reports that skier visits are up so far this season, in part because of early season snowfall.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Skier visits are up 6.2 percent for the season and 3.8 percent for January and February for 21 ski resorts across the state, according to Colorado Ski Country USA.<\/p>\n

The numbers are looking even better for Purgatory Resort, which reported skier visits up 13 percent for January and February compared to the same time period as last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing strong visitation for this week\u2019s spring break period and expect that to continue into next week as well,\u201d Kim Oyler said in an email to The Durango Herald.<\/p>\n

\u201cPurgatory has great spring skiing conditions and the snow is holding up really well. We have more snow this season to date than all of last ski season.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to good snow conditions, the resort is celebrating its 50th anniversary, installed a new high-speed quad at the beginning of the season and changed its name back to Purgatory, Oyler said.<\/p>\n

With snow in the forecast for some Colorado mountains, ski areas are hoping to attract spring break crowds and keep the momentum going for the final two months of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we would\u2019ve liked to have seen more significant storms come through Colorado in January and February, the weather pattern was not unexpected given that this is an El Ni\u00f1o year,\u201d said Melanie Mills, president and CEO of Colorado Ski Country USA.<\/p>\n

\u201cResorts received enough snow to hold up their fantastic early season conditions, and guests have been enjoying the sunny days and mild temperatures just the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skier visits are the metric used to track participation in skiing and snowboarding. A skier visit represents a person participating in the sport of skiing or snowboarding for any part of one day at a mountain resort.<\/p>\n

shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

snow holds up during dry period in 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6328,6313],"tags":[120,13,1660],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-106181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-2-more-sports","category-sports-2","tag-colorado","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-snowboarding"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106181"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=106181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}