{"id":109103,"date":"2015-10-01T23:14:57","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T05:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/purgatory-plans-nov-21-opening\/"},"modified":"2015-10-01T23:14:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T05:14:57","slug":"purgatory-plans-nov-21-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/purgatory-plans-nov-21-opening\/","title":{"rendered":"Purgatory plans Nov. 21 opening"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Coleman\"
Coleman<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Purgatory Resort is making a bold prediction that the start of the ski mountain\u2019s 50th season will begin before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

A statement released Tuesday announced skiers will be able to hit the slopes for the first time this season on Saturday, Nov. 21, and the mountain will be open every day Thanksgiving week.<\/p>\n

And while Purgatory officials say Nov. 21 is the earliest expected opening date in the mountain\u2019s history, a few of the old-time ski patrollers remember an even earlier opening in 1972.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalloween it just dumped on us,\u201d Paul Folwell one of the first members of Purgatory\u2019s ski patrol team recalled. \u201cIt was crazy. It was just one of those freak storms that hit us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Folwell, 76, said when the snows hit at the end of October, Purgatory was one of the few ski areas open in the country. That drew the U.S. Ski Team, members of the pro-circuit and other big names.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the who\u2019s who of skiing here at the time,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was really exciting for a lot of the locals to see the ski world \u2013 the glitter and glamour of it. It was really something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless, it\u2019s been a big year for Durango\u2019s closest ski mountain, with the resort changing hands to new owner James Coleman, whose first act was to change the name from Durango Mountain Resort back to the original Purgatory Resort.<\/p>\n

And, ski enthusiasts are holding a great deal of hope and anticipation this year, as most weather reports expect El Ni\u00f1o to be the largest in well over a decade, and that could translate into many days of fresh snow.<\/p>\n

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

mountain will also be open Thanksgiving week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6328,6313],"tags":[21,44,13,712,1792],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-2-more-sports","category-sports-2","tag-cortez","tag-dolores","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-purgatory","tag-snow-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109103","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=109103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109103"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}