{"id":115864,"date":"2014-12-15T20:11:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T03:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snow-hits-ski-areas-2\/"},"modified":"2014-12-15T20:11:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T03:11:07","slug":"snow-hits-ski-areas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snow-hits-ski-areas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow hits ski areas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Skiers
Skiers and snowboarders beat the Sunday rush by arriving early and waiting for lifts to open after Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort received 12 inches of snow during a weekend storm.<\/span>JAMES BUNTEN\/ Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Although Cortez didn\u2019t get much snow over the weekend, giant flakes of pearly white powder flew in surrounding areas, and the region\u2019s slopes received a blanket of relief.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service\u2019s Jeff Colton said the heavy snow came from the remnants of the \u201cPineapple Express,\u201d a storm of strong winds and heavy rain that brought floods and mudslides to Southern California.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the last piece of the storm that California left for us,\u201d Colton said.<\/p>\n

Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort reported the most new snow for Saturday, 12 inches, of any ski area in the nation. It was much-needed and in time for an upcoming holiday season. It also arrived just in the nick of time for the Locals Benefit Day held Sunday.<\/p>\n

The mountain is now in full-time operation, with skiing seven days a week.<\/p>\n

Kim Oyler, DMR\u2019s director of communications, said the timing couldn\u2019t have been better.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great to see this storm come in, and we had a great powder day today,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Oyler said the new snow allowed more terrain to open, and with more snow in the forecast this week, more runs could open still. This season, DMR has received 30 inches of snow. For now, lifts 1, 2, 7, 9 and 10 are turning.<\/p>\n

Telluride is No. 2 in Southwest Colorado for ski-area snow accumulation, with 9 inches from the passing storm.<\/p>\n

The resort opened Lift 9, the infamous Plunge Lift, dropping into town. Now, 70 percent of Telluride\u2019s terrain is open, and 10 of 18 lifts are in operation.<\/p>\n

So far, the area has received 78 inches of snow this season. As snow fell through Sunday, Telluride reported a total of 13 fresh inches from the latest storm.<\/p>\n

Wolf Creek Ski Area, the usual heavy hitter when it comes to snow depth, has seen 54 inches of snow year-to-date, and it reported 8 inches from the weekend\u2019s system. The mountain, celebrating its 75th year of operation, is perched on the continental divide at 10,300 feet and averages above 400 inches of snow each year.<\/p>\n

Coal Bank Pass, just over the San Juan County line, took the cake with 13.2 inches of snow early Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

Jenn Rudolph, spokeswoman with Colorado Ski Country USA, said the new snow was a welcome change as ski resorts head into the holidays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting a lot of fresh snow,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telluride gets 9 inches; Purgatory gets a foot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[2235,606,13,770,414,88,372],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-coal-bank-pass","tag-durango-mountain-resort","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-telluride-ski-resort","tag-weather","tag-weather-news","tag-wolf-creek-ski-area"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115864","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=115864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115864"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}