The sluggish start to the ski season slowed visitation to Colorado ski areas in November and early December, but the bountiful snow over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday break buoyed resorts.
Several Colorado ski areas — including Aspen Skiing’s quiver of four resorts in the Roaring Fork Valley — saw record visitation over the snowy holiday week.
“The substantial snow totals heading into the holiday season created excellent conditions for in-state and out-of-state guests, which drove holiday visits up significantly,” said Colorado Ski Country’s Melanie Mills, in a statement.
Ski Country said visitation from Oct. 21 through December is down slightly compared to last season’s snowy start, but still falls 3 percent above the five-year average for the early season.
That’s a national trend, too, with the holiday season snowfall blanketing resorts on the East Coast and California and all points between.
“My kind of winter,” said Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association.
In recent seasons, the East Coast has thrived while the West Coast withered or vice versa, or, in the really rough years, everyone but Colorado languished. This year, resorts in California, Pacific Northwest, New England, Colorado and the Midwest are wallowing in snow and guests, Berry said. That was especially true over the New Year’s weekend.
“More ski areas in the U.S. had their all-time best day in that three-day period,” Berry said, citing early reports from his association’s resort survey.
Berry said the long weekend and excellent snow conditions over the New Year’s weekend likely yielded “one of the biggest days that the ski industry has ever had.”
Vail Resorts, which operates nine of North America’s largest and most trafficked resorts, reported last week that visitation was down 13 percent in the early season but traffic picked up during the holiday period.
Aspen Skiing Co. reported that the week following Christmas saw some of its busiest days ever at Snowmass, Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk.
“It was capacity,” said Aspen Skiing spokesman Jeff Hanle.
Dec. 29 topped 22,000 skiers and several days that week topped 20,000, he said.
