Flooding Forces Wolf Creek Ski Area To Close After Brief Opening
Southwestern Colorado is experiencing the thorny side of an El Niño winter.
Just one day after their surprise Halloween opening, Wolf Creek Ski closed again on November 1 due to widespread flooding and evacuation orders in the San Juan basin. The ski area received more than 20 inches of snow the previous week, allowing them to open earlier than expected and with 30% of the mountain’s terrain open to start.
While the precipitation fell as snow up high last week, at lower elevations in Archuleta, Conejos, La Plata and Rio Grande counties, heavy rainfall has caused a 100-year flood. Achuleta County, which is just south of where Wolf Creek Ski Area and includes the town of Pagosa Spring, issued a mandatory evacuation order over the weekend. The ski area closed on Sunday as a precautionary measure, based on recommendations from local & state authorities.
Wolf Creek had planned to be open through Tuesday, November 3 and again the following weekend with plans to assume full time operations when snow conditions allowed. The resorts’ Halloween opening day was roughly a week before their initial planned opening on November 6.
The road between Wolf Creek Ski Area and Pagosa Springs, US 160 also closed last week due to damage from flooding. The road reopened on October 27, after being closed for five days.
As of 6am on Monday morning, the San Juan river had hit a level of 16 feet, with forecasts warning that it could rise above the level of the historic 1911 flood that wiped out the town of Pagosa Springs. At Wolf Creek, precipitation fell throughout Sunday in the form of a ‘wintry mix,’ with high water content snow and temperatures above freezing. In the early hours of Monday, temperatures dropped below freezing, turning precipitation reliably to snow.
Forecasts have temperature highs sitting above freezing through the rest of the week, and even reaching into the 40s this weekend, according to Open Snow. As a result of both recent precipitation and possibility for more runoff through the week, the streams in the area could continue to see more major flooding, including many feeder streams and tributaries to the already flooded San Juan, Rio Grande, Mancos, Dolores, La Plata, Animas, and Navajo rivers.
Leave a Reply