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The O. Zone: Strong storms incoming, Shiffrin GS PTSD, Powder to the People

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February 10, 2025, 1:18 pm

O. Zone freshies on Meadow Mountain on Saturday (KKW photo).

It was a much-needed snowy weekend in the Eagle River Valley, inspiring me to some more quick hits on a variety of skiing-related topics:

  • First, if you enjoyed last weekend’s fresh tracks, get ready for what the weatherman is serving up this week (now relying mostly on how his bones feel overnight after Trump and Elon illegally slashed federal funding for NOAA and the National Weather Service):
  • “From late Tuesday through Wednesday, many mountains could see 2-8+ inches of snow with some powder on Wednesday,” Opensnow.com meteorologist Joel Gratz reports. “Then from Thursday night through Saturday, a strong storm will bring 1-2+ feet of snow with intense snow on Friday and more powder on Saturday. After that, another storm is likely around Tuesday, February 18.”
  • We spent part of Saturday (nine new at Vail) skinning up Meadow Mountain and enjoying some relatively uncrowded, low-angle powder turns there. A neighbor reported he went to Vail where the Back Bowls were interesting after a few somewhat snowless, sunbaked weeks (a very hard surface under the fluff) but that it was crowded and he was literally assaulted by a young snow rider for some perceived slight. Anger is everywhere now, and yeah, I blame Trump.
  • On Sunday, with another four inches for a two-day total of 13 at Vail, we headed up after 1 in hopes everyone would be pregaming for Super Bowl. Mostly that was the case. Zero lifts lines and lots of leftovers in Outer Mongolia and China Bowl. Plus two days of snow and cold temps kept it from being too bulletproof underfoot.
  • Quick thought on the Super Bowl on FOX: It was tough watching on the MAGA propaganda network last night but great to see our hated division rival KC get punched in the face so hard by the Eagles (the Broncos should have swept the Chiefs this season but for one lousy, blocked, chip-shot field goal). But now I’m hearing all these comparisons to the Seahawks Legion of Boom carrying Russell Wilson by destroying the Peyton Manning-led Broncos in SB48. A far better comparison: the Von Miller-led No Fly Zone Broncos, also helmed by Manning, kicking MVP Cam Newton to the curb in SB50. Now everyone sees what the Broncos clearly saw this season: KC can be beat.
  • Now back to skiing. I was a bit shocked to see Mikaela Shiffrin of Edwards pulling out of Thursday’s giant slalom at the ongoing World Championships in Austria due to PTSD from her ugly crash at Killington back in November. We tend to think of her as a ski-racing machine, and so I’m glad to see her admitting her humanity and taking care of the mental side of the sport. I had a pretty gnarly crash at Vail earlier this season and it makes you think. Shiffrin is still participating in the slalom portion of the team event, and it’s unclear if she’ll also do the stand-alone slalom on Saturday. She doesn’t need any outside advice, but she should totally do what’s best for her as an athlete and a human being.
  • Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette Executive Editor Vince Bzdek on Sunday penned a column called “Powder to the People: The Ski Bums’ Last Stand” in which he shouted out my coverage of this season’s building ski-industry crisis: “In another sign of a ski bum revolt, throwback ski areas like Wolf Creek and Purgatory are surging in popularity as Vail Resorts and other ski factories struggle with longer lift lines, parking and labor issues, reporter David O. Williams wrote in these pages last week,” Bzdek wrote.
  • As a follow-up, a friend who owns a B&B down on the Arkansas River toward Salida told me guests recently cancelled because of crowding at nearby Monarch, which she attributed to Epic and Ikon Pass refugees. Seems like Colorado has finally reached the levels of crowding I remember as a kid in the 70s skiing western Pennsylvania, where mobs of skiers from East Coast cities would crush tiny Blue Knob with 45-minute lift lines.
  • Maybe we need to revisit COVID-era reservations and adhering to comfortable carrying capacity limits on how many people can hit the slopes on any given day. I’m sure Elon and Trump’s recently gutted U.S. Forest Service that issues special use permits to privately owned ski companies profiting from our public lands is all over this issue. Not.

Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. Please read how you can help support this site by considering a donation or signing up for news alerts … or both.

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David O. Williams

Managing Editor at RealVail
David O. Williams is the editor and co-founder of RealVail.com and has had his awarding-winning work (see About Us) published in more than 75 newspapers and magazines around the world, including 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), the Anchorage Daily Press (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Boulder Daily Camera, the Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Central Magazine, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics (formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Colorado Times Recorder, the Cortez Journal, the Craig Daily Press, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Del Norte Triplicate (California), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Gazette, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, Explore Big Sky (Mont.), the Fort Morgan Times (Colorado), the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), the Kingman Daily Miner (Arizona), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the Las Vegas Sun, the Leadville Herald-Democrat, the London Daily Mirror, the Moab Times Independent (Utah), the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), the Montrose Daily Press, The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, the Rio Blanco Herald Times (Colorado), Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), the Salt Lake Tribune, SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Sky-Hi News, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Sterling Journal Advocate (Colorado), the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Health Magazine, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail, Westword (Denver), Writers on the Range and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.

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