The man was in a group of four skiers who left the resort at the Peak 6 backcountry access point just before noon, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

The group was planning to ski the K Chute of the Sky Chutes, which are steep avalanche paths on the west side of the Tenmile Range.

After the man triggered the avalanche, he was swept down the path for about 1,100 feet and lost his skis, according to an accident report from the CAIC.

He was able to escape the still-moving debris field as the avalanche slowed down and was helped off the mountain by the other skiers, one of whom skied down the mountain, found an extra pair of skis and hiked back up so the injured man could ski down.

He was treated for unspecified injuries at St. Anthony Summit Hospital in Frisco.

Two other groups came across the avalanche later that day and called 911 after finding the man’s skis as they descended.

Six other people have been caught in Colorado avalanches so far this month, including two climbers at St. Mary’s Glacier, but none reported injuries, according to the avalanche center.

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Bystanders called 911 about 10:23 a.m. after finding the man “in medical distress,” Manitou Springs officials said in a news release. He was approximately 150-200 steps up the Incline, spokesperson Cassandra Hessel said.

People on scene started CPR, but the man was unresponsive when emergency crews arrived. He was later pronounced dead.

The man’s cause of death is under investigation, city officials said.

The Incline is a famously challenging hike with more than 2,000 feet of elevation gain in less than a mile. It draws an estimated 250,000 hikers every year, according to the city.

“City officials remind all climbers, especially those traveling from out of state, to thoroughly assess their physical condition, understand the difficulty of the climb and come properly prepared,” Manitou Springs officials said in a statement.

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In January, the Trump administration rescinded job offers to 5,000 seasonal park service employees, the ones who provide most services to the public in peak months, but later the administration reversed course and told park service officials they actually could hire more seasonal employees than they did last year.

Uncertainty remains, although Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently ordered national parks to “remain open and accessible,” saying they would receive the federal resources they need to do so.

Kyle Patterson, public affairs officer for Rocky Mountain National Park, wrote in an email that resources to support National Park Week events were expected to be “similar to past years.”

Rocky Mountain National Park was the nation’s fifth-busiest in 2024 with 4,154,349 visitors, an increase of 38,152 over 2023, according to figures recently released by the park service. Great Smoky National Park was the busiest at 12.2 million, followed by Zion (4.95 million), Grand Canyon (4.92 million) and Yellowstone (4.74 million).

Park entry fees will be waived on Saturday, although all other administrative fees remain in effect. Entry fees normally are $35 per motor vehicle and $15 for those entering on foot or by bicycle. The park’s timed-entry reservation system doesn’t go into effect until May 23.

The National Park Week observance will include events celebrating national parks and Earth Day. On April 19, National Junior Ranger Day events at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center near Estes Park will include booths, interactive activities and an opportunity for children to earn Junior Ranger badges while learning about plants, wildlife and hiking safety. Similar activities will take place on the west side of the park at the Kawuneeche Visitor Center near Grand Lake.

A full list of activities for the eight-day series is available on the park’s website.

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But the snow gods have smiled on Winter Park recently. As of Thursday, the resort had received 340 inches of snow this season, the most of any ski area in Colorado. Its base depth of just under six feet stood at 11% above normal for the date.

And so, even as other ski areas are shutting down for the season — eight have already closed and five more will close on Sunday — Winter Park is still going strong. It will stay open two more weeks, while the Mary Jane side of the mountain will remain open as long as conditions permit. Last year, that was May 28.

Resort companies like Alterra and Vail Resorts that are investing in expansions of their snowmaking systems acknowledge the threat of climate change is a consideration in their thinking, but the more immediate goal is to extend the length of seasons in the near term.

“There are benefits to it being a hedge against climate change, but that’s not why we did it,” said Winter Park spokeswoman Jen Miller. “It’s kind of an interesting story for us, because we are now one of the resorts that has the longest seasons in Colorado. We’re opening earlier and we’re staying open later.”

Vail Resorts invested more than $100 million in snowmaking company-wide over the past 10 years. In 2019, Vail Mountain underwent the largest snowmaking expansion project in the resort’s history with a heavy focus on two trails from the summit down to Mid-Vail. The company also has invested in snowmaking at Keystone, so that it can offer skiing at the top of that mountain in October, and at Breckenridge, where it aims to offer skiing into May.

“We’ve been able to extend our season by 12 days at our Rocky Mountain resorts,” said Bill Rock, president of the mountain division at Vail Resorts. “The industry (overall) has invested in snowmaking as well, but the industry in the Rockies has added about five days.

“We look to provide more days, and more consistent conditions, for our guests,” he continued. “We try to open Keystone as early as we can, and thanks to our investment in automated snowmaking, we’re able to do that. We go into May at Breckenridge, and that’s because of our investments in snowmaking there. We’ve been able to have some of our longest seasons at Vail over the last few years.”

Mountaintops tend to be colder than base areas and can hold snow longer. That’s why early-season skiing at Keystone and Vail can involve skiing at the top of the mountain, but riding the lift or gondola down to the base rather than skiing.

In 2020, the Aspen Skiing Company installed snowmaking at the top of Aspen Mountain for similar reasons. “It was very much intended to create an upper-mountain opening and closing scenario in lower snow years,” said Aspen Snowmass spokeswoman Hannah Dixon, adding that there are provisions to do the same at Snowmass in that resort’s master plan.

According to the Lakewood-based National Ski Areas Association, the average length of ski seasons in the Rocky Mountain region over the past decade has fluctuated between 122 and 132 days, excluding the COVID-shortened season of 2019-20 (103 days). The average length over that period has been 127 days, but the past three seasons stood at 130 days or more.

Miller said Winter Park exceeded 200 days the past two seasons, and it will again this season if Mary Jane hangs on until late May as it did last year. Winter Park has seen above-average snowfall the past three seasons, too.

“This is our 85th season,” Miller said. “If you go back to the early days of skiing in Colorado, we didn’t start skiing until late December or January. Natural snow is variable, and snowmaking has allowed us to broaden the season. It’s part of doing business as a ski area in the west.”

Although ski areas operate their snowmaking guns primarily in early season, resort officials say those efforts continue to pay dividends in the spring because manmade snow is denser. As a result, it is more durable and holds up better when warmer temperatures arrive in the spring.

“When you build a super-solid, consistent base on the front end, you see less snowmelt and fewer issues when temperatures warm in the spring,” said Vail Resorts spokeswoman Lindsay Hogan. “It has benefits on both sides of the season.”

Eldora Mountain Resort, the Front Range ski area that opened Nov. 7 this season and will close on April 20, is seeking approval to expand its water storage capabilities for snowmaking in the future.

“That is just a common-sense hedge against what we’re seeing in terms of climate trends,” said Eldora spokesman Sam Bass. “We need the opportunity to store more water in case there is a summer when our primary snowmaking water storage doesn’t fill up all the way. Any ski resort that’s thinking about the future, which is every one, is probably thinking about ways to ensure that they have adequate water supplies and the ability to make snow.”

The ability to offer early-season skiing is a key part of Eldora’s competitive strategy. This season it opened a week earlier than scheduled. Last season, it opened two weeks ahead of schedule.

“That time of year, we’re essentially the same size as Winter Park or Copper, or any of the big guys, because we all only have a couple of trails open,” Bass said. “The Ikon passholder, early in the season, if they only have two or three Ikon options to choose from, they say, ‘Why would I drive to Winter Park or Copper when I can just drive to Eldora for the same amount of terrain or more?’ It’s an opportunity for us to make hay early and provide a good product for the people who really want to get out and get after it early-season.”

The looming specter of climate change remains a concern for the industry, however.

“Climate change has a real impact on our business, and it’s something that we’re concerned about,” said Rock, who is second in command at Vail Resorts to chief executive Kirsten Lynch.  “We’re uniquely positioned to serve our guests during this volatility that it represents. The $100 million in snowmaking across the company has allowed us to provide reliable conditions for our guests throughout the whole season.”

The same is true of Winter Park’s massive investment in snowmaking.

“It puts us in a much better position long-term, depending on how snowfall will be in the next 10, 20, 30 years,” Miller said. “It’s a tricky subject. It’s something that ski areas have done for a very long time, but it’s become more of a reality that this is what we’re going to need to be able to operate in the future.”

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The town council voted last week to implement summer parking fees of $2 per hour — with one hour free — up to a maximum of $10 per day. Parking will be free after 3 p.m., however. The plan will be in effect from May 30 through Sept 28.

Winter parking fees are currently in effect and will be through April 20 when the Vail ski area closes. Parking will be free from April 21 until May 30 when the summer fees kick in.

Summer parking in the town structures has always been free, but the town says it will need $10.5 million in repairs over the next five years and another $2.5 million for annual maintenance. The Vail Village parking structure and Transportation Center was built in 1974. The Lionshead structure was built in 1981.

“We had a structural engineer come in and do a very thorough assessment of both structures,” said town spokeswoman Kris Widlak, adding that it would have cost the town more than $200 million to replace the buildings. “It sure seemed way more prudent to find a way to do the repairs recommended by the engineer and keep these structures in place for as long as we possibly can.

“Nothing they found was an imminent, high-danger, critical thing. We were very gratified to find out that a $10-million repair could take the place of $200- to $300-million replacements,” he added.

Vail Transit will expand its free summer schedule to provide 15-minute frequency for the East Vail Route. The West Vail Express and Lionsridge Loop service, which previously did not operate in the summer, will be in service this summer.

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Brian O’Neal, a Greenwood Village resident, had a close encounter with that bear Sunday. O’Neal said he was skiing with his son. It was their first run of the day. They were cutting from the Peru Express chairlift over to the Summit Express chairlift on Last Chance, a green beginner run.

“It happened so quick,” O’Neal said. “I was just trying not to run into it.”

O’Neil is the skier in the blue jacket in the video, who came face-to-face with the bear, turning out of its way on the ski run. He said a bystander captured the video and sent it to him.

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Ski Cooper is offering $35 lift tickets — the price they charged for children ages 6-14 this season — while Monarch is charging $39. Both close on Sunday.

For comparison, Eldora is offering lift tickets in advance online for $99 through closing day on April 20. Copper Mountain will offer $99 lift tickets from April 14 through closing day on May 11.

The other ski areas closing for the season on Sunday are Aspen Highlands, Beaver Creek and Silverton. After Sunday, Purgatory will be open weekends-only through April 27

Buttermilk, Crested Butte, Keystone, Powderhorn, Sunlight, Telluride and Wolf Creek closed last Sunday.

Cooper, which is located 10 miles north of Leadville on Tennessee Pass, has 100% of its terrain open with a mid-mountain base depth of 57 inches. Monarch, 140 miles from Denver at Monarch Pass, has a 64-inch mid-mountain base with 100% of its beginner, intermediate and expert terrain open. Its double-black slopes are 88% open.

Temperatures at Cooper will be in the 30s Tuesday and Wednesday, then in the 40s through Sunday, according to the OpenSnow reporting and forecasting service. Monarch will mostly be in the 40s with a high temperature of 50 forecast for Saturday.

Areas scheduled to close April 20 include Aspen Mountain, Eldora, Snowmass, Steamboat, and Vail. The Winter Park base will close on April 27,  but its Mary Jane complex will remain open as long as conditions permit. Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Loveland and Arapahoe Basin also will remain open into May.

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The fourteeners grant was announced last week by the governor’s office as part of $2.4 million earmarked for 26 trail projects around the state this year. Funding for the state’s Non-Motorized Trail Grant Program comes from Great Outdoors Colorado, the Colorado Lottery and the Federal Highway Administration. Great Outdoors Colorado, which derives its funding from lottery proceeds, typically distributes around $70 million in grants annually.

The fourteeners initiative will hire eight seasonal employees, as it does annually.

“They’re a mobile team that will go out and do smaller-scale reconstruction efforts — cleaning of trail drains, removing downed timber, fixing ‘staircases’ and trail features that have fallen out or eroded,” said CFI executive director Lloyd Athearn. “Sometimes we have avalanche impacts or intense rain events that have washed out parts of trails. It’s stuff we will always be doing as long as there are fourteeners, and as long as there is a CFI.

“There are impacts from hundreds of thousands of people a year,” Athearn added, “in a very loose and highly changing environment.”

Grants from the state’s recreational trails program are capped at $250,000. Last year CFI used that amount for a major trail construction project focused on Mount Shavano.

The initiative has other sources of funding for its trail projects besides state trail grants, Athearn said, such as local governments, community foundations and business contributions.

“State trails pays for roughly a third to a half of our cost in a given year,” Athearn said, “but it’s kind of a lead funder.”

Although Colorado Parks and Wildlife approves the grants after an independent commission analyzes and prioritizes applications, the funding doesn’t come from CPW coffers. However, with already underfunded federal land managers facing increasing budget challenges, Athearn said CPW “really needs to fill the void,” especially given staff cuts by the Trump administration.

“The state is likely to be a more influential trail funder in the future than they have been in the past, just given what is happening with the federal government and money,” Athearn said. “Trails has historically been a small part of CPW’s work, (compared to) state parks and wildlife management. I think there is a growing awareness within CPW that the public would certainly welcome them having a larger role as the federal government becomes much harder to work with and more unpredictable.”

CPW spokesman Joey Livingston said the agency has “worked closely with our federal partners” for more than 150 years and that their partnership would continue.

“When asked by federal land managers, CPW will continue to explore potential partnerships and seek cooperative management solutions that align with our shared goals for sustainable resource management and appropriate recreation management,” Livingston said in an email.

In February, Gov. Jared Polis announced a partnership involving federal and local agencies in the Pikes Peak region that could result in the creation of a recreation area, managed by CPW to improve amenities and create new ones. In 2021, The Conservation Fund purchased Sweetwater Lake on the western slope and transferred it to the White River National Forest. Because that forest lacks the funding to manage the property, CPW may end up managing it for them.

Fourteeners where maintenance crews will work this summer include Mount Bierstadt and Mount Blue Sky in the Front Range; Quandary Peak and Mount Democrat in the Mosquito Range near Hoosier Pass; Mount Princeton, Mount Massive and Mount Columbia in the Sawatch Range; Redcloud Peak and Wetterhorn Peak in the San Juans; Capitol Peak in the Elk Range, San Luis Peak in the La Garitas, and Mount Sneffels near Telluride.

Of the other trail grants announced last week, the only one to receive the maximum $250,000 grant was Austin Bluffs Open Space in Colorado Springs. A grant of $150,000 will go to the Colorado Mountain Bike Association for trail needs in Front Range national forests.

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JACKSON, N.H. — A skier since age 4, Thomas Brennick now enjoys regular trips to New Hampshire’s Black Mountain with his two grandchildren.

“It’s back to the old days,” he said from the Summit Double chairlift on a recent sunny Friday. “It’s just good, old-time skiing at its best.”

Behind the scenes, the experience is now propelled by a high-tech system designed to increase efficiency at the state’s oldest ski area. And while small, independent resorts can’t compete on infrastructure or buying power with conglomerates like Vail, which owns nearby Attitash Mountain Resort and seven others in the Northeast alone, at least one entrepreneur is betting technology will be “a really great equalizer.”

That businessman is Erik Mogensen, who bought Black Mountain last year and turned it into a lab for his ski mountain consultancy, Entabeni Systems. The company builds systems that put lift tickets sales, lesson reservations and equipment rentals online while collecting detailed data to inform decisions such as where to make more snow and how much.

“A lot of general managers will go out and look at how many rows of cars are parked, and that’s kind of how they tell how busy they are,” Mogensen said. “We really want to look at that transactional data down to the deepest level.”

That includes analyzing everything from the most popular time to sell hot dogs in the lodge to how many runs a season pass holder makes per visit.

“The large operators, they can do a lot of things at scale that we can’t. They can buy 20 snow cats at a time, 10 chairlifts, those types of things. We can’t do that, but we’re really nimble,” Mogensen said. “We can decide to change the way we groom very quickly, or change the way we open trails, or change our (food and beverage) menu in the middle of a day.”

Transforming a small-time resort

Mogensen, who says his happiest moments are tied to skiing, started Entabeni Systems in 2015, driven by the desire to keep the sport accessible. In 2023, he bought the company Indy Pass, which allows buyers to ski for two days each at 230 independent ski areas, including Black Mountain. It’s an alternative to the Epic and Ikon multi-resort passes offered by the Vail and Alterra conglomerates.

Black Mountain was an early participant in Indy Pass. When Mogensen learned it was in danger of closing, he was reminded of his hometown’s long-gone ski area. He bought Black Mountain aiming to ultimately transform it into a cooperative.

Many Indy Pass resorts also are clients of Entabeni Systems, including Utah’s Beaver Mountain, which bills itself as the longest continuously-run family owned mountain resort in the U.S.

Kristy Seeholzer, whose husband’s grandfather founded Beaver Mountain, said Entabeni streamlined its ticketing and season pass system. That led to new, lower-priced passes for those willing to forgo skiing during holiday weeks or weekends, she said.

“A lot of our season pass holders were self-limiting anyway. They only want to ski weekdays because they don’t want to deal with weekends,” she said. “We could never have kept track of that manually.”

Though she is pleased overall, Seeholzer said the software can be challenging and slow.

“There are some really great programs out there, like on the retail side of things or the sales side of things. And one of the things that was a little frustrating was it felt like we were reinventing the wheel,” she said.

Not everyone is a fan

Sam Shirley, 25, grew up skiing in New Hampshire and worked as a ski instructor and ski school director in Maine while attending college. But he said increasing technology has drastically changed the way he skis, pushing him to switch mostly to cross-country.

“As a customer, it’s made things more complicated,” he said. “It just becomes an extra hassle.”

Shirley used to enjoy spur-of-the-moment trips around New England, but has been put off by ski areas reserving lower rates for those who buy tickets ahead. He doesn’t like having to provide detailed contact information, sometimes even a photograph, just to get a lift ticket.

It’s not just independent ski areas that are focused on technology and data. Many others are using lift tickets and passes embedded with radio frequency identification chips that track skiers’ movements.

Vail Resorts pings cell phones to better understand how lift lines are forming, which informs staffing decisions, said John Plack, director of communications. Lift wait times have decreased each year for the past three years, with 97% under 10 minutes this year, he said.

“Our company is a wildly data-driven company. We know a lot about our guest set. We know their tastes. We know what they like to ski, we know when they like to ski. And we’re able to use that data to really improve the guest experience,” he said.

How the big guys battle meager winters

That improvement comes at a cost. A one-day lift ticket at Vail’s Keystone Resort in Colorado sold for $292 last week. A season pass cost $418, a potentially good deal for diehard skiers, but also a reliable revenue stream guaranteeing Vail a certain amount of income even as ski areas face less snow and shorter winters.

The revenue from such passes, especially the multi-resort Epic Pass, allowed the company to invest $100 million in snowmaking, Plack said.

“By committing to the season ahead of time, that gives us certainty and allows us to reinvest in our resorts,” he said.

Mogensen insists bigger isn’t always better, however. Lift tickets at Black Mountain cost $59 to $99 per day and a season’s pass is about $450.

“You don’t just come skiing to turn left and right. You come skiing because of the way the hot chocolate tastes and the way the fire pit smells and what spring skiing is and what the beer tastes like and who you’re around,” he said. “Skiing doesn’t have to be a luxury good. It can be a community center.”

Brennick, the Black Mountain lift rider who was skiing with his grandchildren, said he has noticed a difference since the ski area was sold.

“I can see the change,” he said. “They’re making a lot of snow and it shows.”

___

Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

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The decision bucks an ski industry-wide trend of passes increasing.

Both the Epic Pass and the Ikon Pass launched at historically high prices ahead of the 2025-26 season.

The Epic Pass started at $1,051, a 7% increase from last year and a new high for Vail Resorts. The Keystone Plus Pass launch price was raised from $390 in 2024 to $418 in 2025. The Ikon Pass saw an $80 increase from when it went on sale for the first time last year. At a price point of $1,329, this year marks the highest early-bird price in the history of the Ikon Pass.

In comparison, Loveland will offer adult season passes for $599 or $549 for renewal. Young adult passes will cost $409 for first-time buyers, a child pass will cost $199 and a senior pass will also cost $199.

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