No Snow: Jackson Hole Delays Ski Season As Holidays Kick Off

Hitting the slopes at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving has long been a tradition for Andriana Rogers, who this year started a dream job with her favorite ski venue.

She had visions of powder dancing through her head for her first days as an employee with the resort. 

But it wasn’t to be.

There’s been so little snow falling in the northwest corner of Wyoming that Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has decided to delay the opening date for its 60th anniversary season. Snow King Mountain Resort and Grand Targhee have also announced delays. 

Instead of skiing the day after Thanksgiving, Rogers expects to just “eat some Thanksgiving leftovers, and maybe wax my skis” while she dreams of the powder to come.

“I know that it’ll come,” she said. “I’ll be ready when it does.”

It could be on the way as early as this weekend, Cowboy State Daily’s meteorologist Don Day said. 

“We'll see better chances for snow at places like Jackson Hole,” Day said. “But it’s really Friday, late Friday, and into the weekend that the pattern is changing. The pattern that’s been so stingy with the snow is changing.”

The change will start first in the northwest corner of the state.

The area got a little bit of snow this week, Day said.

“But there will be better snow, more widespread snow, Friday and Saturday," he said.

Temperatures will also take a step down and become much, much colder.

“So, it’s finally going to start acting like winter,” Day said. 

Behind Schedule

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort reported earlier this week that it's had just 26 inches of snow so far through November, and there was snow flying on Wednesday.

Warm conditions, meanwhile, have hindered snow-making efforts. 

The story is similar at Grand Targhee, spokesman Jordan Wilsted said. 

“Normally, October, the snow starts to trickle in,” he said. “But this year, it’s just been a slow start. But it’s also nothing we’re not accustomed to in some ways. We’ve had slow starts before.”

Grand Targhee used to have the motto: “Snow from Heaven, not hoses,” Wilsted said. But in more recent times it has retired that motto and invested in snow guns instead.

Unfortunately, the snow guns were little help at Grand Targhee this year in spite of its 8,000-plus elevation. 

This year, the plan had been to open the ski runs Nov. 21. But the day before, Grand Targhee had to send an email advising patrons it would delay the opening date indefinitely. 

Wilsted said he’s not worried yet, though. 

“We’re not in the heart of the season quite yet,” he said. “So, there’s still plenty of time for things to turn around.”

In the meantime, the resort has reached out to those with early bird reservations, to let them know the resort won’t be opening just yet. 

“We’ve offered them credit or refunds since they’re not going to be able to come up and stay with us or ski with us yet,” he said.

So far, people have been understanding, Wilsted added.

“A lot of our season pass holders live close by and they can see that there’s no snow on the ground,” he said. “They can look up at the hill and see what we’re dealing with. So, people are understanding. The weather is the weather.”

Snow On The Forecast

Wilsted has heard that Montana and Colorado are caught in the same weather pattern for now, with an unseasonably dry October and an unseasonably warm November.

Temperatures were 8 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average through the first 16 days of the month, according to OpenSnow weather forecaster Alan Smith, who particularly tracks mountain conditions in Wyoming. 

“This warmth combined with minimal natural snowfall since October has prevented an early season snowpack from building as is typical this time of year,” he said.

Smith, like Day, believes the weather pattern is about to change dramatically, but thinks snow still looks iffy for this week.

“Recent model runs are backing off some on what previously looked like an active pattern,” he said. “It could still end up snowing, there just isn’t a whole lot of confidence right now.”

Long range model projections, though, do look conducive to more snow, he added.

“At the same time, it’s hard to put much trust into these longer projections right now since we’ve seen similar projections over the past two weeks, only for models to back off on the snowier projections once we get about seven to 10 days out.”

Given that, Grand Targhee is going to take things day by day, Wilsted said.

They will also run more snow guns on Shoshone Run, now that it’s colder, to try to get at least that much open as soon as possible. 

“Every day we get with our Mountain Ops Team, and they kind of determine our ability to make snow for the next little bit,” he said. “And we just reevaluate day by day. So that’s the kind of program we’re on, and what I imagine other resorts in the region are on.”

No Tourism Concerns

The lack of snow isn’t hurting the Jackson Hole area too badly yet, Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce Director of Visitor Services Justin Walters told Cowboy State Daily. 

While Jackson is usually about knee deep in white fluffy stuff by now, tourists generally don’t start busying up the town until Thanksgiving weekend. 

“When you look at the flights, they’ve increased a little bit (for the holiday weekend),” Walters said. 

Outside of the holiday weekend though, flights are down a little, by about 6% year over year, Walters said. 

“If you look at estimates going into December, it’s more like 26% down,” he said. 

But these are figures that are likely to change on a dime, the instant snow starts to fall, he added.

So far, he feels optimistic that winter will eventually deliver what the tourists demand for their winter travel — snow, and lots of it.

“The flip side of that too, is … people will literally, regardless of where they are at — Aspen, Vail, Utah, all these other places, these top ski resorts — they’re going to look and see who has the most snow, and that’s where they’re going to go,” he said. “And they may make that decision on a Monday to leave that Friday.”

That means it’s not just when the snow falls that determines how the season goes, but how much overall snow falls.

“That is the driving force across the board,” Walters said. “The overall snowfall, because we’re surrounded by Salt Lake, Denver, all these big cities where people can just jump in the car and be up here practically overnight.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.