Utah ski season heads for July 4 or beyond

LITTLE COTTONWOOD CANYON, Utah — At the base of a slope that at this time of year usually tests the skills of mountain bikers, roughly 60 skiers and snowboarders, hoping to get first tracks on the mountain, waited for the 8 a.m. opening of the tram at Snowbird resort.

These were not bitter-enders hoping to eke out runs on a thin swatch of snow. At this northern Utah resort, it is still winter. There is hardly a bare spot on the mountain. Piles of snow line the vast parking lot. With much of the country in the grip of record-high temperatures, it was 31 degrees here Friday morning. Snowbird has announced that it will be open for snow sports three days a week until July 4. And it could stay open even later.

An unusually heavy winter snowfall and a cold, wet spring have resulted in a record snowpack in much of the mountain regions of the West. Bob Bonar, the general manager at Snowbird, said the mountain received more than 775 inches of snow this season, well above its average of 500.

''We even got 20 inches of powder over Memorial Day weekend, and our current average base is more than 15 feet," Bonar said. "The holiday may not even be the end. We may stay open a few weekends longer if the snow stays good."

But if the giant snowpack remains a boon to skiers at Snowbird and at Snowbasin Resort about 70 miles to the north, it has been problematic to others.

Ed Chauner, director of the Intermountain Cup Mountain Bike Racing Series, said he had to change the site of a race last month because the original site, Sundance Resort, still had 10 feet of snow. A race planned at Snowbird on July 2 is also in jeopardy because, Chauner says, "there's still 20 feet of snow on parts of the course."

''All this weather is killing us," Chauner said. "No one can get out and train during the week, because its been so cold and wet. If they can't train, they don't come out to race. Our rider numbers have been way down."

The La Nina phenomenon is behind the weather anomaly, said Lindsay Storrs, a meteorologist at KUTV in Salt Lake City. In a La Nina year, she said, cooler than normal water temperatures in the Pacific off the coast of Chile leads to cooler and wetter weather in winter and spring in the western United States.

''Troughs develop along the West Coast of the U.S. when this occurs," Storrs said. "That allows storms to continuously drop out of the Gulf of Alaska, giving the western U.S. above average precipitation."

Snowbird's full parking lot is testimony to the attraction of this season's late snow.