Warm weather brings end to ski season

A recent wave of warm weather has put an early end to Laramie’s ski season.

Snowy Range Ski Area, a common skiing location for UW students, had a challenging season this year as a result of the weather. Megan Richter, a Snowy Range ski instructor, said warm conditions could make the sport dangerous.

“The unfortunate thing is when your conditions get bad, the likelihood of injury also increases so that’s one of our biggest concerns,” Richter said. Richter also said it’s a major inconvenience for instructors trying to help out beginning skiers.

“There’s a lot more open ground, so there’s a lot more area where they can run into ground, or run into trees,” Richter said.

Nichole Lumadue, a UW student snowboarder, said the lack of snow is disappointing.

“It’s definitely affected my snowboarding, I haven’t gone as much as I did last year, but last year we had an amazing, large amount of snow and this year’s been an unreasonably small amount of snow. I haven’t gone a fraction of the amount I did last year,” Lumadue said.

Tylynn Smith, another student at UW and an employee of UW’s Outdoor Program said she had gotten her money’s worth out of her Snowy Range season pass, but only from inclusion of passes to the Steamboat slopes.

“I have used almost all my five days at Steamboat so that is well paid for,” Smith said, “even though I’ve only been to snowy four times.”

Despite poor skiing conditions , the weather is not at a problematic level. Larry Oolman, a senior research scientist at Atmospheric Scientist, said it was a pretty typical year in the long run.

“It’s not unusual for weather patterns to lock in like this.” Snow pack numbers have been at the 80 percent range in locations across the state, so the weather has not been a burden on the state as a whole.

Anyone hoping to get in one last run has until April 7, when Snowy Range closes.