John C Wrote:
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> Does the area get enough snowfall or moisture for
> snowmaking to make a good ground cover?
Cumbres Pass sits in one of the highest AVERAGE snowfall districts in Colorado and northern New Mexico. That sounds great, but the reality of southern Colorado snowfall and snowpack over time (and I'm an amateur climatologist who has studied mountain weather since I was a kid four decades ago) is that snowpack and winter temperatures are highly variable and unreliable from year to year in the southern Colorado/northern New Mexico region. That is not conducive to a successful ski area operation, notwithstanding the other issues confronting a ski area in a place relatively remote from major population centers. The last few years have seen the snowpack in the Cumbres area less reliable than in nearly a century (look at this past winter as a prime example).
Finally, artificial snowmaking is hugely expensive and requires consistent cold temperatures to be effective. The other fact lost on most people from outside of the West is that one can not just simply take water out a stream and pump it into a snowmaking machine. One has to have a legal water right to use the water and under the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation in law in both Colorado and New Mexico, a new ski area trying to get a water right for snowmaking would only be able to adjudicate a water right that would be junior to every other prior water right holder on the water course--unless, of course, they spent a huge sum of money to acquire a more senior water right from someone else. With the continuing drought of the last few years, the more senior water rights are treated like gold in these arid parts of the Southwest. Considering that the Rio Grande River drainage (which includes all of the area of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR--contrary to popular belief, Cumbres Pass is NOT on the Continental Divide; both sides of the Pass drain into the Eastern Slope Rio Grande River Basin) is already overappropriated--that is, more water rights have been granted than there are in streamflows in the Basin during an average year--the water situation gets even more bleak.
Short answer--a ski area in the Cumbres area is highly unlikely ever to be built. I'm in a minority here, but I have real reservations as to whether both Durango Mountain (formerly Purgatory) and Wolf Creek ski areas will ultimately be able to survive in the long term. Demographics are now working against the ski industry in general, and the resulting predatory competition is now starting to weed out the less desirable, more geographically remote areas. The big areas near places like Denver get bigger and sap market share from the smaller, more remote places.
