January 9, 2017 will go down in resort history as the day we officially #buriedthebutte. Some reports say Crested Butte received two inches an hour, other reports claim four inches an hour. We just know it snowed A LOT. The rate at which the snow was falling and safety concerns ultimately led to the Resort’s shut down at 1:30 pm.
Every skier’s thumb across the county was hitting refresh on the GORE-TEX PowCam. You could literally watch the snow stack up every 5, 10, 15 minutes while big fat flakes continued to fall, #burythebutte was trending on social media across the state. As the snow continued through the night the Crested Butte Mountain Resort Ski Patrol and Mountain Ops teams were dedicated to opening as much terrain as possible, as quickly as possible. Lifts were spinning by 9 am January 10, 2017.
For ten days straight Crested Buttians repeated the same actions over, and over, and over; snow, shovel, ski, eat, sleep, repeat. Mother Nature would hit reset every night and everything would refill as if yesterday had never happened. Even the local Crested Butte Community School closed for the first time since 1970. Ultimately Crested Butte received almost eight feet of snow in ten days.
Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s snowpack is 191% of its average snowpack as of January 25, 2017. The Resort will soon be 100% open wall to wall and the best part is, it’s only January. This means the Resort’s legendary extreme terrain including Teocalli Bowl, Phoenix Bowl, Banana, Spellbound Bowl, Headwall and Funnel are open! 
There are seasons that stick with us, ones that locals reference for years as the best. This January has unofficially been coined Snowmageddon. This season however, will officially go down in history as one of the greatest in recent memory.
January Snow from Crested Butte Mountain Resort on Vimeo.
