Club Colorado  

In case you were stuck behind your desk all day (or living somewhere other than Colorado) and didn’t see the local news or check the Colorado snow report, it’s been dumping in the mountains! Loveland and A-Basin both have a new foot of snow, and that means early season skiing and riding is just getting better. It also means new terrain will be opening at each of those areas soon. And if it keeps up, more resorts could be firing up their lifts sooner than their anticipated mid-November opening days. (Copper Mountain and Wolf Creek are almost ready!)

If nothing else, it could solve your dilemma about your Halloween costume, right? You can play hooky from work/school/whatever on Friday, get some turns in and keep your snow gear on for trick-or-treating and other types of frivolous Halloween behavior.

Loveland and A-Basin have been open for almost a week. Yes, there’s limited terrain, but this week’s cold weather means more snow is on the way. Here are 10 reasons to get your gear together and head up for a day (or even a half-day) of skiing or riding:

10—Because if you wait until December, you’ll wish you’d gone earlier. (Trust us on this one.)

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So I decided at the late Saturday night to zip up to Loveland for a few turns on Sunday morning. (That’s Day 2 for me, if you’re counting at home.) After sleeping in (you can do that in October and no worry about ski traffic), I picked up a friend, stopped for bagels and coffee and cruised up to Loveland. We buzzed the groomed terrain on the Catwalk, Mambo and Home Run trails, all the while looking toward the top of the mountain and thinking about a day later this winter when we’ll ski the copious amounts of deep powder off of Chair 9.

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When Arapahoe Basin opened for the 2008-2009 season at 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 15, the first seat on the Challenger chair lift was wrapped in a blue blow and dedicated to Edna Dercum, one of the founding members of A-Basin back in 1946. Dercum passed away in September at the age of 94, after spending much of her life skiing in Colorado.

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It’s 5:45 a.m. when I finish loading my car and pull out of my driveway in Boulder. The sky is dark but there is an ambient glow from the brilliant full moon hovering overhead.

I remind my drowsy self that I could easily sleep for another hour before starting what might be a typical work day.

But it’s Opening Day at Arapahoe Basin and Loveland and, while I’m not a zealot who has any intention of getting on one of the first few chairs of the season, I’m super-stoked about skiing for the first time since last March. More on that in a moment …

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In most places, the middle of October means baseball playoffs, football games and colored leaves fall from trees. But in Colorado it means the start of the ski and snowboard season. And today was Opening Day, baby!

Skiing in October is a Colorado phenomenon and a rite of passage for many of the diehards who live here. If you just couldn’t wait to break in your shiny new season pass or new gear or whatever, it meant you either called in sick, showed up late or just plain blew off work, school, family and various other responsibilities in order to get back on snow. A-Basin and Loveland opened at 8:30 a.m. with throngs of skiers and snowboarders eager to make some turns.

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Let the race begin! With the 2008-09 ski season just around the corner here in Colorado both Loveland Ski Area and Arapahoe Basin are well on their way to starting off the season with a bang. Both resorts have begun snowmaking in preparation to be the first ski resort open in the state of Colorado, and in the nation. We are getting excited to start cruising down the slopes again, and we’ve got out skis waxed up and ready for their first taste of snow for the new season.

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