Imagine yourself in the heady days of 1974...

In my last report from Keystone, Colorado I described the fat and frosty clouds that surround us and that giant blue hole in the sky above. Now it is time to expand on that story.

Imagine yourself back in the heady days of 1974, disco beats and flares galore. Keystone was a young resort, built with some of the highest lift serviced terrain in the country, bang on the backbone of North America, the Continental Divide. Averaging the highest snowfall in the state, Keystone could pull in hundreds of inches of the fluffy stuff a season. Then came all the people of Denver. Like most people, the Denver crowd love a drink of cold, pure mountain water, so they decided to build a very deep, very large lake full of the stuff!

You may have heard of lake-effect snow before. In the resorts around Salt Lake City it helps create dry, low moisture snow that is a pleasure to ski. It also helps develop microclimates that generate precipitation in the Great Lakes. In Lake Dillon, five miles down the road from Keystone, by chance and bad luck, snowfall has been decreasing ever since. Explain it if you can!

Despite the pessimism we got five inches of the fresh stuff yesterday and Vail got an ice storm.

Keep your eyes peeled for up and coming details of Breckenridge's Chevy Truck U.S. Snowboard Grand Prix!

Report from Sam Marfleet & Melissa Cannon - Natives Resort Reporters in Keystone

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