Photo by Eric Peterson

The Crown of the Continent is losing its jewels.

​The big headline on this first weekday of National Park Week is not good news -- unless you're pushing for a name change to Glacierless National Park.

The Associated Press is reporting that two more glaciers in Glacier National Park have gone the way of the dodo. The park -- which once had 150 named glaciers -- is now down to 25, and that number could dwindle to zero by the end of this decade.

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Photo by Eric Peterson

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Photo from kteague's Flickr photostream

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Photo by Casey Day, courtesy JC Communications

Going for the money shot at Echo Mountain, March 24

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Okay, so it's not exactly Girls Gone Wild, but with another six inches of new snow at Echo Mountain in the last 24 hours, on top of the 18 they reported the day before, the closest ski area to Denver is looking more and more like the place to be this week, especially for anyone looking to make some turns after work: Echo keeps the lights on until 9 p.m.

But don't take my word for it: Check out these money shots from Casey Day, taken yesterday. What else do you have in store for us, Spring Break?

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Courtesy Colorado Ski Country USA

Eldora Mountain Resort reports 18 inches in Spring storm

​Today's probably the best day of the year for an urban assault, and I know some of the local video crews are going to be out around town on filming missions.

For those of you looking for more of the deep stuff close to home, check out Eldora or Echo Mountain - The two ski areas closest to Denver got the best of last night's storm, reporting 18 and 16 inches, respectively, more than any other resorts in Colorado.

Echo's open until 9pm tonight, which means you can still get some sloppy seconds even if you didn't have a snow day today.

Wherever you're headed this week, there's going to be some fresh snow and some slushy roads:
Spring has sprung. Have fun!

For avalanche forecasts and information, visit Avalanche.State.CO.US

​A 20 year-old snowboarder died in an avalanche yesterday afternoon in the sidecountry terrain known as The Beavers, just West of Arapahoe Basin, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC). For those of you familiar with the terrain, the slide and fatality occurred in The Beavers' Gully #1 (they're numbered from East to West) just South of US 6 at approximately 11,600 feet.

"Sidecountry" refers to lift-accessed backcountry terrain outside of ski area bounds. A separate avalanche in the area was remotely triggered yesterday morning, in Gully #4, and a skier triggered another in Gully #2 on Monday. It's the third Colorado avalanche fatality of 2010, but the first in this area in a decade: The last recorded fatality in the area was in 2000. [Update: Alan Henceroth, COO and General Manager at A-Basin notes, "To clarify the CAIC report that an avalanche in that area had been remotely triggered... That trigger was by another sidecountry skier, not explosives or other components of an avalanche control program" and provides a link to a SkiNet.com report on skiing in the sidecountry. "It's a really bad year to be heading out into the backcountry, I'm afraid. But the good news is we're really close to getting East Wall open in the next few days and there should be plenty of snow to be had in-bounds"].

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(Colorado Dept. of Transportation)

​If you had big ideas to go to Aspen this weekend in search of spring freshies, you might want to can those plans. In a bid to prove she's still the boss around Colorado as well as Chile and Haiti, Mother Nature saw fit to rain down hundreds of tons of rock last night onto I-70 in Glenwood Canyon, just beyond the Hanging Lake exit.

The cascading rocks put 20 by 10-foot craters into the highway, and highway officials estimate the largest boulder on the road weight 66 tons and approaches the size of a Mac truck. Governor Bill Ritter has declared the highway a disaster area, hoping to access emergency federal funds.

(More pics after the jump.)
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(Screen grab): SkiWinterPark.com shouts it to the world... Powder!

​If you're looking around your cubicle this morning and noticing that an unusual number of your colleagues have called in sick, you might want to check the ski report: The light dusting we got down here in Denver (I woke up to the sound of my neighbor sweeping her sidewalk) went big in the mountains, especially at Winter Park, where they're reporting 16 inches in the last 24 hours.

Or, as the front page of SkiWinterPark.com subtly puts it this morning: "WE'RE GETTING HAMMERED!"

There's still time to come up with (or come down with) something! Cough, cough.

After Winter Park, Loveland's your next best bet for freshies, with 11 inches. A-Basin got 7 inches, and most of the other areas close to town got about 5 and counting. There's snow in the forecast at just about every resort in Colorado this week, so you might want to do a quick audit of how many sick days you have left. Just sayin'.

Eldora Mountain Resort feels your pain.

​Double-digit weekend snowfall at just about every ski resort in Colorado this week, and more on the way? My fellow skiers and snowboarders, our winter prayers have finally been answered!

Unfortunately, our I-70 prayers have not. More >>

Photo by Will Beback

It's alive!

​Better than yellow snow but still not recommended for human consumption, pink snow is a fairly common springtime sight in Colorado. It has nothing to do with an explosion at a food coloring factory, as was the case in Buffalo, N.Y., a couple of weeks back.

Our pink snow is alive.

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