Holiday ski traffic has given resort operators a reason to smile.

At Copper Mountain, resort officials are encouraged by this past week’s skier and lodging numbers, said spokeswoman Lauren Pelletreau.

Bookings for the coming weeks aren’t as strong as they’ve been in the past, but the resort will continue to use creative lodging packages to encourage visitors, she said.

The resort will continue to sell a popular new three-mountain pass called the pow-pow platter, albeit at a slightly increased price. The three-mountain pass, good for one day each at Steamboat, Loveland and Winter Park, will sell for $129 starting today.

Pelletreau said Copper has opened 1,710 acres of terrain for skiing and riding, including parts of Copper Bowl. Expert skiers can look for areas of “directed skiing,” where ski patrollers will point guests toward recently opened areas.

Copper has also opened its beacon bowl for the season. The practice arena near patrol headquarters at the top of the American Flyer enables guests to sharpen their search skills by using a set of buried beacons as targets.

Look for more terrain to open at Arapahoe Basin once the next storm rolls through. For now, patrollers at the area said the most recent winds loaded fresh snow into runs like the Spine, Rock Garden and Upper Standard.

A-Basin and Keystone

The Legend is still selling its Bonus passes at $379, with unlimited skiing at A-Basin, plus five days at Keystone or Breckenridge. One of those days can also be used at Vail or Beaver Creek, said spokeswoman Leigh Hierholzer, calling the pass a great deal for destination guests in Summit County.

Keystone is 91 percent open, with 2,871 acres, and this weekend marks the opening of the resort’s A-51 superpipe, as well as the I-70 line of rails and features in the resort’s popular terrain park.

Keystone is also offering a 30 percent discount on snowcat skiing tours the rest of the season (normally priced at $225 including ticket and lunch), but the deal has to be sealed with reservations made before Jan. 16. The discount means savings of $67.50 per person for the resort’s popular “backcountry-light” experience that offers soft-snow skiing and riding in Bergman and Independence bowls.

On-mountain fine dining at Keystone also is more affordable this year with a new $67 four-course menu at the Alpenglow Stube, the cozy Alpine restaurant at the top of the Outpost gondola.

Business booming?

Several resorts outside Summit County are also reporting solid skier numbers for the holiday period. Beaver Creek bumped up against a so called “manage-to” number three times this week, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Vail Resorts doesn’t release tallies for individual days, but under an agreement with the Forest Service, it does report when skier numbers reach about 11,000, a threshold that gives local entities an idea of how to plan for services like parking and snow removal.

Resorts in Summit County don’t have a similar agreement, but anecdotal reports from the slopes, as well as from local restaurants and shops, suggest the holiday week was a relief from the forecasted gloom-and-doom scenarios of the early winter.

To the east, the small Echo Mountain resort outside Evergreen reported an increase in skier numbers for the holiday period over last year, the area’s first full season of operation. In a press release, Echo Mountain attributed its growth to low-priced tickets and proximity to Denver.