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A look at the snowiest winters in Summit County that were ‘almost too deep to ski,’ ‘changed lives’ and cut off civilization for 80 days

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Ryan Spencer

A rotary snow plow works on snow drifts at Boreas Pass near Breckenridge during the winter of 1898-1899, which was one of the snowiest in Summit County history.
Summit Historical Society Collection/Courtesy photo

Snow can dazzle. When the white, fluffy flakes fall, it draws crowds of skiers and snowboarders to Colorado’s ski resorts to shred the fresh powder. It caps the Rocky Mountains in an ethereal beauty.

But snow can also wreak havoc and immobilize. Snow-slick roads have been the cause of many traffic jams. Too much snow can close schools. And, on mountainsides, snow can cascade into destructive avalanches that rip trees from their roots.

Summit County historian Mary Ellen Gilliland, who has experienced more than 50 winters living at 9,000 feet in the Rockies, reminisced on the best and worst that winter has to offer — from quiet, pillowy turns on the slopes to snarled gridlock on the highways.

“We’ve seen some wonderful winters, some fabulous snows. There have been times the snow has been almost too deep to ski,” Gilliland said. “If it were a lighter powder in January, that’d be one thing. But when it’s heavy, wet, well into March, and up to here, it’s hard to even get down the slopes.”

Yet, as a historian, Gilliland said she knows that for all the winters she’s experienced in Summit County, none compare to the winter of 1898-99, a historic season when snow fell so thick that the town of Breckenridge was isolated for 80 days.

So, which winters stack up to be the snowiest in Summit County’s history? National Weather Service forecaster meteorologist Kenley Bonner said that the data leaves no doubt: the snowfall of 1898-99 remains unparalleled in the more than a century since.

While determining which winters were the “snowiest” is not an exact science, here is a look at the five of the whitest winters in Summit County’s history.

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1994-95: Snowfall totals 248 inches

The winter of 1994-95 started out slow in Summit County. An article in a Jan. 3, 1995, edition of the Summit Daily News noted that snowmaking helped local resorts stay open through November and December. Some locals and tourists “complained about brown spots, rocks, closed runs and icy patches,” according to the article.

But in February, the tides quickly turned. The week of Valentine’s Day, steady snow storms brought as much as 5 feet of snow to some parts of Summit County. Snow continued into March, then grew even heavier in April.

“It just keeps snowing,” a Breckenridge Ski Resort spokesperson told a Summit Daily reporter that April. The ski resort reportedly recorded more than 90 inches of new snowfall at the top of Peak 8 in April 1995.

The Weather Service reports that the Breckenridge climate site recorded 248 inches of snowfall in the 1994-95 winter season, with the heaviest snowfall – about 54 inches – coming in April.

2013-14: Snowfall totals 271 inches

The winter season of 2013-2014 proved to be one for the record books. It started out strong and didn’t let up.

Arapahoe Basin Ski Area opened Oct. 13 thanks to natural snow as well as snow making efforts and, on the other side of the county, Copper Mountain had received more than 7 feet of snow before the turn of the New Year.

Snowstorms continued across the state in January and February 2014. At Breckenridge, February saw record-breaking snow totals with 85 inches. The snowfall did not let up until after Easter.

The ideal snow conditions drew 12.6 million skiers to Colorado’s ski resorts, setting what was then a new record. 

The Breckenridge climate station recorded an annual total of 271 inches of snowfall in the 2013-2014 season.

“It was the perfect snowstorm this year, with a snow message that started early, and it was enthusiastic,” a spokesperson for the ski resort trade group Colorado Ski County USA told the Denver Post in 2014. “We just had snow every month.”

1982-83: Snowfall totals 288 inches

For many longtime Summit County locals, the winter of 1982-83 stands out as one of the snowiest in living memory.

December began uneventfully in Colorado with little precipitation until the end of the month, according to a Colorado State University summary of the water year 1982-83. But then, just before Christmas, a huge storm pounded the Rocky Mountains.

“The storm hit Denver and parts of northeast Colorado with such fury that it will stay fresh in people’s memories for a long time,” the climatology report states.

Then, snow continued to bombard the Summit County area late into the spring of 1983. Berthoud Pass received 93 inches of snow in April, and a surprise blizzard swept through the mountains in May.

Summit Daily columnist Gary Lindstrommonday once remarked that during that winter, “the highway between Breckenridge and Frisco had so much snow piled on the side that one had a hard time seeing the mountains.”

The Breckenridge climate station recorded an annual total of 288 inches of snowfall in the 1982-83 season, with 95 inches recorded in December alone.

1995-96: Snowfall totals 292 inches

One national summary of the 1995-96 ski season describes the winter as “a season of extremes” – and in Summit County the skiing was extremely good.

While other parts of the country did not fare as well, the ski industry boomed in Colorado in 1995-96 as storms started tracking through the region early in the season, continuing into the spring.

As snow blanketed Summit County in January of that year, the Frisco public works director told the New York Times, “February and March are typically our big snow months. So now we are wondering where we will put all the snow when we get more in the next couple months.”

The Breckenridge climate station recorded an annual total of 292 inches in the 1995-96 season.

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1898-99: Snowfall totals 362 inches

While those other winters may have been snowy, none compare to the winter of 1898-99.

The massive amount of snow that fell on Summit County that year cut off the local mining community’s contact to the outside world for 80 days, Gilliland said. She calls the winter of 1898-99 “a snowstorm extravaganza unparalleled in known Summit history.”

The autumn that year had been warm. But then, on Nov. 27, snow started to fall. The next morning, county residents awoke to 5 feet of snow.

“And it went on from there,” Gilliland said. “It snowed every day until February 20. Every day. Heavy.”

With the help of the recently invented rotary snowplow, the railroads worked “valiantly” to get over the mountain pass into Breckenridge, Gilliland said. But the trains encountered 40-50 foot drifts and by Feb. 5 had given up on attempting the treacherous route. Another train was not seen for 80 days.

Household supplies ran short. The newspaper ran out of newsprint. Saloons ran out of liquor. While butter, eggs, milk, fresh fruit and vegetables became a fantasy, Gilliland said the townspeople of Breckenridge never starved thanks to stores of grains.

There are stories of “daring feats,” like when a young man named Jess Oakley volunteered to cross Boreas Pass on snowshoes to fetch the mail, Gilliland said. 

When Oakley got to the top of Boreas Pass with a 45-pound bag of first-class mail on his back, he couldn’t locate the railroad station house, she said. But finally, he saw smoke from a chimney 6 inches beneath the snow.

In March, when a train finally made it to Breckenridge again, school was dismissed and people poured out of their homes to see it pull into the station, Gilliland said. Even then, though, the snow didn’t let up.

March proved to be the heaviest month of snow that year, with the climate site in Breckenridge recording 104 inches of snowfall. 

In 1898-99, the climate site recorded almost double its annual snowfall, with a total of 362 inches.

“It was a lollapalooza of a winter,” Gilliland said. “It really changed lives. It was very, very tough economically. I think it brought the town of Breckenridge together, because they all had to share and work together.” 

Editor’s note: This story previously published in the winter 2024 edition of Explore Summit magazine.

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