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Storms spring mud season syndrome

BOBBERWYN
Summit Daily/Brad Odekirk Denver resident Vincent Murphy throws out his line at the mouth of the Snake River inlet Sunday morning trying to attract some trout to his hook baited with PowerBait. Murphy was fishing with his brother Neil and his uncle Manuel Benavidez, and all three were wearing hoods against Sunday's chilly High Country temperatures.
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SUMMIT COUNTY – Continued stormy weather including occasional snow flurries didn’t deter Manuel Romero from a planned fishing expedition Sunday.”The fish are hungry. It’s really good fishing when the ponds start to melt,” Romero said as he left Wal-Mart with a new rod, headed for Tenmile Canyon.Romero’s reaction to the unsettled weather pattern was typical for many locals and visitors around Frisco, who said they considered the showery skies typical for this time of year.

“What do you expect? It’s spring time in the Rockies,” said Susanne Johnston, a recent arrival in Frisco who was setting up her laptop to do some work at an internet café on Main Street. “I saw snow out of one of my windows, sunshine out the other.””I think it’s pretty normal,” said Kristine Holland, minding the front desk at a Main Street lodge. Holland said only a few rooms were occupied, but at least one guest, in town for some late season skiing, was pretty excited about the prospect of fresh snow.”It does seem wrong,” said John Roberts, a 14-year resident who was manning the help desk at the Frisco visitor center. “I heard one lady complaining about it the other day. She said, ‘I might as well be back in Kansas, you can’t see the mountains around here for all the clouds,’ Roberts said, describing one of those grainy gray days Summit has seen recently.Roberts said about 30 people stopped by the visitor center Saturday, making for a normal day for the time of year. By mid-afternoon Sunday, he had tallied 12 guests.

The bike rental business was also slow at Wilderness Sports, where Luke Scanlon said the shop had rented about a dozen bikes recently, but none in the last couple of days.Scanlon, just returned from six weeks of travel in the Southwest, said it didn’t bother him to come back to winter’s last gasp.”I’ve never been one to care much about the weather,” he said. “I’ve got toys for any condition,” he said, adding that if he hadn’t been at work, he probably would have gone skiing Sunday morning, or cycling in the afternoon, as roads and trails dried out.For some, the situation calls for escape – the classic High Country mud season syndrome.



“For me, it’s the only time it makes me want to get out of Summit County,” said Jacquie Hill, as she squeezed a fresh order of carrot-apple-ginger juice at Alpine Market, contemplating a Utah getaway.The latest swirl of cold, moist air out of the north dropped three or four inches of snow at some favored locations Saturday night into Sunday, and forecasters are calling for one more wet and wintry blast Tuesday or Wednesday, potentially bringing several more inches of snow.In a season-ending message, state avalanche forecasters said some slide hazards may linger at high elevations, where up to three feet of snow has fallen since the end of April.The late-season precipitation has also helped boost snowpack totals across the state to the highest levels in recent years, with reservoir managers and whitewater enthusiasts all looking toward a promising runoff.


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