Winter is coming, right?

Ski season has finally hit Aspen, but this year, it’s with a lack of snow. The preliminary monthly weather report at the Aspen Water Plant shows it snowed 10.8 inches in November, about half the average of 21.84 inches. This leaves Aspen natives all around the town with fingers crossed, praying to the weather Gods to finally get the snow to cover the mountains and the famous town.

According to www.onthesnow.com, there hasn’t been this little snow since 2013. The lack of snow has a huge impact on Aspen High School’s Ski Team, that has been practicing since November. The only difference this year is that they’re practicing on man-made snow. According to AHS social studies and US history teacher as well as the coach of the high school ski team, Jennifer Morandi-Benson, the lack of snow is unfortunate but it’s not stopping the ski team from doing their thing.

 “As a coach personally, my life depends on snow. My life revolves around snow. I know it sounds dramatic, but that’s the way it is. I, myself, am an avid skier, so when I don’t get to enjoy what I love, it affects me emotionally.” Morandi-Benson said. “The lack of snow obviously affects our training. Highlands, where we ski, is smaller than we’re used to, so we’re having to share since there’s a lot of teams up there. It would be better if we had the snow, because then we’d have more options as to where we would ski.”

The man-made snow at Highlands is hard, but it makes for a good racing surface, so the team actually benefits from practicing on it.  Since Highlands is open to public, it’s hard to practice now. AHS junior, Annabelle Ward, who’s 1 out of 54 skiers on the high school team finds it hard to practice and find the motivation without snow.

“Man-made snow is of a much lower quality than real snow. It gets icy really fast, and personally I hate skiing on ice, so for me, it’s just not fun,” Ward said. “It’s super sad that there’s no snow because we don’t get to ski as much as we usually would. The lack of snow this year has made me realize that global warming is a real thing that’s kicking in and cutting down our winters.”

The AHS Ski Team have their first race January 5th at Ski Cooper.