Austria’s Michael Walchhofer set the fastest time in Thursday’s second and final training run for the Birds of Prey World Cup downhill race at Beaver Creek, Colorado.

After more than two feet of snow fell on the slopes of Colorado in recent days, the first of the famous ski state’s larger international destination ski resorts will begin opening today.

Copper Mountain and Keystone will join three small areas that have already been open for several weeks, Arapahoe Basin, Loveland and Wolf Creek.

Keystone Resort announced it will open earlier than planned, today November 5th, thanks to fresh snow on the mountain and a spate of cold temperatures that provided ideal conditions for Keystone’s talented snowmaking team.

So there I was, lying in a bed big enough for giants, with crisp cotton sheets. Having done a few hours’ hiking followed by the best massage in the world, I was thinking in an American accent: ‘Yup, this is, “Not exactly roughing it”.’ For that is the Beaver Creek motto.

Summer bookings at mountain destinations in Colorado and other Western high-country areas are down 15 percent from a year ago, echoing the ski-season slump, the Mountain Travel Research Program (MTRiP) reported Tuesday.

Colorado winter resorts recorded 11.85 million skier and snowboarder visits during the just-completed 2008–09 season, down 5.5 percent from last year, Colorado Ski Country USA reported Thursday. But the state’s ski resorts had an uptick in visits by Front Range residents, and Melanie Mills, Ski Country’s president and CEO, pronounced herself “very happy with where visitation is for this season.”

A series of unusual spring dust storms has left the snowcapped mountains of western Colorado stained brown and red, even a bit pink. The dust is speeding up the runoff to rivers that supply millions of people with water and raising fears of an increasingly arid West.