Precipitation on Pikes Peak on Aug. 22, 2025, made the mountain look vastly different from vantage points in Teller County than the previous day, when patches of snow could be seen only in deep crevices.
I spy with my naked eye patches of white amid the shadowy terrain of the north face of Pikes Peak, which is visible from some neighborhoods in Teller County.
But in late August, the cold white stuff we see is left over from last winter, since snow that falls in warmer months disappears quickly.
Not only are the icy remnants not fresh, they're also not fluffy nor particularly pretty. That doesn't stop Pikes Peak Highway tourists from marveling about it, or lowlanders in sight of the alluring 14,115-foot peak from talking about it.
Cavernous gaps in the Pikes Peak granite are magnets for snow to collect, harden like the rock around it and stay put year-round, says Skyler Rorabaugh, manager of the 19-mile winding road to the summit, which the city of Colorado Springs owns and maintains.
While snow lingers in some places on the mountain throughout the year and falls from the sky in all 12 months, he said it's not common for swaths to be spotted from afar in late summer, as is the case now.
"Every year, if you get into shady areas near the summit, there's always snow, but whether it's visible from a distance is atypical," Rorabaugh said. "This summer a lot of it stuck around. The north face gets that morning sun, which isn't the warmest, and it'll stay in those deep crevices that erode over time and get deeper each year."
At that elevation, snow just remains, said John O'Brien, who retired a few months ago after working as a park ranger on Pikes Peak for 50 years.
"The amount of snow of course can vary -- a lot of years the snow disappears by July and you don't see anything," he said. "Then, all of a sudden, one year there's quite a bit of snow still in summer."
Here's another example.
When the Pikes Peak Ski Area -- one of Colorado's first ski resorts -- operated on Pikes Peak from 1939 to 1984, the attraction had multiple rope tows and later a triple chair lift. Slopes initially were carved out near Glen Cove, about halfway to the top, and later relocated farther downhill.
"We had the road open to maybe Elk Park (about 2 miles up), so people could ski down," O'Brien said.
But the mountain had other ideas.
"Pikes Peak is the only 14,000-foot mountain that's not part of the main range, so it has its own climate," O'Brien said. "It's warming considerably, and there wasn't enough snow. They tried to get water to make snow, but it was too dry.
"The year they brought in a helicopter to remove the chair lift it was snowing like crazy. The had to ground the helicopter because of too much snow."
The popular ski area was shuttered due to poor snow conditions and financial issues. Slopes that still can be seen among the trees are now considered a ghost resort.
Rorabaugh is beyond excited when he talks about a new high-tech weather station that's on its way and with Mother Nature's graces will be installed before snow piles up too much over the next month or so.
The first weather monitoring system atop Pikes Peak came in the form of a telegraph station built in 1873 by the U.S. Army Signal Service.
The Pikes Peak Cog Railway assumed responsibility in 1881 and today owns and monitors the existing summit weather station. The cog railway is privately owned by the same company that owns The Gazette.
The system is only semi-operational though, Rorabaugh said. It doesn't work in extreme wind or freezing temperatures, which disable the unheated unit and defeat its purpose.
For three years, just over the time Rorabaugh arrived at the job, his highway crew has been working on obtaining and installing a new gauge, which will be owned by the city of Colorado Springs.
"We'll maintain the new station and share a dashboard," he said. "It's really an intelligent system that will give us more data than we've ever had before."
Moisture will be measured "more robustly" by sonar and radar to provide more accurate snowfall accumulation, which Rorabaugh said has always been challenging to determine on the peak because of its harsh weather and what's been called a meteorological phenomenon.
"With the wind, we'll get 3-4 feet of snow in one area and in another direction have 5-6 inches," he said.
Rangers routinely do hand-held readings up and down the mountain. But the new station won't include physical mechanical pieces that need to be read.
"It'll have power run through sonar and radar, which will keep it heated to a level of accurate readings: temperatures, barometric pressure, wind speeds, relative humidity, ambient temperature," Rorabaugh said.
Entities that will receive the information collected include the cog railway -- which currently shares statistics from its system -- and also Colorado Springs Utilities, the U.S. Army High Altitude Research Lab, Summit House Restaurant operator Aramark Concessions, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and the U.S. Forest Service, which owns most of the land in the recreational corridor.
The system will cost $8,000 to $9,000 at the onset, with more expected for full installation, according to Rorabaugh. The project is a partnership between the city, an information technology group and companies that build the equipment.
Some of the equipment is being ordered from Europe and is "tried-and-true in high elevation, high wind-shear environments," Rorabaugh said.
The new weather station will consist of a 3-foot-tall central antenna pole with hand-selected instruments attached. It will be located at a corner of the visitor center, which was rebuilt in 2021.
Other new elements are soon to come. A high-functioning camera will be installed at the brake station at Glen Cove, where vehicles' brakes are checked to ensure they're working properly on the mountain.
"So we can get a bird's-eye view of snowfall and ice and avalanche conditions," Rorabaugh said. "It allows us to better educate people as they come across the gate."
A lightning detection system also is being erected as part of the weather station.
Rorabaugh is working with the National Weather Service in Pueblo to devise a dashboard on lightning and strikes, so visitors can link to it and better prepare for day- or trip-planning.
"We've had so much rain and monsoons this summer, and we work a lot with search and rescue operations to educate people, and we think having lightning detection at the summit for visitors and workers will help," he said.
This year is shaping up to have a higher than usual number of people needing to be rescued from the peak -- perhaps 15%-20% more, according to Rorabaugh.
Because good weather in town isn't a good indicator of what conditions are like above tree line on the fourteener. Before arriving, check weather websites at mountain-forecast.com or weather.gov, Rorabaugh recommends.
Visitors also can call a regularly updated line for road conditions at 719-385-7325, or the tollgate, 719-684-9138, and talk with a ranger. Detailed information about Pikes Peak, is at https://coloradosprings.gov/drivepikespeak or www.pikespeak.us.com.
"We definitely want people out here exploring and enjoying themselves," Rorabaugh said. "On Aug. 9, we dropped below freezing and had snow. That can be dangerous for people. We ask that everyone be prepared and stay safe."
Precipitation on Friday, covered the mountain in white for a short time.
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