A quick look at the 2012-2013 skier numbers recently reported by Colorado Ski Country USA reminds of the of famous scene in Field of Dreams in which Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice while walking through his cornfield. “If you build it, he will come,” the voice says. It seems that things aren’t so different when it comes to Colorado and skiing. In this case, the voice might whisper something like: “If it snows, they will come.”

After a rough 2011-2012 ski season, thanks in large part to bel0w average snow totals, the 21 member resorts of Colorado Ski Country USA—which includes popular mountains such as Arapahoe Basin, Loveland, Winter Park, and Copper Mountain—saw a 3.8 percent uptick in skier vists this past season. The 3.8 percent figure equates to about 235,000 additional skiers this year compared to last year. (Vail Resorts and its mountains Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Keystone are not members of Colorado Ski Country USA.)

“In-state visitors tend to lead the charge in the beginning of the season, but an unusually warm fall kept local skiers and riders from logging in those early ski days,” said Melanie Mills, president and CEO of Colorado Ski Country USA in a statement. “It wasn’t until mid-December that the snow really started to show up, but it showed up big time and made for a quintessential Colorado winter ski holiday at resorts. We are very pleased with where we ended up for the 2012-2013 season and are thrilled to see such a strong recovery trend for both Colorado and the ski nation.”

So, this news just seems to confirm what we already knew: Coloradans and out-of-state visitors hit the slopes when it snows. If there’s no snow, well, who wants to fight I-70 traffic only to ski patches of ice covered with manufactured snow? Yeah, not us either.

—Image courtesy of Shutterstock