The 3rd Annual Winter on the Rocks was perfect. Although it didn’t start out that way. I couldn’t help but question my own intelligence as I navigated Red Rocks Loop in the dark. The temperature outside was a cool 25°F as my headlights reflected off the fog back through my windshield. The Upper North Lot was a desolate wasteland when I arrived. Creation Rock was invisible behind a curtain of haze. Things became even more eerie when others began to make their way onto the frozen tundra. As other headlights joined my own, they shone on a scene of dark silhouettes making their way South into the abyss. But once inside, the sky reclaimed the clouds, the snow started to fall, and Red Rocks became a stunning spectacle.

It would have been discouraging to see Sam Spiegel’s set fall on an empty amphitheater if that amphitheater wasn’t so breathtakingly beautiful under a thin white layer of dusty snow. Unlike the first year, when it was so cold it was almost unbearable, and unlike last year, when it was almost too warm, this year’s Winter on the Rocks was shaping up to live up to its name. In fact, it will go down in history as the first Red Rocks show where it snowed. And it snowed the whole time. Volunteers shoveled snow off the stairs as it fell, like glitter from the heavens, through Ghostland Observatory’s laser show. Snow greeted the masses as they filed in. And every individual flake had a birdseye view of Jurassic 5’s classic hip-hop performance.

I really didn’t expect to stay until the end of the show, but Ghostland made me forget about the cold and J5 were better than I could have expected. Four and a half hours were spent in this unique winter wonderland and it was still snowing when I found my way back to the Upper North Lot. By that time, Creation Rock was visible and standing tall again — marking the end of another great night on the Rocks. It’s just too bad that we have a few more months until the season really gets going again.