Beartooth Basin Delays Opening Due To Too Much Snow
North America’s only ‘summer-only’ ski area, Beartooth Basin, has delayed its 2018 season by a week due to there being too much snow.
“We have so much snow! Too much in fact – all this snow has given us a big load of lift maintenance to attend to. We are now planning to open on June 2nd. Thanks for understanding. The good news is that we’ll easily be skiing the Basin until mid July!”
The ski area, located on the border of Montana and Wyoming, is one of half-a-dozen or so ski areas in the northern hemisphere worldwide that only open during the summer months, either because the roads that access them are closed mountain passes in winter, or because they get so much snow in winter their lifts are buried, or both.
Similar ski centres around the world include Norway’s three glacier destinations Folgefonn, Stryn and Galdhoppigen; Passo Stelvio in Italy (video shows road clearing there this week ahead of opening on Thursday 31st May) and Gassan in Japan.
Lunedì 21 maggio 2018. Si riparte per una nuova stagione che avrà inizio da giovedì 31 con il programma White Feeling evento che sancisce l’apertura della cittadella Pirovano, sede dell’Università estiva più amata dagli italiani. ⛷🎿
Gepostet von Pirovano Stelvio am Montag, 21. Mai 2018
Beartooth Basin, formerly known as the Red Lodge International Ski Camp, traditionally opens for the US Memorial Day holiday weekend, this weekend, but is unable to this year.
The centre is accessed from the Beartooth Highway, a 68-mile road that snakes across a two mile high plateau after climbing 1,500 vertical metres through a long series of hairpin bends eventually arriving just outside the northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
Snow keeps it closed for more than half the year but the road, considered one of the most beautiful in North America, which was completed in 1937, is cleared and opened from Memorial Day in late May for nearly five months to mid-October.
Besides Beartooth Basin, which has been operating since the 1960s with a handful of tow lifts, and has attracted many famous skiers over the years, ski tourers drop in to numerous chutes and on to other terrain from the edge of the road along the way.
