US 23-24 Ski Season Starts Sunday

The US and North American ski season is expected to start on Sunday morning in Colorado at Arapahoe Basin ski area, if no one else beats them to it.

After a warm spell in mid-October following a promising start to the month for snowmaking and some natural snowfall there had been concerns that nowhere would manage to open in October this year, but it has now turned colder again.

“There is nothing I enjoy more than seeing people have fun skiing and riding. To get open takes an extraordinary amount of work and coordination by all departments and the entire staff. In particular, the snowmakers, the cat drivers, the ski patrol, lift operations and lift maintenance have to shift gears on very short notice and capitalize on ever changing weather conditions to get the mountain open. They didn’t miss a beat this month. Here’s to a great season,” said Arapahoe Basin’s COO Alan Henceroth.

Arapahoe Basin, one of the highest ski resorts in the USA and the world, will open for the season, Sunday, October 29 at 8:30 AM with Black Mountain Express and the High Noon trail.

Some US media focused on the small ski area of Ski Ward in Massachusetts making snow with an all-weather snowmaking machine a week ago to briefly create a small snow area and say this was the first area to open for 23-24. The snow pile has since melted in +80s F temperatures.

Those reports do not seem to count Trollhaugen ski area in Wisconsin which had a snow rail jam three weeks ago on a patch of snow saved under cover from last season (top right of picture below).

There have been snowier conditions this past week further north and west than Colorado with some Western Canadian areas posting over 30cm (a foot) of snowfall. The first scheduled to open is Mt Norquay near Banff in Alberta (pictured below earlier this week) which hopes to open a week today, on November 4th.