The snow guns have been fired up across North America. One of the most brutally dry and warm winters ever for much of the continent is mercifully behind us. No doubt, skiers, snowboarders, lifties, ski patrollers, and resort managers are a little more ready than usual for the annual holiday that is Opening Day.
But which resort is going to open first? And does it even matter?
Mother Nature ultimately decides, and elevation determines whether you’re in the race. But that doesn’t stop resorts from controlling what they can. We can look to the friendly rivalry between Colorado’s Keystone and Arapahoe Basin for proof that being first matters and resorts do what they can to earn those bragging rights.
Keystone and Arapahoe Basin are separated by fewer than 10 miles just off Colorado’s I-70 with base elevations of 9,280 feet (Keystone) and 10,780 feet (Arapahoe Basin). Keystone’s managed to beat its neighbor to the punch more than once despite its lower elevation. The resort is expected to make that happen again this year even though its only official PR declaration on the matter is “as soon as possible.” There’s no date picked out, but the snow guns were turned on October 15 and tickets have been available online for skiers and riders to ride lifts as early as October 24.
“We will be open for winter asap!” is the same line from A-Basin. That mountain is selling tickets online that are good for lift rides as soon as November 1.
Last year’s race to open was an entertaining one. A-Basin was scheduled to open on Sunday, October 26, until Keystone dropped ropes for a last-minute afternoon opening on October 25. Keystone held a shortened opening day from 3-6 p.m. and stole the bragging rights from its neighbors.
Cold move.
“We might have done some shenanigans in the past,” Arapahoe Basin President Al Henceroth admitted. A-Basin pulled a similar last-minute move back in 2019 and beat Keystone to the punch. “When you do something like that, you know it’s going to come back around. So good for them.”
The rivalry between Arapahoe Basin and Keystone is a friendly one, and whoever takes the title in a given season is often the first in the entire United States. The bragging rights are an obvious marketing tool, so the incentive is there. Most skiers and boarders are going to remember which resort closest to them gets the season started first year-to-year. And marketing juice aside, as one resort exec told me bluntly, “When your business is open for business, that’s better for business.”
That came from Tom Pettigrew, general manager of Utah’s Brian Head Resort, which has invested $2 million in snowmaking and lift infrastructure since last season. Some of those investments will play a role in the 600-acre resort’s efforts to be Utah’s first to host an opening day for the fourth season in a row. The upgrades include things like building a new pipeline that allows crews to operate up to 24 of its snow guns at once on Navajo Mountain.
“With a more efficient snowmaking system on Navajo Mountain, we can take advantage of favorable temperatures, open beginner terrain faster and build on natural snowfall when storms arrive,” Pettigrew said back in August when the upgrades were announced.
For resorts that do open earlier than most, snowmaking infrastructure is something they want people to know about. The more they can do to maximize conditions in a given season, the longer they can extend that season on both ends.
When Pettigrew and I spoke in September, he outlined how crews begin offseason maintenance on things like chairlifts and snowcats in the spring, as some trails and chairs are beginning to shut down for the season. Opening Day is already several months in the making long before we get our own first laps of the season.
In many ways, the whole first Opening Day achievement is a year-long advertisement for the attention and care a resort gives to its terrain. That’s a badge of honor worth wearing proudly in the ski industry.
“It’s what we all live for,” Pettigrew says. “Our groomers, they ski and ride them every day. They take pride in the surface that they can create, you know? Our snowmakers are working at night, and they’re proud of the product they put out on the hill. (The same for) our maintenance team and the vehicle maintenance team that works on our equipment.”
Pettigrew’s team at Brian Head has November 6 targeted for this year’s Opening Day. If the resort hits that goal with a combination of Mother Nature’s favor and months of hard work, it probably will be Utah’s first ski resort to open. Brian Head may have as much as a two-week head start on the rest of the state this winter.
So yeah, being first in a given state, or the bigger prize, the entire nation, is certainly worth bragging about. And let’s not forget, the people that make this happen are just as eager to get their first day in as you are.
“We’re also individually passionate about being able to slide on snow,” Pettigrew says. “There’s maybe a little bit of selfishness in that too. We want to go skiing or snowboarding.”
