Utah’s Snowbasin on Friday March 20, 2026
A wave of Utah ski resorts announced early closures this week as much of the West watches snow melt by the minute. The Beehive State closures mirror a similar trend in California, which saw multiple ski areas close down for the season earlier than usual due to this winter’s lack of snow and the current late-season heat.
Nordic Valley, Cherry Peak, and Eagle Point all closed abruptly, announcing their last runs had already taken place as early as March 11 (Cherry Peak) and March 15. Eagle Point had been planning to stay open through at least Easter (April 5).
“We were down to only just a handful of runs this weekend, and we’re looking at temperatures of next weekend,” Eagle Point’s Tanner Larsen told the Salt Lake Tribune, “and we’re just like, ‘There’s just no way.’”
The biggest closure is Snowbasin, though, which announced Thursday that March 22 will be its final day of the season. The new closing date comes around a month earlier than usual for the popular resort, which hosted the downhill, Super-G, and combined alpine skiing races for the 2002 Winter Olympics on its 3,000 acres.
“This is not ideal. This is not what we wanted. But Mother Nature had a little bit of a different plan for us this year,” said General Manager Davy Ratchford. The last part of that statement — Mother Nature calling the shots — is one skiers and snowboarders have heard a lot from resorts all over the past week.
At Snowbasin, those plans were for a lot less snow than the typical winter. The resort averages ~325 inches a year. The record 2022-2023 winter, which now seems like a lifetime ago on a different planet altogether, saw over 500 inches at Snow Basin. According to Ski Utah, this year brought just 118 inches.
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That makes four Utah resorts packing up for the winter by the first day of spring, 2026. KSL 5 TV’s Matthew Johnson says Beaver Mountain should make the state’s fifth resort to close before April. Several others around the state are still scheduled to stay open until mid-to-late April, while Brian Head, Solitude, and Snowbird are all penciled in for May closing dates (May 10, May 17, and May 25, respectively). But at this rate, the bigger story would be celebrating anybody operating that late into the year.
