Woodbury, CT – Snowmakers were busy overnight at Woodbury Ski Area in Connecticut, where owner Rod Taylor expects to kick off the 2012-13 ski and snowboard season today.

“Woodbury Ski Area has always been one of the first ski areas to open for the season, and this year we will be opening earlier than ever, with our tentative opening for this Saturday,” Taylor confirmed this morning. “This Saturday, for the first time ever, Woodbury Ski Area will have all its activities open at the same time. We will have skiing, snowboarding, summer/winter tubing, zorbing and zip lining.”

Woodbury’s web cam this morning showed a single novice slope in front of the base lodge covered in white, consistent with the resort’s practice in previous seasons in which Woodbury was one of the nation’s first ski areas to welcome the public.

This year, however, the top honor went to Wild Mountain in Taylors Falls, Minn., which last Sunday offered skiing and riding to the public on a similarly small patch of manmade snow serviced by a rope tow. Killington Resort in Vermont will also open today with one trail, the high elevation Rime run, but it will open only for those sliders holding one of the resort’s season passes or Express Cards.