Multiple Colo Resorts opening early - Including Eldora

[EMSC]

Quite a bit of early season snow in Colo. Last I heard (prior to todays snow reports), Colo was already at the same SWE levels as we were by end of Dec last season. Which goes to show both how much snow is falling as well as how horrible last years early season was.

Breck and Keystone as well as Eldora are opening on Nov 7th - tomorrow. For the former two they moved the date up by only two days, for Eldora, I've been aware of the big push to open early for a while and which pulls in the date by 9 days from the previously scheduled 16th.

Surprisingly Eldora is opening with two intermediate trails off the top and no beginner terrain. They will be the first Ikon pass based resort to open in Colo (possibly the entire west?). Kudo's to the team up there.

In other Ikon pass resort news... Copper is ridiculously behind in getting their two new lifts installed. Apparently parts are still in transit from Europe. S0 when they do open over there it will be using the Super B lift, skiing down the normal runs toward the center village but then taking skip road back over to the Super B. even more interesting they are saying that one of the two lifts probably won't even be open by Turkey Day weekend.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Usually these early storms are not big enough to move the needle in terms of opening terrain in Colorado. But this time might be an exception: https://opensnow.com/dailysnow/chase/post/11867

It will be interesting to see how much terrain opens for the upcoming weekend. If Breck really got 53 inches it should be much more than the WROD. But it's usually like Chinese water torture waiting for Loveland and A-Basin to open significant terrain. A-Basin is an overall steep mountain but Loveland is not. Loveland reports 50 inches snow in the past week and a 35 inch base, yet still has only 6 runs open (really 3 top to bottom if you look at the trail map) on one chair.

Loveland seems to be the opposite extreme from Wolf Creek in terms of opening terrain. In fairness it probably makes sense for Loveland to pack and groom the recent snow to preserve as much of it as possible. I'll retract the above comments as jumping the gun if there is significant expansion for the weekend.

A-Basin's progress is detailed on Al's Blog: http://arapahoebasin.blogspot.com/2018/ ... -news.html It looks like A-Basin will expand its vertical to the top of the mountain by this weekend. With the Epic passes I suspect weekend crowds on both lifts and runs will still be very high. But if I lived in Denver metro I would definitely be skiing midweek when A-Basin opens top-to-bottom.

Loveland and A-Basin have an ideal climate for making snow earlier than anywhere else. I suspect that their water supply falls short of many other western ski areas though. Al references the possibility of a few runs opening before too long on natural now only.

In the comments there is a rumor that the Vail/A-Basin Epic Pass agreement will end after the upcoming 2018-19 season. Does EMSC know anything about that?

 

[EMSC]

It will be interesting to see how much terrain opens for the upcoming weekend.

It certainly will be interesting. Breck is already at something like 180 acres of terrain open. Certainly not a lot compared to total acreage available, but then it is a weekday in very early Nov too. The big guess by each resort boss will be how many lifts should they pay to spin up this early (eg how many people will show).

Abasin should open Lenawee by the weekend, Loveland likely will have chairs 2 and 6 open (not sure about ptarmigan), Eldora should have beginner terrain and at least one more run off the top for the weekend too. The pics and video's I've seen are impressive and it looks like mid-winter up in the mtns. Quite chilly too so snowmaking is a round the clock effort where needed (only in the 30's in Denver today).

 

[ChrisC]

Looks like things are off to a good start. Fingers crossed that it continues.

I was never sure how extensive the snowmaking was at ABasin or Loveland.

Unfortunately I have somewhat given up early season skiing - but enjoy April.

 

[ChrisC]

In other Ikon pass resort news... Copper is ridiculously behind in getting their two new lifts installed. Apparently parts are still in transit from Europe. S0 when they do open over there it will be using the Super B lift, skiing down the normal runs toward the center village but then taking skip road back over to the Super B. even more interesting they are saying that one of the two lifts probably won't even be open by Turkey Day weekend.

That seems like a big mess, but very ambitious to try to replace both core lifts in one year.