I believe Colorado is overall doing better than Utah so far. Utah is on the edge of these storms tracking from Oregon to Colorado. Alta's season to date including October is 35 inches, which is about average. Evan at Utah Open Snow:
Even after the spectacular October in 2004:
I have no evidence that Alta has ever advanced its opening date. Brighton is the one to look for, and its website isn't even tallying new snow yet.
www.mtbachelor.com
I would assume that's POWDR Corp sticking to a fixed opening date rather than how much snow is on the ground. POWDR bought Bachelor in April 2001. As far as snow is concerned, Bachelor should be able to open in early November at least as often as Mammoth does.
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I wonder how much having sizable local population plays a part for Bachelor. Eldora has had the explicit option to open whenever local leadership thinks they can/want during Powdr corp ownership. But that's with lots of 'locals' available to provide solid early season revenue.
Given how exorbitant day-ticket prices have made most people unwilling to ski anywhere unless they have a megapass, how do you define "early-season revenue"? F&B sales?
I suspect very little from the perspective of POWDR Corp bean counters. The Bend locals have season passes, so very early and very late seasons don't add enough day ticket revenue to interest POWDR. The one year 2012 when Bachelor brought in race camps, the mountain was reserved for them the entire month of June and the public including passholders were only allowed the final 3 days June 29 - July 1. That policy would be unthinkable at Mammoth. I consider myself blessed by Mammoth's aggressive stance toward both early and late season, but that attitude is rare in the ski industry these days.
Yes but Bachelor is to the NW what Mammoth is to the Sierra. That includes relatively high base elevation and a less humid climate east of the Cascade Crest. Plus the whole lower mountain at Bachelor is intermediate groomers below tree line that could easily handle snowmaking. Of course, as with all western areas the caveat is how much water supply is available for snowmaking?
Most of them probably don't consider the investment worth it beyond high traffic areas near their bases. Higher up early season snowfall is more abundant and more consistent than most ski regions of the world. I'll bet if I lived there I'd ski more before Christmas than in most places.
Pre-POWDR Bachelor was a remarkably early adopter in that regard considering it never had much of an overcrowding problem. In the 90s/00s I considered Bachelor the Vail of the Northwest in a complimentary way with nearly all high speed lifts and impeccable grooming, enabling insane amounts of vertical including my only day over 50K and two of the other 8 over 40K.
Bachelor being a Powdr corp resort it will get a certain amount of $ per skier day from Ikon. If you have a Bachelor only pass (eg live in Bend) then you are not getting much in incremental revenue, but any Ikon skiers days gets you more $ from Alterra. That plus any F&B, lessons, etc...
I may think Bachelor is a better ski product, but those Portland skiers have Mt. Hood within easy daytrip distance and we have had enough discussion over the years here to know that many skiers draw a hard line between daytrip resorts and those requiring overnight lodging.
Actually just the 2 first years. I recall meeting then marketing director Tom Horrocks at a NASJA meeting in 2009. I inquired why Killington didn't use the gondola as a transport lift for early season access to the Glades triple. He said they had recently built a walkway from the top of the chair to the top of the gondola to enable that. Since then the median opening date has been Nov. 3. That's not so different from the 5 years prior to POWDR's takeover. The consistent October openings were a feature (perhaps now relic) of the last century. This is one of the few examples IMHO of climate impact on the ski industry. Shoulder seasons in the East have always had a lot of rain and marginal temperatures. So if a ski area is pushing the envelope to earliest possible opening date, that date has probably eroded a couple of weeks since the 80s/90s.