TL;DR
Winter has officially started in North America, and it is one blue run long. On Wednesday 28 October, Arapahoe Basin fired up the Black Mountain Express at around 10:30 am after a surprise announcement just hours earlier, becoming the first major North American resort open for 2026/27. Cold nights, a dusting of natural snow and a lot of snowmaking made it happen in the resort’s 80th winter. More terrain is promised as the snow guns keep running.
Colorado has its first chairlift-served skiing of the season, and it comes in the form of a single blue run.
Arapahoe Basin opened for the 2026/27 winter on Wednesday 28 October, making it the first major ski resort in North America to start regular operations. The resort had scheduled lifts to start turning at 11:00 am local time, but the first chair went up closer to 10:30 am. The announcement itself only landed on the morning of opening day, which caught most of Colorado’s skiers off guard. For anyone holding an Ikon Pass, it also makes A-Basin the first of the pass’s destinations to open this season.
One lift, one run
The Black Mountain Express chairlift is the only lift running, and it serves High Noon, a blue run. That is one of the resort’s nine lifts and one of its 147 runs. It is a modest start on paper, though anyone who has watched the resort’s social feeds in October knows this is the point at which the ski season is considered to have begun.
Reports from on mountain, described a thin crowd of around 30 people at the first lift start. Word was still travelling at that stage, and by noon several hundred people were skiing. The base area had a DJ handing out bacon, and the snow on High Noon was reported to be in better shape than the speed of the opening suggested, with no bare patches along the run.
