Ski season has officially started: 1st US ski resort is now open

30.10.2023 - 16:25 / thepointsguy.com

Each year, there's an unofficial race to see which ski resort will be the first one in the United States to start turning its lifts up and down the mountain.

Wolf Creek Ski Area, Keystone Resort and Arapahoe Basin Ski Area are often in the running to be the first to get those chairs heading up the slopes. Location, weather and snow-making capabilities are often what dictates who can pull it off the fastest.

While the race is concluding a little later than it has in some recent years, we now have our winner for the first ski resort to open for the 2023-2024 ski season.

The technical winner is Ski Ward Ski Area — a 220-foot vertical ski resort less than an hour outside of Boston in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. However, this one-day opening on Oct. 22 didn't give skiers and riders the real mountain feel as it included just a short (and narrow) run with 100% man-made snow.

So we'll also include the first larger resort opening with chairlift service: Arapahoe Basin, also known as A-Basin, in Colorado. With the first turns taking place Sunday, ski season is officially here.

However, if you are prepping for your first ski trip, you may want to wait a little longer as the early season is not a beginner-friendly time to ski, with generally very limited terrain available. On A-Basin's opening day, despite a foot of fresh powder, only the Black Mountain Express lift and the High Noon run were operating.

Related: 5 things to know before taking your 1st ski trip

Fortunately, many other resorts out west also saw over a foot of snow over the weekend, which will significantly help these mountains continue to build their base and move toward opening day.

As of now, there are a few projected opening dates over the next week, but nothing official. With the combination of some natural snow and snow-making in full effect, there's a good chance we will see lifts turning at Keystone, Winter Park Resort, Wolf Creek and Loveland Ski Area in the near future. And when Keystone opens, it usually opens with the over-3-mile, beginner-friendly Schoolmarm run in play. You'll want to pay attention to the social media pages for these and other resorts to get a real-time feed of the first tracks of the season.

After that, there are many resorts hoping to open for Veterans Day weekend, such as Vail Ski Resort, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, Brighton Resort, Breckenridge Ski Resort and Heavenly Mountain Resort.

On the East Coast, you'll have to wait a few more weeks before ski resorts are really open. Some are looking to open mid-November — such as Killington Resort, Sunday River Resort, Sugarloaf and Mount Snow — while others won't be open until December. And similar to what we saw with A-Basin, terrain will likely be extremely limited at