In what promises to be a most unusual ski season in Colorado due to COVID-19, it might also be an unusually late kickoff.

With the race to opening day going strong and (hopefully) coming up soon, Keystone Resort is ramping up the competition with new snowmaking technology. The resort just replaced 50 of their snow guns, which were previously manual or semi-automatic, with new high-efficiency and fully automatic snow guns. 

A midweek snowstorm has dropped up to 20 inches on the slopes of Wolf Creek, prompting the management to say they will spin the lower beginner lift on Saturday (Oct. 13).

Copper Mountain Resort officially kicked off the 2018-19 snowmaking season early Sunday morning near the top of the Excelerator lift on Andy’s Encore trail. Meanwhile, Loveland Ski Area received three inches of new snow, and just over the Continental Divide, Arapahoe Basin also reported a fresh coat of snow.

After taking the first steps towards doubling the resort’s snowmaking capacity this summer, Sunday River completed its annual fall systems test this morning starting at 6:15 a.m. In the latest news in the #RaceTo Open, the Maine resort typically opens for skiing and snowboarding on or around Halloween, and this morning’s cold temperatures provided the perfect opportunity to put the new equipment to the test on the Lower Downdraft trail.

October has arrived, and with it comes the annual #RaceToOpen between Colorado’s Loveland Ski Area and Arapahoe Basin, which has claimed the crown outright the past two years.