Colorado's Ski Season Is Open: A-Basin Took First Chair, Keystone Follows on Friday

Colorado's 2026-27 ski season is officially underway. Arapahoe Basin sent its first skiers up the Black Mountain Express at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 28 — the first major ski area in North America to open for the season — starting its 80th winter with laps on High Noon, its classic early-season intermediate run (Colorado Ski Country USA). Costumes, parking-lot breakfasts and a crowd that treats a single white ribbon as a state holiday: opening day at The Legend is a Colorado tradition, and this year it arrived first.

The season doubles on Friday. Keystone confirmed on Thursday that it opens Friday, October 30, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with more than two miles of skiing and riding on Schoolmarm and Silver Spoon, laps off the Montezuma Express, and uploading and downloading on the River Run Gondola (POWDER; SnowBrains). A year ago Keystone won the first-to-open race by less than a day. This year, A-Basin took the crown back.

Opening week is a ribbon, not a mountain, and both resorts are upfront about it. A-Basin's day-one offering is one lift and one run, and it is a snowmaking product: Colorado crews fired their guns on October 15, rode out a warm stretch that shut the guns down for days, and got a boost from a Sunday-night storm that left 3 inches of natural snow at A-Basin before the final push (SnowBrains). A-Basin is now open seven days a week, with terrain added as conditions allow.

Keystone's two miles come with a hike-to terrain park at the top of Scout, free donuts and coffee for the opening crowd, specials at Summit House and a live DJ at the base — plus the standard early-season fine print: uphill access remains closed until designated routes open, and skiers download the gondola at the end of the day rather than skiing to the base. Thin cover, short hours, and the genuine pleasure of being early: that is the trade, and regulars make it with open eyes.

The A-Basin–Keystone race is Colorado's October ritual, and it flips often enough to stay interesting. Last season Keystone announced a same-day opening on October 25, 2025 and beat A-Basin to first turns by a day; earlier this week neither mountain had announced a date at all, and A-Basin's Wednesday move settled the argument for 2026.

The next fixed dates on the calendar belong to Breckenridge and Copper Mountain on November 6, with the rest of the continent's majors landing through November — the full rundown is in our 2026-27 ski season opening dates guide, which also tracks which resorts' webcams to watch as their days approach.

This is the week the camera habit pays for itself. WorldEye's ski webcams page gathers both resorts' feeds in one place: Arapahoe Basin for the High Noon ribbon and the base-area scene, Keystone for Schoolmarm, the gondola and the Montezuma maze. Summit for visibility and wind, base for the snow surface and the lift lines, and the road cameras for the US-6 and I-70 drive — a two-minute circuit that tells you whether opening week is a ski day or a spectacle day.

Check twice: the night before, to see whether the guns are running and the ribbon is holding, and again in the morning before you commit to the drive. Early-season conditions change faster than any snow report, and the cameras are the only source that shows you the mountain as it is, not as it was announced.