Brian Head Delays Utah’s Opening Day of the Season, Continues Snowmaking Push

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In Utah, skiers will be waiting a little longer for the season to start.

Brian Head, which had an ambitious opening date of November 6, will no longer open this week despite the start of snowmaking on Navajo Mountain. A new opening date hasn’t been set.

In a release, the resort said that it’s evaluating conditions daily and plans to open as soon as possible.

“We’ve had some good early season snow, and the improvements we made on Navajo Mountain are helping our crews make the most of every snowmaking opportunity,” said Tom Pettigrew, general manager at Brian Head Resort, in the email. “We’re taking things day by day, and we can’t wait to get the lifts spinning and welcome everyone back.”

Images shared by Brian Head showed widespread snow coverage on Tuesday and Wednesday but it wasn’t quite enough to start welcoming skiers yet. The webcam for the Navajo Express base wasn’t live when we checked.

“We got two good nights of snowmaking over the last two days, but it hasn’t been quite cold enough to build the base we need. We got close, but we’re not quite ready,” a social media post from Brian Head reads.

For Brian Head, the coming days look crisp with temperatures dipping below freezing at night, a potential boon for snowmaking. No natural snow is forecasted the rest of this week, according to the National Weather Service.

Had Brian Head opened on November 6, it would’ve beat out other resorts in the state by a wide margin. The next planned openings are for Alta Ski Area, Park City, and Solitude Mountain Resort on November 20.

While Brian Head, along with other resorts in Utah, faced delays at the start of last winter, it has a track record for early openings: Brian Head became the first ski resort in Utah to open in 2024 on November 8.

Outside of Utah, the ski season is getting underway. In Colorado, Arapahoe Basin and Keystone are off to the races. So is Lake Louise in Alberta.

A few more resorts on the West Coast are set to join the party this week. Mt. Rose, Nevada, and Mammoth Mountain, California, open on November 6 and November 5, respectively.

Beyond the smaller group of frontrunners, the ski season typically gets underway in full towards the end of November, with major hotspots like Whistler Blackcomb, Palisades Tahoe, and Big Sky shooting for that window.

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This story was originally published by POWDER on Nov 4, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add POWDER as a Preferred Source by clicking here.