Crested Butte, Colorado, Kicks Off Snowmaking as 2026-27 Ski Season Approaches

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At Crested Butte, the party’s on.

The Colorado ski resort announced on Tuesday, October 27, that it fired up its snowmaking system Monday night, “thanks to colder temps, a little help from Mother Nature, and the hard work of our Snowmaking and Mountain Operations teams.”

The post also included scenes of snow guns happily blowing snow and shots of higher-altitude peaks caked in snow.

The pre-season effort comes around a month ahead of Crested Butte’s planned opening day: November 25.

So, while the base area at the resort remains green, Crested Butte still has plenty of time to stack snow. And the coming days are set to bring below freezing temperatures, at least at night and at higher elevations.

Crested Butte’s snowmaking efforts could also benefit from a widespread storm system set to hit the West in the coming days.

According to a blog post Crested Butte shared in 2023, the latest snowmaking push arrived a little ahead of schedule. The post noted that snowmaking typically starts on November 1 and continues through around January 1, with the goal of creating a skiable base on the affected trails.

Once that’s complete, the crew shuts down the snow guns and puts away the equipment for the season. Many of them move over to grooming operations afterward. Unsurprisingly, the resort’s not the only one in Colorado already thinking about opening day.

As of Tuesday morning, the state’s regular frontrunners, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin, are blowing snow, per their webcams.

“I am looking at the weather forecasts, streamflows and pumping rates very closely—doing a lot of math. I am getting excited,” wrote Arapahoe Basin’s COO, Al Henceroth, in a blog post Tuesday morning.

And if Henceroth’s getting excited, we should be, too.

Beaver Creek’s also begun snowmaking with the goal of opening on November 25.

In the meantime, now might be a good time to start doing squats. The ski season has a funny way of sneaking up on us, and it could get underway before we know it.

Arapahoe Basin and Keystone tend to announce their opening dates just ahead of opening, so don’t be too surprised if it comes out of the blue.

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This story was originally published by POWDER on Oct 27, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add POWDER as a Preferred Source by clicking here.