Vail Resort will open for skiing on Friday and Purgatory will follow on Saturday, bringing the number of operating ski areas in Colorado to 10.
Steamboat will open next weekend and eight more resorts are scheduled to open during Thanksgiving week. They are Beaver Creek, Crested Butte, Aspen, Snowmass, Telluride, Granby Ranch, Powderhorn and Howelsen Hill.
Vaill will open at 9 a.m. on Friday with more than 100 acres of terrain, including the Swingsville and Ramshorn trails. Both gondolas will be in operation, providing access to beginner and intermediate terrain. Vail has received nearly two feet of snow this month, which has been supplemented with snowmaking.
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Purgatory has received 47 inches of natural snow this season, and its base depth of 27 inches is more than twice its annual average for this time of year.
Little snow is forecast for Colorado over the next few days, according to the OpenSnow forecasting and reporting service.
“Thursday and Friday will be dry and warm with daytime highs in the 30s,” OpenSnow founding meteorologist Joel Gratz wrote in his Thursday morning forecast. “Saturday, Sunday, and Monday will be cooler with highs in the 20s and a few snow showers. Then on Tuesday, a storm will bring snow, though the latest models show totals generally under six inches. After that, we’ll likely see drier and cooler weather through the later part of November.”