Aspen Closed on Bare Grass. A Pennsylvania Resort Is Making Snow. This Season Broke Reality.

The New York Times published a piece on Sunday titled "A Rocky, Snow-Barren Ski Season Concludes in Colorado." It described bare grass greeting skiers at Aspen Mountain on closing day, puddles forming at the summit, and the annual "Buck-Off" mogul event moved from Ridge of Bell to Silver Dip because -- well -- Ridge of Bell didn't have enough snow to host it.

Meanwhile, 800 miles to the west, Mammoth Mountain was sitting under 30 fresh inches with a 121-inch base and 103 runs open. Planning for Memorial Day.

And 1,800 miles east of Aspen, a Poconos ski resort in Pennsylvania was firing up its snowguns. In April. On purpose.

This is the 2025-26 ski season. It stopped making sense around January and never recovered.

The Aspen Funeral

Aspen Mountain's closing day on April 19 was supposed to be a celebration. Instead it was a wake.

Aspen Skiing Co. had already been forced to shutter its other three mountains -- Snowmass, Highlands, and Buttermilk -- early. Ajax held on to its scheduled closing date, but "held on" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The terrain was limited. The snow was slush. The vibe was one of those parties where everyone's laughing too hard because the alternative is crying.

The Aspen Daily News headline read: "And Then There Were None."

Colorado -- a state that routinely has a dozen resorts open into May -- is down to three: Arapahoe Basin, Copper Mountain, and Loveland. That's it. Copper extended to May 3. Loveland closes Saturday. A-Basin is doing its usual thing where they refuse to name a closing date, but with 11 of 147 trails open, the math isn't great.

Breckenridge and Winter Park also closed April 19. In a normal season, they'd both run into mid-May minimum. This year, they were running on fumes and snowmaking miracles.

The Mammoth Resurrection

Contrast that with what's happening in the Eastern Sierra.

Mammoth Mountain got 30 inches from the mid-April storm, and another 8-12 inches is falling today from a new system that's been hammering the Sierra since yesterday. The resort has 103 runs open, a packed-powder base, and a full calendar of spring events running through Memorial Day weekend.

Palisades Tahoe -- across the Sierra -- picked up two feet last week and has 36 trails and 11 lifts going. They're hosting Cushing's Crossing, their legendary pond-skim event, this Saturday.

This is the same California that was at 15% snowpack a month ago. The same state where people were writing off the ski season in early March. Now it's the best skiing in America by a wide margin.

The driest winters really do produce the wettest springs. Or at least the most ironic ones.

The Camelback Miracle

Here's where the timeline goes full "Twilight Zone."

Camelback Resort in Tannersville, Pennsylvania -- a Poconos ski area with a summit elevation of 2,133 feet -- is currently 11 days past the longest operating season in its 63-year history. They have a 10-foot base on their Cliffhanger run. And on Sunday night, April 20, they turned the snowguns back on.

In April. At 2,133 feet. In Pennsylvania.

General Manager Jason Bays posted an open letter explaining why:

"We're making snow tonight. On April 20. In Pennsylvania. Yes, it might sound a little crazy. And yes... we probably are."

His reasons were refreshingly honest: they want the longest season in Pennsylvania, full stop. Their passholders showed up all season and this is how they're returning the favor. Their snowmaking ponds are overfull and this draws them down responsibly. And -- his words -- "this is just fun."

Guests are showing up from Nashville and Cleveland to ski in the Poconos. In late April. While Aspen sits on bare grass.

Read that sentence again.

This Week's Storm: One Last Gift

Mother Nature apparently isn't done messing with the timeline. A storm system is crossing the West this week, and the last holdouts are about to get refreshed:

• Big Sky, MT: 13-20 inches forecast Wednesday through Friday. They're only open weekends, so this storm is perfectly timed for their closing weekend (April 25-26). Lift tickets are 40% off.
• Mammoth Mountain, CA: 8-12+ inches Tuesday through Wednesday, with traces continuing through the weekend. Memorial Day still looks solid.
• Palisades Tahoe, CA: 9-13 inches this week. Cushing's Crossing on Saturday just got a lot more interesting.
• Snowbird, UT: 10 inches forecast through Thursday. The Tram is still spinning.
• Brighton, UT: Open through May 3 with $49 lift tickets. Got 11 new inches last week.
• Copper Mountain, CO: Extended to May 3, $49 tickets for the final week. 17 runs, three lifts.

If you're flexible and have a car, this might be the best late-April skiing deal in years. Nobody's there. The prices are cheap. And fresh snow is falling on spring corn -- which, for the uninitiated, is basically nature's groomer.

The East Coast Is Winning (Still)

Here's another sentence nobody expected to write this season: the East Coast might have more total ski days left than Colorado.

Between Camelback (PA, no closing date), Killington (VT, aiming for May+), Sugarloaf (ME, closing April 26), and a handful of others still running weekend operations, the eastern half of the country is putting up a fight that would've been unimaginable in November.

When we wrote about Vermont outlasting Colorado on April 10, it felt like a novelty. Two weeks later, it's just the reality. The East didn't have a great winter either -- but it had a cold one. And cold beats dry every time when you have snowguns.

What It All Means

The 2025-26 season was a stress test. Some resorts passed it (Mammoth, the Utah resorts, Camelback's snowmaking team). Some didn't (everything Vail touches in Colorado, basically). The ones that survived did so through a combination of elevation, latitude, snowmaking investment, and sheer stubbornness.

If you're planning to ski this weekend -- and you should, because the window is closing fast -- here's the shortlist:

Closing April 26 (last call): Loveland, Big Sky (weekends), Alta, Crystal Mountain, Alyeska, Brian Head, Sugarloaf

Making it to May: Copper Mountain (May 3), Brighton (May 3), Snowbird (weekends through May 25)

The long game: Mammoth (May 25), Palisades Tahoe (TBD), Timberline (targeting July 19), A-Basin (TBD)

Wild cards: Camelback (PA, record season still going), Killington (VT, because Killington)

The NYT called this a "snow-barren" season. They're not wrong about Colorado. But the full picture is weirder than that. It's a season where Pennsylvania out-skied Aspen, where the worst winter in 50 years produced 30-inch April storms, and where the last powder day of the year might be this Thursday at Big Sky.

Nothing about it made sense. And honestly? The skiing this week might be the best of the entire year.

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Still tracking every open resort at Ski This Week. Our prediction markets have one final market running -- Mammoth Mountain season total, closing May 15. Place your bet before the snow stops falling.