Resorts Are Closing Early. Others Never Opened at All.

We need to talk about the season that isn't.

Colorado's statewide snowpack is sitting at 63% of normal -- the worst since 1987. Idaho has it worse. And while the big resorts with deep pockets and industrial snowmaking systems are grinding through, the small community ski hills are running out of options.

Some have already made the call. The season's over.

Idaho: Four Down, More Wobbling

Bald Mountain -- "Idaho's greatest little ski hill," open since 1959 -- announced on February 21st that it won't operate this season. At all. Instead of lift tickets, they held a fundraiser that raised $10,000, which will probably go toward their insurance payment. Twenty-one trails, two lifts, 684 feet of vertical. Dark all winter.

Snowhaven managed to open for a single weekend in January before the base melted to dirt and grass. Their manager told the Spokesman Review the math just didn't work: "It would be a lot more work. On top of that, looking at the weather forecast, maybe we get a week or two out of it then it's going to get nice again."

Cottonwood Butte has gone quiet. No social media updates, no opening day. Just silence.

Magic Mountain -- not the Vermont one, not the roller coaster -- installed a brand new magic carpet this offseason. They were excited. The snow never came. They've been hoping for February storms that didn't materialize, and warm weather has been eating what little base remained.

Four ski areas. Combined: 58 trails, 9 lifts, decades of community history. All idle.

Colorado: Better, But Not Good

February brought some relief to Colorado. Purgatory got over 3 feet from a single storm cycle (Feb 17-20), pushing them to 94% terrain open. Vail saw 22 inches. Summit County picked up around a foot.

But zoom out and the picture is bleak. Even after those storms, the statewide snowpack barely budged -- still just 63% of the 30-year median. Some Western Slope basins are hugging record lows. The Colorado River basin readings look like something from a late April melt, not late February.

"Getting these late-season storms is going to help," NWS meteorologist Brianna Bealo told the Colorado Sun. "But there's only so much we can do this late in the season. We probably won't get anywhere close to median."

The Snowmaking Divide

Here's the uncomfortable reality this season keeps hammering home: the gap between big and small is getting wider.

Vail Resorts' spokesperson was blunt about how they survived the early season -- snowmaking. "The company has invested a lot of money in snowmaking, and that's what got us open and moving early season," said John Plack, Vail's senior director of communications.

That's a luxury Bald Mountain and Snowhaven don't have. Industrial snowmaking systems cost millions to install and require reliable water rights, power infrastructure, and temperatures cold enough to run the guns. When your entire annual budget might be in the low six figures, you're at the mercy of whatever the sky decides to drop.

CSU professor Michael Childers, who studies the ski industry, has seen this pattern before. He points to the 1976-77 season as the closest parallel -- a winter when many areas didn't open at all. His prediction for what comes next: short-term cost cutting and reduced hours, followed by heavy investment in snowmaking and summer amenities for the resorts that can afford it.

The ones that can't? They get quieter.

What the Forecast Says

We checked the models this morning. For the next 7 days across the Rockies: basically nothing. GFS, ECMWF, and ICON are all showing near-zero snowfall for Colorado resort elevations through early March. There's a faint signal around March 3rd -- GFS suggests maybe 4cm near Vail, ECMWF about 2cm -- but ICON has it at flat zero.

No storm in the pipeline. No cavalry coming.

The Bigger Picture

Bouldercast called it bluntly this week: "A complete failure of winter across the West." And without a major spring pattern shift -- which models currently don't support -- the deficits from this season will ripple through the rest of 2026. Water supply, wildfire risk, agriculture, tourism. All connected.

For skiers, the takeaway is simple: if you've got snow near you right now, go ski it. The base areas that got February storms are in decent shape today. That window won't stay open forever.

And for the small hills that went dark this winter -- the Bald Mountains and Snowhavens of the world -- spring will come with hard conversations about next season. About whether the investment makes sense when winters keep getting shorter and less reliable. About what a community ski hill means when the snow stops showing up.

Those are conversations worth having. Even if nobody wants to start them.

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Sources: Unofficial Networks, Colorado Sun, Aspen Public Radio / RMCR, Bouldercast, NWS Grand Junction, NRCS SNOTEL, Open-Meteo forecast data.