Courtesy Arapahoe Basin Ski Area
ARAPAHOE BASIN SKI AREA — It’s rare that a ski area has two hyped up “opening days” in one season, but after an executive order from Gov. Jared Polis closed all Colorado ski areas in mid-March amid the coronavirus pandemic, A-Basin officials repeatedly said they would try to reopen for late spring skiing.
On Sunday, the ski area got the green light to reopen Wednesday, May 27, after more than two months with restrictions. Since the announcement, A-Basin management and employees have scrambled to prepare a safe reopening day.
The ski area is allowed to have a maximum of 600 skiers per day, and officials set up a reservation system to limit the number of skiers that could show up Wednesday. The system would allow reservations for 570 current season passholders and would sell 30 day pass tickets per day. People could reserve a day of skiing 36 hours in advance of the intended ski day.
For those hoping to ski and snowboard Wednesday, this meant they could make a reservation at 7 p.m. Monday. But the system crashed due to high demand. Forty-two minutes after the reservation system opened, A-Basin posted on Twitter apologizing for the delay and stating that they were not sure when the system would be back up and running.
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At around 8:30 p.m. Monday, the ski area announced that the system was down and would be back up by Tuesday. Those hoping to make reservations were told to check back at midday for more information.
Then at about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, the ski area posted on Twitter that access to the ski area would instead be done via a random drawing for one day at a time. Passholders hoping to ski or snowboard Wednesday as well as those who hoped to purchase a day ticket now can enter into the drawing by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
The ski area’s terrain status page on its website listed High Noon intermediate run as the single open run at A-Basin.
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