Beaver Creek opens for 2025-26 season with high spirits, warm cookies and a sprinkle of fresh snow
Beaver Creek celebrated its Opening Day for the 2025-26 season Sunday after the resort had delayed its traditional pre-Thanksgiving opener due to a lack of snow and warmer temperatures. Those few days provided colder temps and additional snowmaking efforts, resulting in an 18-inch base on Opening Day, according to the My Epic app.
“This morning, guests were welcomed with a celebratory first chair banner break at the top of Centennial Express, live music at the base of the lift and the resort’s iconic chocolate chip cookies to set the tone for another memorable winter,” said Lee Nielsen, senior manager of communications at Beaver Creek.
The resort opened by spinning Centennial Express for skiers and riders looking to hit Gold Dust, as well as the more beginner-friendly Haymeadow Express Gondola and the Snowflake Carpet.
A usual cast of characters made it on first chair. Thomas “Trailer Tom” Miller, of Summit County, has plenty of experience camping outside chairlifts overnight in order to claim first chair on Opening Day celebrations across the state.
“I was here. We were right up by the chairlift,” he said. “But they had to groom this whole area and bring the snowcat through here. So we moved several times throughout the night. We’re over here a little bit. They had the fireplace going till 10 p.m., so we were just moving all around.”
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Tom was joined by an Eagle County man known as “First Chair Fred,” who has a similar knack for leading the first lift. As Tom and Fred waited to sit on that first chair, staffers atop the Centennial Lift anxiously and affectionately awaited Fred’s notorious banner “chop” — a move unorthodox enough to qualify as a signature for the local powderhound.
As he got off a loaded chair 72 and cruised into that banner, Fred didn’t disappoint … nor did the groomed corduroy atop Gold Dust and the warm cookies at the base. But the real treat on Beaver Creek’s Opening Day was a snowstorm that carried into the evening, leaving a fresh coat for the mountain as the world’s fastest skiers make their way over for the Stifel Birds of Prey races this upcoming weekend.
