My information says that ABasin is closing to work on construction projects. They are building new/bigger parking lots and a tunnel under Hwy 6 so that guests don't have to dodge traffic from the upper lots.
I saw a lot of non 4WD cars have trouble in the parking lots this year. Very rutted mess to say the least. Of course being the 2nd year in a row of shutting rather early for construction, at some point that becomes a trend/new baseline.
I'd be skeptical. Continental Divide Colorado was one of the very few regions with below average snowfall this year. A-Basin was 85% <snip>
Recall that the new Montezuma area didn't even get adequately covered until mid-January and that Paliviccini closed fairly early. June 1 skiing at Mammoth was better and more diverse than A-Basin this year.
Tony,
Snowfall might have been below, but snowpack was solidly average IMHO based on my April trips (must have been some wetter storms in there somewhere). Abasin has become very gun shy in the spring after the wet slide death on Pali back in (2001? or so).
Pali and East Wall the past number of years have had plenty of snow depth to ski, but are closed by patrol much earlier than they used to be. Somewhat of a CYA, IMO as it does not seem to be directly related to temperature profiles, etc... but more of a fairly set time in May. This spring for example being quite cool... so it should have been a much more stable snowpack this year than the avalanche year where the overnight temps were not even hitting freezing (allowing the snowpack to go rotten to quite a depth). Anyway, just my opinion as I am no avalanche guru.
Abasin used to stay open until there were only a couple trails up top with upload/download required. Instead, they closed last week with 3 feet of snow on their lower mtn runs... Plenty to stay open for at least a couple more weeks, if not longer, if they really were interested.
Net, after about mid-May; Mammoth, WB or most other places still open definitely do/will have better terrain options than the Basin. Abasin's prime time is now ~March 1- mid-May.