We salute and thank our veterans today….so Boreal kicked the season off in California on Friday as expected. Photo above taken live this morning; Boreal gets this weird see-saw winter weather with super warm days and positively frigid nights. Now the odd thing is that they often have mild summer days, followed by nights that are almost too warm. Anyway, they’ve got a couple things going on and while it may not look pretty, it is a beautiful sight…Lake Louise race organizing committee trying again for positive snow control for the men’s FIS World Cup downhill and super-G races scheduled for the end of the month. Chief Race Director Hannes Trinkl postponed the assessment due to overly warm conditions, so let’s hope today is kinder to our Canadian hosts. Men’s downhill and super-G races are scheduled to take place Saturday, November 24th and Sunday, November 25th, while ladies’ downhill races are scheduled for Friday & Saturday November 30th – December 1st, followed by a ladies super-G on Sunday 12/2…back to Cali, Mammoth Mountain wasn’t far behind Boreal, they opened this weekend and are serving up the Broadway Express daily from 8:30AM-4PM with access to a 12-18 inch base on Broadway and a couple of terrain park features…back east, cold snap has the guns on at a bunch of resorts — including the New York State owned triumvirate of Belleayre, Gore, and Whiteface…up in Maine, Sunday River kicks off daily operations today with the Locke Mountain Triple serving top-to-bottom terrain on T2 and the Punches. Riv sez they’re gonna open the Barker Mountain Express tomorrow, which will give them bragging rights on two mountains. Their snowmaking team will soon expand onto Spruce Peak and down onto South Ridge, with plans to open those up for Thanksgiving…Buck Hill Minnesota kicked off their season on Saturday, it’s the real deal and they’re open evenings through the week…over in Michigan, Caberfae Peaks had the guns on over the weekend, but temps warmed up a bit last night so they’re on hold for now. If you look over in the right hand column and click on their webcam feed, you can see that they made significant progress…hold the phone, Mad River Glen Vermont had snowmaking going this past weekend. That’s not a typo — MRG had some fan guns going on their Race Hill. And in true “ski it if you can” fashion, there was so much natural snow elsewhere on Gen’l Stark Mountain that the earn-your-turns crowd was all over the hill yesterday and the base area is all tracked out…northern Vermont Jay Peak also seeing a lot of uphill traffic, they’ve got snowmaking on top-to-bottom on Jet and we just may see them open on Friday. No official word yet…down in the mid-Atlantic, I was thinking that Woody & Co. are still enjoying mint juleps on the porch but turns out that’s not the case — Massanutten Resort in Central Virginia did a fairly serious test this weekend, wouldn’t be surprised if they had something in play for Thanksgiving. Wintergreen also did a test this weekend on Dobie, albeit not as aggressive nor impressive as Massanutten’s. Regardless, WTG is more likely to be first to open in the Commonwealth when the time comes…and to follow up, Trollhaugen indeed opened Saturday, first in Wisconsin…late update: Lake Louise passed snow control this morning, the schedule will proceed as listed above, weather permitting of course.