Advice on driving west to ski

[egieszl]

Thanks for the feedback! I guess I'm not too surprised to hear that the idea of driving is even more insane than I thought it might be (and my wife always appreciates it when other people agree with her that I'm nuts).

Not to pick on you in particular, but in general people who suggest driving long distances fail to calculate the true cost. Driving from Pennsylvania to Colorado for a family of four is not cheaper than flying.

You've made the classic mistake of failing to account for a lot of expenses. The true cost of driving your car is not simply gas. You need to take into account fuel, maintenance from the mileage you drive, wear and tear and loss of value from the mileage. The true cost to drive from Pennsylvania to Colorado and back is between $1,800 and $2,000. The real cost is between 50 and 55 cents per mile for an average vehicle.

Second, you haven't taken into account the costs you'll incur in route. This isn't a one-day drive, so you've failed to account for lodging and meals while in route.

And lastly and most importantly your time. Not only is your time worth something, but so is everyone else's who will be traveling with you. You have to assign a dollar amount to each persons time. Furthermore, I look at wasted paid vacation days as lost income, so you may as well add that onto the travel cost as well. You're talking four days of wasted vacation time, versus two for air travel. If you have to unfortunately take unpaid time off when you could be working then it really truly is lost income.

As already mentioned by others you didn't consider possible weather delays, road closures, accidents, and construction.

The cost to fly a family of four from a major airport in Pennsylvania to Denver or Salt Lake City will cost round-trip between $300 to $400 per person.

With the $2,000+ I just saved you you can instead add a day onto that vacation and ski for eight days instead of seven now!

Your best options are to fly to Salt Lake City or Denver and then rent a car for the week. Flying to smaller airports like Jackson, Aspen, etc. are problematic since they suffer from frequent weather issues.

 

[EMSC]

Second, you haven't taken into account the costs you'll incur in route. This isn't a one-day drive, so you've failed to account for lodging and meals while in route.

Caveat on #2: Only if these are additional days or if they plan to stay with family/friends once at the mountain (or cook in at a condo, etc...). Otherwise they would be paying for food and lodging in either scenario.

 

[egieszl]

Read what written.

When you analyze travel costs you consider the costs on the days in transit, not what you would be doing if you were not driving.

 

[Marc_C]

As already mentioned by others you didn't consider possible weather delays, road closures, accidents, and construction.

Case in point - over 100 miles of I-80 was closed in Wyoming yesterday as was a massive chunk of I-70 in Kansas.

 

[Tony Crocker]

As the one who has done some marathon drives here, I still support egieszl's and MarcC's comments.

The two biggest marathons for me involved driving from southern California to Revelstoke in 2012 and 2013. In both cases the trip lasted a full month, skiing multiple areas en route. Tseeb did the same last year and will again this year from northern California over a 3+ week span. The key advantage here is flexibility visiting multiple areas. 2014-15 was a rough season and we were able to bypass areas that had had rain to the top and get better skiing.

To drive you want a relatively long period of vacation time in relation to the distance involved. To me, southern California to Utah is a drive trip (10+ hours each way, no extra lodging required) if for a week but a fly trip if for 4 days as I often did before I bought the Snowbird time share in 2008.

The OP's question is about as negative for driving as I can imagine. The distance is way too long for only one week, and he's not contemplating a multiple area, potentially flexible safari where having your own car is a big advantage.