Eldora 2/22

[Tony Crocker]

What I meant was are there any eastern areas as good as second line western areas like Loveland, Brighton, etc.?

My offhand guess is that there at least 50 western areas better than the best of the East.

 

[EMSC]

What I meant was are there any eastern areas as good as second line western areas like Loveland, Brighton, etc.?

Now that makes more sense. By your definition of "second line", I would put all of the western "B" resorts above all of the east personally (assuming you were skiing there as a long term 'home' place, as obviously each year can be quite different for snow dynamics in the east and west, etc..). It would be very interesting and certainly impossible to be too definitive about ranking resorts too literally at some point in the scale though.

Anyone know if Snowy Range is still open in Wyo

I live too close I guess. Got my curiosity peaked. It is open, but also it is for sale - $6.5M (was $8.6M if you listen to their sales pitch video)for the whole place including the couple of new lodges at the base, all 4 chair lifts, groomers, maint shop etc... (I don't think they have any snowmaking as it is not mentioned).

Snowy Range for Sale Info

Any FTO takers? :wink: C'mon, one of the lodges even has a 2 bedroom apt in it

I suspect you'd want to put a couple $M into the place (probably just on some snowmaking to ensure consistent season for starters) and then say $1M for additional start up costs, inventory, marketing and contingencies... So, a cool $10M for 1000 feet of not too exciting vert 32 miles from anywhere...

That's a tough sell even at the reduced price. I suspect the real number is more like $4.5-5M in value to a buyer and if you wanted to be cheap you could get away with only $500-$750K for improvements and start up on top of that...

 

[Geoff]

I was at Eldora yesterday (Wednesday 27-February) for the first-ever time. I was working in Boulder and decided to blow off my morning meeting and ski instead. I'd brought boots, clothing, and my helmet as carry-on bagage on my flight to Denver so it was pretty painless to hit a ski shop in Boulder the night before and grab some demo skis and a pair of rental poles. I really like little western day areas with limited vertical and nothing but fixed grip lifts. My personal favorites list includes such anti-glitz spots as Monarch, Wolf Creek, and Ski Santa Fe. I ski freakin' Killington. If I want to share a resort with 20,000 of my closest friends, I can stay home.

Tuesday was the big powder day at Eldora and I showed up a day late. Not knowing the place, I started at first chair at the day lodge skiing every advanced trail on the map working my way left to right as you look at the trail map. By noon, I was over at the far boundary in pretty steep trees skiing completely untracked powder. After a lunch break where I had a pretty decent bowl of chili, I went right back over to the far edge of the ski area. The scale of the place is comforting to this eastern skier who is used to getting his vertical 1500 feet at a time. I was totally entertained on the medium pitch cut-trail terrain and pretty challenged by the powder in steep trees using unfamiliar demo skis. The surface was mostly great though there was some crunch to be found underneath if you strayed to the middle of a cut trail. They'd had quite a bit of wind so you had to pay attention to where the snow had piled. Some of the bump runs had a foot of windblown that had filled in the troughs. In the morning, I was the only person skiing most of the terrain since the locals probably knew to head to the trees where the wind hadn't trashed things. By eastern standards, it was still really good. The trees and little chutes traversing out beyond the far Corona lift are great and I could probably be entertained skiing there for several days without wearing it out.

In this east vs west debate, there's just no comparison in typical skiing surface. In the east, you have some excellent days every season but you also have a lot of marginal ones. On those excellent days, the skiing is every bit as good as in the west but most people don't have the luxury of suspending their life whenever it dumps to take advantage of those times.

 

[EMSC]

Glad you had a good day.

Also glad you are not the fatality that happened Wed. Someone from Orlando somehow hit a rock on the short, flat 100 foot long stretch at the very bottom of westridge where it pushes you back onto the bottom of Corona to go to the lift... First fatality at Eldo since 2000...

There are also some good, but hidden tree shots on skiers right of corona lift, skiers left of muleshoe and skiers right of muleshoe if you know where you are going... (as well as one or two on the front side too). But my lips are sealed

 

[Geoff]

Glad you had a good day.

Also glad you are not the fatality that happened Wed. Someone from Orlando somehow hit a rock on the short, flat 100 foot long stretch at the very bottom of westridge where it pushes you back onto the bottom of Corona to go to the lift... First fatality at Eldo since 2000...

There are also some good, but hidden tree shots on skiers right of corona lift, skiers left of muleshoe and skiers right of muleshoe if you know where you are going... (as well as one or two on the front side too). But my lips are sealed

I skied right by the half-dozen snowmobiles on that little cat track by the lift around 2:15. I figured it was pretty serious when all those people were there and a helicopter was in the parking lot.