Rest of the season, then no more east for me -- where to go?

C

cweinman

New member
Some of you probably remember my Greek Peak reports and what not the last two years. I haven't been posting much this season since I haven't actually skied yet (yeah, I know that sucks, especially with how it's been lately) and I don't have a Greek Peak pass this year. Life has been very busy with my doctorate finishing up in the next year. I have been lurking around keeping an eye on things though!

Anyway, after not having an offer in Sandy, Utah come through (this broke my heart) I ended up taking a job in Phoenix starting next January. Hopefully Snow Bowl up in Flagstaff will win their snow making expansion case (really interesting thing to read up on if you haven't) since that place has potential to be a really good, reliable ski area with snow making capability. Otherwise at least I can road trip to Utah, southwest Colorado, and New Mexico easily enough (plus flying around the west coast wouldn't be that bad).

What I wanted to ask all of you is if I only have maybe 5 or 6 days to spend at bigger ski areas in the east this year, where would be the best places to still check out? I have never skied Whiteface, and have only skied Mount Snow, Stowe (just one day), and Killington in Vermont. In NH and Maine I've only gotten to Attitash and Sunday River.

I can cash in some hotel points for a 4 night stay in Burlington, VT, so we are thinking about doing a 4 day trip with a day a piece at Jay Peak, Stowe, Smuggs, and either MRG or Sugarbush.

I have also been contemplating planning a trip to go up to Sugarloaf in mid to late March if possible for a few days. I have always wanted to make it up there with the Snowfields open if possible (I was really upset I didn't have the time at the end of last year when they had insane conditions). I figure this may be my last chance to ski there for a long while as I don't picture myself coming back to the east coast for quite awhile, if ever (other than to see family). April is probably going to be shot for skiing due to a scheduled trip to New Orleans for 5 or 6 days quickly followed by a week or two in England for work.

Any other places we should consider checking out? Would going up to Canada be worthwhile for a few days to check some things out? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I feel like the rest of my season is my farewell tour to eastern skiing and wish I had more time and money to throw at it now, but alas I'll have to make do!

I'll still check in next season when I'm posting Arizona Snow Bowl reports (I noticed nobody does that on the west coast forum now, hehe)!

-Craig
 
Craig, while I'll let others with more recent Eastern experience chime in to answer your specific questions, I wanted to offer my congratulations on your degree and new opportunity in Phoenix. We'll welcome those reports! In the meantime, just remember that Phoenix is a cheap and quick 90-minute flight from SLC. :wink: Should Phoenix not work out, our job market is so tight that you shouldn't have much challenge replacing that opportunity missed in Sandy.
 
Another defector to the godless West...

I like your Burlington idea. You can easily spend several days in the Mad River Valley, especially if conditions are good. Same for Stowe/Smuggs.

I'm a big fan of the Eastern Townships, Quebec (Sutton and Orford) and all the towns there.
 
@ Admin,

Thanks and yes, that was my point about being able to fly around the west easily enough. Looks like a drive up to Salt Lake would be about 10 hours, which I'm perfectly fine with also if I was heading up there for at least 4 or 5 days. I think it's a bit closer to head out to the southwest Colorado areas like Telluride and Durango, but not by that much. My wife and I are okay with driving in general which will definitely help out with living in Phoenix (it seems like willingness to drive 5 to 10 hours gets you all sorts of different places).

@ jamesdeluxe,

I actually am Minnesota born, but I have been in NY since 1981 (minus my 4 year stint in Virginia for college). I could have probably tracked down some options in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts but the eastern cost of living we decided is a miserable thing to people starting out, especially after being in Upstate NY for the last four years where it is reasonably cheap. Neither my wife or I have been out west other than for trips there are tons of things we'd like to see and do. We figure we can always come back east after awhile if we want to. It's easiest to dislocate yourself from your roots like this while you are still young without too many things to tie you down, that's for sure.

I've been really curious to check out the eastern townships sometime and I know this would probably be the last year I'd be able to now; I remember reading a feature article that I think Skiing did in one of their eastern sections on Orford, Mt. Sutton and some other places up there. What do people usually do for lodging up those ways, stay in a B&B somewhere or at one of the ski areas?

-Craig
 
yeah, skip Geek Peak and head to the Green Mtns and to Maine!!

Stay in Burlington and ski Stowe, SB, MRG, Jay and Smuggs. Stay as long as you can!!

The Loaf is a wonderful place, but it is pretty far and you'd burn some fuel driving from here.

PM me if you are going to still be around looking to ski in March. I've got some info for you regarding that time frame for skiing in VT.

Congrats on the PhD!!
 
I hate to rain on this parade, but Phoenix (well technically Tucson) is probably the worst metro area in West for skiing. I would rate it worse than Boston and marginally better than NYC. Judging by Sharon's reports from Vermont, not necessarily any better than Ithaca.

The Snowbowl battle with the Navajos over snowmaking is very tough. Snowbowl lost the most recent judicial decision and is appealing. The Indians' ultimate goal is to shut the place down, and with no snowmaking that possibility is not out of the question.

Snowbowl averages 171 inches at the base and 247 on the upper mountain. But volatility is the highest in the West, so in 2001-02 and 2006-07 it was essentially never open. The big years (1973, 1993, 2005) are over 400 inches. Exposure is mainly west, so sometimes it will be firm in the morning.

Terrain-wise Snowbowl is not quite as good as Mt. Baldy or the top eastern places like Stowe or MRG. Maybe as good as Gore or Mt. Ste. Anne. Lift capacity is limited, so I hear there are major lift lines on weekends if snow is good. I don't hear much about Arizona Sunrise (3 hours from Phoenix) but I've seen a trail map and terrain is very flat. Ironically it is run, with some snowmaking, by Apaches who have a very different culture than the Navajos.

So that's why you see a lot of Phoenix skiers at Durango and Telluride. And even Telluride is a 9 hour drive. Driving to Utah takes as long as from SoCal, because like us you have to go through Las Vegas.

I argue with the easterners about the distance/quality issue. My 5 hour drive to Mammoth seems a reasonable price to pay for that quality of skiing, and it's doable for weekends. But when the one-way distance gets up to 8-10 hours I generally want the trip to be at least 4 days. Similarly I think fixed air travel costs need to be amortized over 4+ days of skiing. So if your job allows flexibility for a lot of long weekends you might do OK. Otherwise, if skiing means much to you, you should be looking somewhere else to live.
 
@ Sharon,

A good friend of mine here (he sits in my office, but is in another research group), just broke his hand on Greek Peak yesterday on his second day of skiing this season. Luckily he just broke a small piece of bone off of a bone in his thumb, so it isn't season ending, but he may need surgery to pull the shard out of his hand. Greek had groomed their snow making mess into the edges of the trail and he hit one of their rocks of ice while stopping at the side and flipped himself onto a ski pole. Makes me even happier I didn't spend the money on the pass (even with the cheap as can be college student deal we get). Pass along the info by PM, I will definitely be up for things in March still (it just looks like April is going to get insane).

@ Tony,

I agree with you that Phoenix isn't optimal by any means for skiing. A lot of other options for me would have been the upper midwest, mid-Atlantic, or somewhere like Texas, none of which would have been any better. I maybe could have gotten something near Boston, but we wanted a break from the northeast if possible (for reasons vastly beyond skiing). Cost of living in California (one of the reasons we are fleeing the northeast) was a big turn off, thus Arizona won out. Part of my job may be some trips up to Oregon also, so I could easily sneak in some days skiing up there before and after travel. Skiing is really important, but enjoying my job also is :) . Quite frankly, if it compares to NYC, that will be more than good enough for us. We've never really skied in the west, so if my skiing was limited to a 4 or 5 day long weekend in Southwest Colorado and a week+ trip flying up to somewhere like Whistler every year, that'd be fine be me (and this is only assuming Snowbowl was to disappear which seems unlikely). I love how all you guys can do 40 or 50 days a year on the slopes, but unfortunately that's not something I can make a reality yet at this point! I do have three weeks of vacation plus 10 floating holidays, so I figure I can use a lot of this to fuel skiing every year. Especially since for the first time in my life I'll actually have some money to back all of this (being a student until your late twenties is a pain).

One interesting thing, I see that you can go up through Arizona directly into Utah to get to Salt Lake and it shaves 60 or 70 miles off the drive, but not much of it is by interstate (google maps picks this route though). I hadn't even realized about the I15 route through Las Vegas since I was looking solely at google maps. What's the better way to go?
 
I-15 is almost certainly the faster way to Utah, especially in winter.

Larry Schick grew up in SoCal and did not ski much until he went to college at Northern Arizona U in Flagstaff. He was fortunate to be there during 1972-73, when Snowbowl got 500+ inches and was open to July 4. He has been a Seattle powder junkie for at least 2 decades now.

My day at Snowbowl was March 31, 2001. It was warm, very quiet and there was good corn snow. But 80% of the mountain is served by one long fixed triple chair, so I have to believe there are big lines on good January/February weekends. It's also over 2 hours from Phoenix.

It will also be interesting to see what a northeasterner thinks about Phoenix summers. Remember those billboards you see in most places advertising winter getaways? In Phoenix they all advertise summer getaways. Lots more people head up to 7,000 foot Flagstaff on summer weekends than for skiing in the winter.
 
Sharon":kweghu5p said:
Stay in Burlington and ski Stowe, SB, MRG, Jay and Smuggs. Stay as long as you can!!

The Loaf is a wonderful place, but it is pretty far and you'd burn some fuel driving from here.
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From Burlington you have the best combination of the greatest ski areas in the East. Sugarloaf belongs to the greatest, but hard to combine with others.

Congrats on the PhD.

PS. I won't comment on Phoenix. :P
 
cweinman":1irtepy3 said:
I love how all you guys can do 40 or 50 days a year on the slopes, but unfortunately that's not something I can make a reality yet at this point!
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Which is precisely why Tony comments on proximity. Living in the Boston area, Albany or Saratoga I usually managed ~40 days/year, but that was only because I was patrolling. Here I scraped together 75 days last year without even trying hard. I doubt I'll hit that again this year due to certain work situations but it should still be around 60.

This may be sacriligious to say, but I actually enjoy summers here more than winters. Winters are one dimensional: skiing, skiing and skiing. Summers, though, it's more of a challenge to figure out what not to do each weekend -- hiking, backpacking, car camping, rock climbing, mountain biking, road biking, fishing, boating, kayaking, etc.

I'm not taking anything away from you -- you should be extremely proud of what you've accomplished and you may very well be happy in Phoenix. I just want to point out that racking up that many ski days is actually quite easy when the skiing is 20 minutes away.
 
The summer activities admin mentions are fairly accessible from Phoenix heading north to Prescott, Sedona or Flagstaff. And probably in the other seasons in central and southern Arizona.

In the years with heavy family obligations I was averaging about 24 ski days per season living in SoCal. It will take more effort or $ to do that from Phoenix most years.
 
We (my wife and I) actually are both avid hikers, I used to be into mountain biking a lot (which I still need the time to get back to), and just love travelling to see things. Sandy would have been a dream come true, but we still felt like Phoenix would offer a lot for doing outdoors stuff (especially with the insane amount of national monuments and parks that we can explore throughout the four corners states).

I figure the first summer down there is indeed going to be a bit of a character testing experience. I expect us to spend a lot of weekends up towards Sedona, Flagstaff, and other higher elevation areas during the summer to do outdoors activities where it's easier to deal with 80 to 90 degrees than it is to deal with 115. As much as I love winter though, it will be nice to not deal with the really nasty aspects (driving, being out in it for routine sort of things, digging out your car, etc.) of it other than when we are travelling out of the valley there.

I didn't get into skiing seriously until 2004-2005, and with a season pass over at Greek Peak I think I hit about 19 or 20 days that season. Last year I was a lot busier, December was wrecked snow wise down here and March was shut down due to work committments. Thus, I only got about 8 or 9 days from what I recall. This year I think I'll be lucky if I get 15, but that will be without a season pass (and not skiing in December due to personal time crunch). I moved 20 minutes further from Greek Peak and having a 45 or 50 minute drive (especially in bad weather) versus a 25 or 30 minute drive makes a massive difference. Thus, I can completely appreciate all your comments about proximity.

I still don't see how 40+ days is that easy unless you have a really flexible work schedule, lots of vacation, or are putting night skiing towards your total. 25 days though would be pretty realistic if you were close to things though.

Thanks for the input everyone, now we just need to cool down in the east again so that it's actually worth getting out there (it is always typical for me that the weather turns for the crappy just when I get time to actually enjoy being outside).

-Craig
 
cweinman":32dnr2i6 said:
I still don't see how 40+ days is that easy unless you have a really flexible work schedule, lots of vacation, or are putting night skiing towards your total. 25 days though would be pretty realistic if you were close to things though.
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A 7-month season = 60 days if you ski only weekends. Subtract out the odd weekend days when you need/want to do something else, then add in extra days over holidays, etc., and with things right in your backyard 50 days can be done easily without missing a single day of work.

When I lived back East I had 28 days of vacation. Living here I'm back to 10 days/year for a couple more years, but I'm skiing more per year. Even with only two weeks I still lost vacation days at the end of the year because I hadn't used them, whereas back East I burned those 28 days every year.

And FWIW I despise night skiing. I've been once (Brighton) three years ago, the only time since moving here.
 
I still don't see how 40+ days is that easy unless you have a really flexible work schedule, lots of vacation, or are putting night skiing towards your total. 25 days though would be pretty realistic if you were close to things though.
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I average 50 days/year, and I do count night skiing which I was doing twice a week in years past. So far I have yet to hit the lights after work.

To date, I've got 12 days of lift-served skiing and about the same for xc skiing. Not too bad considering it is only January.

I expect to ski 8 days in Utah, I have at least 3 more VT trips and 3 more Gore Mtn trips and a bunch of night skiing, and I expect by April I'll be near the 50 day mark once again.

I would have to say, outside of my vacation week/ends, I probably only do about 3-4 "gotta-skip-work-and-ski" days a season. I presume if the season is very good, there will be more. Thus far I've only done that 1 1/2 times this season, and one of those days I kinda knew in advance, prior to going to Jay Peak that Sunday there would be a big noreaster and we wouldn't be driving home, getting Monday as a bonus big powder day. I told my work peeps that if there is a big snow on Sunday, don't expect me on Monday. They know the deal. Last Weds I took the morning off when 6" of fluff fell, but was back in my cube by noon. That is about as flexible as it gets for me, and it sure helps. After 13 years of working there, they know what to expect from me in the winter...and in the summer when the wind is blowing (I also windsurf).
 
The breakdown of the 24 day average over 13 "family obligation" seasons:

5 days daytrip SoCal (1-2 hours drive)
7 days Mammoth weekends (5 hours)
5 days longer drive trips (7-8 hours Tahoe, 11 hours Utah, one 10-day trip to Steamboat and Vail).
7 days fly to destination resorts.

The first 2 categories are tougher or not available from Phoenix.

I think the way to approach the "where to live in terms of skiing discussions" should start with the list of available ski areas within the first 3 categories.

Then it comes down to personal preferences. Some, like Riverc0il, are going to draw a line in the sand and say that essentially only the first (daytrip) category matters. I don't agree with this, but it's a defensible position if cost and powder are the absolute priorities. Larry Schick in Seattle handles his ski seasons similarly to Riverc0il.

The second (weekend) category is key to SoCal due to the huge quality difference between our locals and Mammoth. But I think it's pretty important to people like Sharon and Patrick too.

The 3rd category (long drive) can be a big plus for anyplace West vs. anyplace East for those who can handle the long drives, and is a big cost saver for families to get quality skiing during school vacations without paying for multiple airfares.

Phoenix works for those who can handle the 3rd category well.
 
A 7-month season = 60 days if you ski only weekends. Subtract out the odd weekend days when you need/want to do something else, then add in extra days over holidays, etc., and with things right in your backyard 50 days can be done easily without missing a single day of work.
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Only if Salt Lake City is your backyard. The Cottonwood resorts average 28 weeks of quality skiing per season, and admin's commute time is under half an hour. He's skiing close to 90% of weekend days.

#2 western metro area is Reno. Now the average number of quality weekends is 23 and the commute time is an hour instead of half an hour. You're going to see fewer of these days where admin pops up the hill for 3-4 hours of skiing, and you're somewhat less likely to ski both days of the weekend.

#3 and #4 are Vancouver and Seattle. Whistler's quality weekend count is nearly good as Utah's but it's 2 hours from Vancouver and in the second (weekend) not first (daytrip) category from Seattle. The Seattle locals resemble Fernie in reliability and probably average about 15 quality weekends with the marquee area Crystal being close to a 2 hour commute for most. Thus Larry Schick averages 25-30 days, but of course his powder average is pretty high.

#5 is Denver. Average 25 quality weekends Commute time is usually close to 2 hours, so I suspect you're only going to ski both days of the weekend when it's really good. #6 Sacramento to Tahoe is a direct analogy to the Denver I-70 commute in terms of both distance and traffic issues.

Other western metro areas have less diversity of skiing within a 2 hour radius than those above.

SLC is the #1 metro area for skiing, and it's not a close call IMHO.
 
Tony Crocker":16fx2vnw said:
SLC is the #1 metro area for skiing, and it's not a close call IMHO.
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We do agree sometimes. :lol:

BTW, here are some anthropological numbers that I know Tony would appreciate. I'm presenting these numbers without prejudice.

25.7 (4 yrs): Pre-University (High School & CEGEP) years with driver license (31 without injury year) - skiing mostly Tremblant, Jay and Smuggs.
Avg vert of ski area skied: 543m / 1781ft

33 (7yrs): University years (two degrees incl. injury year) - Races and training. Mostly small hills with late season days at K. First trips out West and in the Alps.
Avg vert of ski area skied: 400m / 1312ft

26 (2 yrs): End of studies in Montreal - Weekend warrior to the major Eastern areas and some Alps.
Avg vert of ski area: 814m / 2670ft

21.5 (6yrs): Living in Ottawa, first real job, got married, first kid and a few trips. Not bothering with small areas.
Avg vert of ski area: 739m / 2424ft

43.7 (7yrs): Since my first full ski season for my daughter at 3yr. A split between small local for skiing with the kids, started Recreational Racing on weeknights and some ski travelling.
Avg vert of ski area: 550m / 1804ft

So you can see, my current family status get me out more often. Sure in the past (see first two years in Ottawa), I wouldn't have necessarily bother getting out and skiing the mole hills as Tony would put it. But with kids, my skiing has taken a totally different meaning (see summary of my Holiday Week report). Recreational racing has added a new dimension to my winters also. Some people have their Poker nights, I have my race nights. :D
 
My breakdown analogy to Patrick:

5 seasons, single and freshly addicted to skiing:
Average 30 days
10 daytrip SoCal (1-2 hours drive)
13 Mammoth weekends (5 hours)
4 longer drives (7-8 hours Tahoe, 11 hours Utah)
3 fly to destination resorts.
Pretty typical of someone in their 20's in terms of time and budget I think.

13 "family obligation" seasons:
Average 24 days
5 days daytrip
7 days Mammoth weekends
5 days longer drive trips , included one 10-day trip to Steamboat and Vail.
7 days fly to destination resorts.
The 16-day season the year Adam was born in December was the only one under 20 days.

8 seasons, family older, more resources to chase powder:
Average 28 days
4 daytrip
5.5 Mammoth weekend
2 longer drive Tahoe or Utah
13.5 fly to destination resorts.
3 snowcat/heli
Day count only up a little. But willing to spend more $ to increase average quality.

Last 3 "Warren Miller years - if you don't do it this year ..."
Average 38 days
3 daytrip
10 Mammoth weekend
2 longer drive Tahoe or Utah
16 fly to destination resorts.
7 snowcat/heli
I'm excluding the 6 days each of the past 3 seasons in the Southern Hemisphere because I expect to ski there only occasionally in the future.
 
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