My son and one of his buddies bought Epic passes the day they were going off sale. They live in the NYC area and are planning to do Hunter, a couple of places in the Poconos and a long weekend in Vermont.
My reaction when I heard Hunter was ugh, but they can stay in a family cabin 45 minutes away from it. I’ve never skiied there myself but have seen the oddly shaped dynamited mountain, and heard negative comments about the crowded trails and unpleasant people it seems to attract. I was also puzzled by the trail map one time we were thinking of going there: for some strange reason, a lot of the trails are named for roads in NYC, including some that are known for bad traffic.
@garygnu Good plan - raise your own snow buddie. The Summit at Snoqualmie claims to teach more skiers and snowboarders than any other resort in the US. Not sure if that is actually true, but they have a ton of ski schools and a ton of kiddie programs.
It is an hour or so away from Seattle depending on the road conditions and where you live. I’m on the east side of seattle and can have my butt on a lift within 60 minutes if the road is reasonably clear. Yesterday it was slow going on I-90 with chains required or AWD. Today was fast with only traction tires required.
Opened last week with 18" of powder. New section opened today with about 6" of fresh powder. Early opening as usually it is mid Dec before there is enough snow.
Be forewarned, the base is only 3,000ft, so the snow is often pretty wet, and it can rain. BUT it’s an hour to Seattle, and I get in 2-3 visits per week depending on the snow.
Conditions improving at our intended destination. another foot or so of fresh snow over the next day or two so I reckon all of our favourite slopes will be open by the time we get there.
This is a webcam of Leogang, one of the resorts connected in to Saalbach-Hinterglemm. Looking good for snow (if a bit gloomy today) the mountain hut you see first looks rustic but it is massive and serves some of the best food you can find. The roast pork is incredible. It is quite expensive for Austrian mountain restuarants but absolutely worth it.
I have to say as well that looking into the USA resorts you’ve been mentioning, the lift ticket prices seem to be astonishingly expensive. I knew that historicallly they were always on the expensive side but have they jumped recently?
They have, but it’s more than that. The majority of the big ski areas are now part of two major conglomerates (Vail/Epic and Ikon) that are pushing folks to buy seasons passes. Single day passes are so high that people are forced to buy a seasons pass and then they’re locked in to that brand.
You can still buy an Epic or Ikon pass, but they’re now at full price. They’re around $800-1000 depending on which tier you want, most tiers still have some restrictions for today days at the most popular resorts and holidays.
I noticed a pretty big increase in the Epic pass this season. I seem to recall the last few years somewhere in the $300 range, but this year went to $460 I think (I don’t even pay attention. It’s something I’m gonna buy no matter what, so just renew it without much thought), but I did notice what I thought was a big jump.
Rode the chair Wed, and some kid told me a day pass was $179.
Feeling kinda sorry for folks that can only ski weekends. Whole mountain pretty much shut down Friday, today and probably tomorrow due to wind and weather. Wed was beautiful.
Ski Cooper opened up yesterday, so I got really excited, as it’s only 15 minutes from girlfriend’s family’s cabin. Instead I got food poisoning last night and have just started to recover, so my weekend trip is shot. Resorts are really starting to get up and running here in Colorado. I’m too spoiled.
Last year the prices for the Epic were incredibly low, and there were huge increases in the number of passholders. As a result, some of the main ski areas on the pass were incredibly over-crowded, under-staffed, and had some unfortunate mechanical issues. As a result, the experience on snow was sub-par. They’ve responded by increasing pay to attract more workers, limiting tickets sales (not season pass sales) and offering a few more ticket options.
Got a second day in, up at Sunapee again using one of our Epic day passes ($41). Same terrain open (one run from top to bottom) but since we were there at first chair (8:00 AM) there were few skiers. Top-to-bottom runs without stopping, had to deal with a few snow guns spraying on us, and conditions on the lower mountain after the rain weren’t great.
Got 11 runs in and called it a day at 11:45. Working to build a base for skiing this season, a good day.
I was looking to post a few pictures of the places we are off to but I don’t seem to be able to insert them into the post. I assume it is the “upload” function but it just tells me that I can’t insert media items into the post.
found a good option for hosting the images, hopefully these work.
This is from xmas 2019. (the last time we were away for the holidays) This is the view from the Glocknerblick restaurant on the Maiskogel mountain, looking back towards Zell am See.
this is on the K-onnection gondola from the Maiskogel to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier runs, massive gondolas, massive spans and great views.
and this one is on a particularly lovely day on the Schmittenhoe, the main mountain of Zell am see. Looking over to the locations of the previous two photos. The two pointy mountains just right of centre are the Maiskogel (lower) and Kitzsteinhorn (the higher one). Winding it’s way down the Maiskogel is probably my favourite run of all. A mixed black/red/blue of 7.5 km in length and about 1000m in altitude change. It disappears into the low cloud but it eventually goes right down into the village and it is an absolute blast.
It was a great few days with the sun out and the recent snow nicely packed down but not icy. Those are my wife’s phone pictures, hard to take a bad photo when it is so bright and clear and the scenery is so photogenic.
It was a different story 12 months before when a big snowstorm dumped a huge pile and very kindly it started just as we were about to start out on our drive home, about 750 miles.
This is us packing up the car on the morning before setting off, this is the snow just starting (and we were halfway up a mountain). We packed really quickly to get ahead of it. We sort of succeeded but it still took us 11.5 hours to drive to our overnight in Stuttgart, normally 4.5 hours away. Still, full marks to the road services and drivers in Austria and Germany, everyone was on proper snow tyres and though we crawled along we never actually got stuck in a jam.
