Tesla, Euro and South America Ski Trips

kingslug

Member
I'm taking the easy way out. Snowbird. If my other half had more vaca time I would venture further West.
Tesla. Need a bit of planning for excursions in one of those.
 
kingslug":oabl02bd said:
Tesla. Need a bit of planning for excursions in one of those.
Any vehicle where it's very helpful to have a spreadsheet to plan your refueling stops is basically a joke at the moment, and I'm all for electric/hybrid vehicles. But seriously.....
 
Marc_C":53dew9wo said:
kingslug":53dew9wo said:
Tesla. Need a bit of planning for excursions in one of those.
Any vehicle where it's very helpful to have a spreadsheet to plan your refueling stops is basically a joke at the moment, and I'm all for electric/hybrid vehicles. But seriously.....

Second car, can't be the only one. I'm considering one right now but it's just for getting around town so the range on the smallest battery would do.
 
The Tesla is not our only car but it is the primary car, driven 16K miles in its first year, about 3/4 of our total driving including 6 out of 9 trips to Mammoth. We would not have bought the Tesla if we couldn't take it to Mammoth.

This year a new Thai place opened near the Mojave charger. Liz likes that better than the options at Inyokern but Mammoth nonstop to Mojave after the last day of skiing requires driving a bit more moderately than we usually do.

kingslug":1jsw15np said:
Tesla. Need a bit of planning for excursions in one of those.
I got 2 referrals for other people who bought Teslas in 4th quarter 2016. It's best to analyze your own travel patterns before you buy to see if it will work conveniently for you. In Al Solish's case it was easy. Two days a week he has long commutes to Beverly Hills and Palmdale. Letting him drive our car home over the Angeles Crest from Palmdale facilitated the sale. :mrgreen: He has a second home in Atascadero, which is only 4 miles from a Supercharger. He thus went for the smaller 75kW battery, which handles his commutes and requires only a 10-15 minute stop at Buttonwillow on the way to Atascadero. Mammoth is a more demanding drive and time is definitely saved by having the larger battery for that trip.

The other referral was a guy we met on the Thailand trip, who lives in San Diego and has a second home in Big Bear. We can drive to Big Bear but need a charge on the way home in Rancho Cucamonga. That charger is out of the way if you're headed to San Diego, so his solution was to install a 240 plug in the Big Bear place as well as at home.

MarcC":1jsw15np said:
Any vehicle where it's very helpful to have a spreadsheet to plan your refueling stops is basically a joke at the moment
I'm sure an expert in sophisticated time series calculations like MarcC can handle it fine. :p

socal":1jsw15np said:
I'm considering one right now but it's just for getting around town so the range on the smallest battery would do.
The Model 3 will not be a spacious as Model S but even with a smaller battery it will be nearly transparent vs. a gas car for some trips, like San Diego, Central Coast, the desert, SoCal local ski areas. Model 3 will share the impressive driving dynamics of Model S. Take a test drive and you'll see.
 
Tony Crocker":vjav53mn said:
socal":vjav53mn said:
I'm considering one right now but it's just for getting around town so the range on the smallest battery would do.
The Model 3 will not be a spacious as Model S but even with a smaller battery it will be nearly transparent vs. a gas car for some trips, like San Diego, Central Coast, the desert, SoCal local ski areas. Model 3 will share the impressive driving dynamics of Model S. Take a test drive and you'll see.

Gotta be a Model S with 2 young kids. I test drove it, it's great have 2 months left on a lease and 90% set on it. I don't drive much, around 7k/yr but its all city driving and I get like 10mpg in my current car with a big V8.
 
Model S is great for carrying capacity, including skis with the hatch. If you go used to save $$$ don't get anything earlier than 2015. AWD and Autopilot 1 were introduced in late 2014 and you probably know that there were serious reliability issues in 2012 and 2013. 2016 and earlier used will probably retain the free supercharging, but you should check on that.
 
Some day the new SUV will be a good used vehicle, at 160K its a bit steep. And I find it interesting that Tesla is now the most valuable US car maker.
 
Tony Crocker":3dyahzbt said:
I guess you missed the Diamond Dogs trip in March 2011. That was where Liz and I first met in person.
I certainly understand Mammoth's appeal as a late-season warhorse for destination skiers, but I'm surprised that a NYC-based ski club would plan a mid-season trip there given the logistics: a 7.5-hour flight where you have to change planes (the only nonstop from our region per day lands in Reno after 11 pm) + a more than three-hour drive = long travel days in both directions. I don't get the logic given more easily accessible options across the pond and out west, but good that you and Liz met that way.
 
The Dogs flew nonstop to L.A. and connected to the Horizon flight directly into Mammoth. This is another illustration of NYC's upside as a home air base. From many places in the eastern half of the country, getting to that Mammoth airport requires two stops, which is a deal breaker for many people.
 
Considering the 6 hour bus it took us to get to Solden after a long plane ride, and ended up skiing groomers with the club, a 3 hour drive or 2 planes is not that bad.
 
kingslug":2oek9t2n said:
Considering the 6 hour bus it took us to get to Solden after a long plane ride, and ended up skiing groomers with the club, a 3 hour drive or 2 planes is not that bad.
I heard the 2016 Solden trip had mediocre conditions, but this year's Dogs' trip to Val d'Isere should have worked out great.

kingslug":2oek9t2n said:
Some day the new SUV will be a good used vehicle, at 160K its a bit steep.
160K is definitely the performance version. Base 75kW versions cost about half that. In general I'm not a fan of Model X vs. Model S unless you absolutely need to have a high seating position or the third row seats.
1) Worse aerodynamics means shorter range.
2) Second row seats in Model S fold down, but not in Model X.
3) The Falcon Wing doors are a great conversation piece, but add a lot of weight and have reliability issues.

Items 1 and 2 above mean Model S is a better ski car.
 
kingslug":369rqsc6 said:
Considering the 6 hour bus it took us to get to Solden after a long plane ride, and ended up skiing groomers with the club, a 3 hour drive or 2 planes is not that bad.
A six-hour transfer?!? I'm guessing you flew into Vienna (or Frankfurt :lol:)? A nonstop into Munich would've halved that.
 
Traffic, it was a bit of a mess. Should have been 3 hours. I should have been in Colorado, you know, where it snows. Tony heard mediocre
conditions, more like 200 hundred miles of flat groomers covered with out of control skiers and boarders. No more Europe for a while.
 
kingslug":2horbo5b said:
No more Europe for a while.
Zermatt in 2014 didn't have enough powder for you?

What were the dates of the Solden trip in 2016 (I thought late January)? Solden and nearby Obergurgl have glaciers up to 10,000 feet. Wasn't the snow any good up there?
 
Zermatt was great, we got very lucky with a 2 day snowfall. Solden got nothing until the night before last when it dumped 2 feet. The glacier was closed a lot due to wind. I'm sticking with the US for now, except for Chille this August.
 
Tony and I have had discussions offline about the pros and cons of targeting the larger/high-profile Alps ski areas vs. the off-the-beaten path joints that I lean toward. Sölden is definitely not on my hit list although it gets decent reviews across the pond. Of course, going anywhere during low-tide conditions where you're confined to groomers is not a recipe for success.
http://www.wheretoskiandsnowboard.com/resorts/solden
 
Wasn't my choice at all. There are areas in Europe I want to hit that I've seen in movies. Not easy to get to some but an adventure would be had. Speaking the language would help. Andora looks interesting.
 
kingslug":1nav0cvy said:
Wasn't my choice at all.
Sorry, wasn't implying that you proactively decided to go to a place with nothing but groomers on the menu. :-D If my eastern Switzerland trip hadn't been canceled by passport issues, I may have been dealing with similar conditions after a multi-week drought.
 
Was a club trip, my wife picked it. Her last trip as a trip leader. Have to admit the last day was cool with 2 feet on the ground.
 
kingslug":mtsogng9 said:
except for Chile this August
If you think the Alps are erratic and unreliable, South America is on a completely different level. Their ongoing drought is as severe as California's was (meaning some seasons with less than half normal snow) and has lasted longer. The last above average season was 2009. I would avoid committing $$$ until sometime in May/June if you can see there is actually some snow on the ground. As least you're going during the highest probability month. Where are you going, I assume not with Diamond Dogs?

Our second week in Austria this January was all groomers, but they were in good shape and the Saalbach complex was massive and well organized to spread people around. It also helped that we had an abundance of powder the first week in the Arlberg. Liz' knee got worked hard that first week so the second week needed to be dialed down a bit anyway.

Fraser Wilkin actually gives Solden good marks for snow reliability.
http://www.weathertoski.co.uk/european- ... n-austria/
Of course that's based mostly on the glacier access. Glaciated ski terrain tends to be on the flat side, because if it's not it will be riddled with seracs and be unsafe. The long T-bars at the top of Zermatt's Klein Matterhorn were a good example.
 
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