"Home" Resort ski day counts?

2 impressions on the night ski difference.

1) In the east the night skiing is largely driven by school groups (at least mid-week). I have never seen large contingents of local school groups organized to go skiing even on weekends. Can't quite put my finger on why. The flatlands have large church groups come in on wekends (Nebraska, Kansas, etc..), and the occasional inner city group being 'exposed' to non-city activities. Even those are not too huge of numbers on any given day.

2) Different lifestyle for many out here as far as evenings and nights go. Our local news comes on at 9pm and 10pm, etc... Certainly there are those who stay up late, but seems to be far fewer than back east. I wonder how many would ski even if it were available 30 min up canyon.

EMSC":1t389nz6 said:

2) Different lifestyle for many out here as far as evenings and nights go. Our local news comes on at 9pm and 10pm, etc... Certainly there are those who stay up late, but seems to be far fewer than back east. I wonder how many would ski even if it were available 30 min up canyon.

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Night time is simply just not ski time.

I was a bit simplistic. There are 3 factors in the success of night skiing: proximity, population base and the quality of the daytrip skiing, in that order of importance IMHO. Canada Olympic Park and Grouse are practically IN Calgary and Vancouver. The quality of daytrip skiing comes into play if there's a big difference and the more important factors are similar. Population base and proximity are similar for Quebec City and SLC for example. Also Montreal and Denver.

I put proximity over population base due to my experience here, where the population base is huge but the distance at 1.5 to 2 hours for most people is mediocre. The night skiing is there but it's not that busy. I used to go to Snow Summit at night for my season opener when they had about 3 runs open because all 3 were lit and there would be about 20% of the skier traffic as during the day. Now that their snowmaking is beefed up they can get up to 50+% open pretty fast so day skiing is better with more runs. They have gone from 20% to 67% in the past week, also helped by the 10-14 inches natural snow Monday.

In a good season night skiing is completely off my radar here because the "real mountain" at Baldy is actually closer than the night skiing.

jamesdeluxe":d1ds8cx3 said:

Doesn't MC have some sort of internet deal for $25 each if you buy three tickets?

That said, I still wouldn't pay that to go to Mountain Creek. If I want to ski a 850-vert hill, I'll go to Camelback.

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Yeah, but Camelback is an extra 45 minutes from the city.

Regarding the original idea of this thread, I can't really participate as my numbers are too low.

But I will anyway. I'm assuming we are talking about resorts with lifts:

Only above 100 at Gore.

Next would be:

Squaw Valley - 15
Stowe - 9
Blue Mtn - 6
Hunter - 5
Killington - 5
Camelback - 4
Whiteface - 3
Beaver Creek - 2
Okemo - 1
Stratton - 1

I can't really participate as my numbers are too low

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The opposite extreme from Patrick, and I suspect more common. Probably a lot more people with the #1 area over 50% than under 20%.

I'd guess I'm around 1000 at Killington. The three 100+ day seasons offset the years when I didn't ski as much or had exploded a knee.

I'm over 100 at Stratton since I was an every-weekender as a kid. Maybe 200 total?

I probably just barely broke 100 at Stowe when I was in college. An engineering major made it tough to get lots of days in other than during Christmas break.

Nothing else comes close. I have a lot of days at Whistler but I doubt I'm anywhere close to 100. Probably closer to 50. I have a lot of places that are likely in the 20 to 30 day range. Snowmass. The Canyons. Deer Valley. Squaw. Sunday River.

jamesdeluxe":2v5vknup said:

Thanks, asked and answered.

So why is night skiing in the east so popular, especially among non-passholders? In addition to giving people something to do after work, it's a cheaper deal per hour (of course, less terrain is skiable). Is it the sundress metaphor?

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I think terrain parks have changed the dynamic of night skiing. This message board doesn't attract the jibbers so you're not getting the demographic that likes to go up in the park and hang out with their friends.

Night skiing is great for learn-to-ski. You can take your kids out for a couple of hours after work. I personally pretty much only ever went out at night for beer league. Flat groomers are pretty damned boring unless you're running gates. I once tried skiing bumps under the lights and discovered that I couldn't stay in my bindings. I kept dropping skis from the shock of hitting the bumps wrong.

Geoff":29o7ffx3 said:

Flat groomers are pretty damned boring unless you're running gates.

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Flat groomers are pretty damned boring even if you're running gates. At least for me.

SolVista in Colorado also has night skiing. It was free the Sat. night I arrived in 2005, so I did it. This year it sounds like it is $10 every Sat. night.

My resorts with over 100 days are:

Heavenly ($100 pass senior year of high school, two passes in last 5 years and about 5 days a year average since family cabin in early 60s)

Kirkwood (pass last year and this year plus 5 days a year average since 70s when they opened - should add 5 more days Dec 22-23 and Jan 1-3)

Squaw Valley (two years of passes in drought years 76-78, plus a week or two there during high school trips and a day a year average for 20+ years)