Powder Mt., Utah, March 18, 2018

Tony Crocker":kbnw4naz said:
Terrain-wise what would be ideal for beginners? IMHO long runs without a lot of traffic from faster skiers.
definitely not cat tracks. I like Northstar b/c of the long green runs that are not cat tracks.

Tony Crocker":kbnw4naz said:
I'd like to know how much sierra_cement has skied and where it's been comfortable. Skiing has a fast learning curve compared to many sports. People with a positive attitude, decent physical coordination and conditioning and receiving good instruction can progress very fast. If that's you, 2 weeks at a place like Targhee might work out well.

Tony,

We are more constrained by what my wife can do. She has been on the bunny slope chair lifts only a few times and is still doing snow ploughs. We will go to Northstar for 3 more weekends this season. I have skied a total of 20 days at various Epic pass locations and a couple of days at Squaw/Sierra at Tahoe. In January, I was able to ski most of the blues at Northstar. I'm comfortable now taking our 4 y.o. on bunny slopes by myself and wife can practice on her own. She has taken lessons before but just needs to practice more to get out of the snow plough. Northstar lessons are expensive so we are not able to take as many lessons as we want. It might make sense for us to take a lesson at Homewood instead although we have a pass for Northstar. Epic pass locations are too expensive for kids/adults lessons. So we are not keen on continuing with the Epic pass next season if we can find a better option.

I'd like to learn how to ski powder. I tried to ski powder at Park City but kept falling and then gave up.

I know Xmas is not the ideal time to do a ski vacation. However, it's about the only time we can have a 10 day stretch that you ski everyday and progress quickly. With the improved skills, we can enjoy the rest of the season with weekend or long weekend trips. If we wait go to on a week long trip until Feb, we will only get to enjoy half the season. A 10 day trip also allows us to justify the travel time/cost to a location other than Tahoe. Northstar has good beginner terrain but it would be nice to not have to deal with the traffic and crowds.

Thanks for reading and offering your valuable suggestions. I have read through a lot of your material and really enjoy the logical way in which you analyze ski areas and conditions. Let me know if you have written articles targeted at beginners. I would love to read those.
 
sierra_cement":tgk3b4r9 said:
We are more constrained by what my wife can do. She has been on the bunny slope chair lifts only a few times and is still doing snow ploughs. We will go to Northstar for 3 more weekends this season. I have skied a total of 20 days at various Epic pass locations and a couple of days at Squaw/Sierra at Tahoe. In January, I was able to ski most of the blues at Northstar. I'm comfortable now taking our 4 y.o. on bunny slopes by myself and wife can practice on her own. She has taken lessons before but just needs to practice more to get out of the snow plough. Northstar lessons are expensive so we are not able to take as many lessons as we want. It might make sense for us to take a lesson at Homewood instead although we have a pass for Northstar. Epic pass locations are too expensive for kids/adults lessons. So we are not keen on continuing with the Epic pass next season if we can find a better option.

I'd like to learn how to ski powder. I tried to ski powder at Park City but kept falling and then gave up.

I know Xmas is not the ideal time to do a ski vacation. However, it's about the only time we can have a 10 day stretch that you ski everyday and progress quickly. With the improved skills, we can enjoy the rest of the season with weekend or long weekend trips. If we wait go to on a week long trip until Feb, we will only get to enjoy half the season. A 10 day trip also allows us to justify the travel time/cost to a location other than Tahoe. Northstar has good beginner terrain but it would be nice to not have to deal with the traffic and crowds.

While they may be expensive*, an intensive set of lessons at the beginning of your ski career is indeed the best way. Do you guys really want to be unlearning bad habits in 5 or 10 years that could have been eliminated with 10 early lessons instead of a few plus self-practice? I didn't learn to ski until far later (33 yrs old) than a lot of people on this forum. I took a week of morning group lessons and practiced on my own in the afternoon. Any budding bad habits were quickly dealt with the next morning. The remainder of that season I took an additional 10 small-group clinics. This amount of reinforcement early on is critical.

*: look at the expense of lessons as an investment in decades of enjoyment instead of struggle any time conditions aren't perfect or you want to get on the more interesting/challenging ungroomed terrain.
 
Marc_C":jyiol5gz said:
While they may be expensive*, an intensive set of lessons at the beginning of your ski career is indeed the best way. Do you guys really want to be unlearning bad habits in 5 or 10 years that could have been eliminated with 10 early lessons instead of a few plus self-practice? I didn't learn to ski until far later (33 yrs old) than a lot of people on this forum. I took a week of morning group lessons and practiced on my own in the afternoon. Any budding bad habits were quickly dealt with the next morning. The remainder of that season I took an additional 10 small-group clinics. This amount of reinforcement early on is critical.

*: look at the expense of lessons as an investment in decades of enjoyment instead of struggle any time conditions aren't perfect or you want to get on the more interesting/challenging ungroomed terrain.

I agree with you regarding importance of lessons. We can probably go to Kirkwood instead of Northstar. Their beginner lessons are $89 instead of Northstar's $170. I will do some more research on which resorts in Tahoe offer continuing ski lessons. This year we can probably do another 6-8 days ski days.
 
I have not written any articles directed at beginners, but I did learn as an adult, first skiing at 23 and not that competent until a 30-day season at age 26 in 1978-79. As I had only 20 days lifetime before that season, sierra_cement may be on the verge of a breakthrough.

From my experience, skiing as hard as I could every weekend in 1978-79 resulted in more progress that an extended trip would have. For several seasons when I did go somewhere for a whole week, I would usually get overly exhausted by the third or fourth day and need to dial back the quantity and difficulty if skiing for a day or two.

Northstar is certainly ideal for a lot of low end terrain, though it has crowd and logistics issues. Kirkwood would be good for your wife's lessons. There's good beginner terrain with usually the best snow conditions at Tahoe. While on Epic, you might want to think about Beaver Creek.

I'm not sure bunching lessons continuously is most cost effective. I think you want to take a lesson, practice what you have learned, then come back to learn more. Every individual is different; it's hard to say what your wife needs more: lessons or more mileage. Assuming she's not reluctant, probably both.
 
Tony Crocker":3f4aimmc said:
While on Epic, you might want to think about Beaver Creek.

I'm not sure bunching lessons continuously is most cost effective. I think you want to take a lesson, practice what you have learned, then come back to learn more. Every individual is different; it's hard to say what your wife needs more: lessons or more mileage. Assuming she's not reluctant, probably both.

Beaver Creek is great.. that's where we went for Xmas. Wife got a back sprain on her 3rd or 4th day so she was not able to ski more. I lapped the Red Buffalo area a lot and did some lessons. That's how I improved my skill enough to ski the easy blues there. I did lessons on a gap of 3-4 days. I also started exercising a couple of months before my trip to improve my stamina.. certainly helped. Skiing a lot of days at a time was effective for me.

We could go to beaver creek as we had hotel points.. we don't have enough for a Xmas trip next year. The lodging there is quite expensive and to do it cheaply we would have to stay farther, drive to the shuttle stop and still pay for parking. Plus the cost of expensive pass and lessons. So I'm looking for an alternate destination.
 
It sounds like you did everything right this year: choice of resort, conditioning, spacing of lessons.

I think Targhee could work well for you next Christmas. Your wife needs to understand there will be beginner terrain, but not nearly as much of it as at Northstar or Beaver Creek. But there's two months more of this season with plenty of snow to get her some mileage.
 
Yeah. I bought the epic pass and decided on get my money's worth by spending a lot of days at their most expensive location.

I'll keep my eye on spring pass sale for targhee. They have some Homewood free days that I can use as well.
 
Resurrecting a very old thread here; but seems like the right place to add to the prior discussion surrounding the owners and village and etc... that were included just after the TR on page #1.

An update on the lack of reaching nearly any of the original claims and vision f the articles from before:
Fortune Powder Mtn 2023 article

As if it wasn't clear way back when that this was likely the most probable outcome, lol.
 
An update on the lack of reaching nearly any of the original claims and vision f the articles from before:
Fortune Powder Mtn 2023 article

As if it wasn't clear way back when that this was likely the most probable outcome, lol.

Fyre Festival! When a web company starts doing music concerts.


Summit Powder Mountain? This was one of the craziest ideas ever that only a very young entrepreneur might try.

Loved the following quotes from the article:

A quiet mountain community is just fine with Netflix’s Hastings, he told me in January, when I reached him by Zoom in the 5,500-square-foot wooden home that he and his wife built on Powder Mountain. It was three days before the streaming giant’s cofounder was to step down from his longtime role helming the company as co-CEO, and he looked blissed out after a particularly good ski run. “You can see I’m red,” the 62-year-old said, grinning and pointing to his cheeks, which were indeed rosy.
In its current iteration, Summit Powder Mountain is no Aspen-like luxe resort, the multibillionaire was eager to explain to me: “It’s a hostile environment on the top of the mountain,” he said. “The electricity goes out. In a huge storm, you’re locked up here.” High winds, raccoons, and crows (not to mention roaming black bears and mountain lions) mean residents—even billionaires—have to haul their garbage to a dumpster. The vibe is “pioneer,” Hastings says, and “the après-ski scene is near zero. We all just do potlucks.”
 
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