The Top 10 Ski Resorts In North America For 2015 - Forbes

I enjoyed the piece as usual. However I found at least two errors on the business side of things:

1. Snowbird is no longer owned outright by Dick Bass; he sold a majority interest to Ian Cumming.

2. Alta's snowboard lawsuit has already been dismissed by the court via its approval of the defendants' motion for summary judgment.

Too bad that comments are turned off for that post on the Forbes site, so I'll just have to do that here instead.
 
"Classic Jackson moment: Led Zepplin filling your ears while the tram skims the treetops above Tower 3 Chute, snow hammering at the windows, erasing your last set of tracks."

Really?!?! Ya can't spell Zeppelin correctly..
 
I caught that one too, but I'd be the world's biggest hypocrite for criticizing spelling and grammar errors!
 
The writer based a fair amount of the rankings on Tony's research, yet didn't point out that Jackson Hole's conditions go to hell after the first weekend of February. :lol:
 
jamesdeluxe":1m9wr1x0 said:
The writer based a fair amount of the rankings on Tony's research, yet didn't point out that Jackson Hole's conditions go to hell after the first weekend of February. :lol:
I am responsible for customized snow conditions comments on the individual resort pages. Jackson's are here:
http://zrankings.com/resort/show?id=70-jackson-hole (scroll to bottom of the page)

ZRankings is still a work in progress. The individual resort pages in particular have customized commentary for only a handful of areas. I have provided customized snow conditions comments for 32 areas so far.

I will pass along what should be easily fixable simple corrections noted by admin and jason.
 
I'm surprised that you haven't tried to jerry rig Zrankings to "correct" the fact that it confirms more north facing terrain at Alta than at Snowbird. :lol:
 
This article lost all credibility with me. Mammoth should not have been in the Top 10. There are more than a dozen ski areas I can think of that rank ahead of Mammoth. Also, out of all the Colorado ski areas only two are included and Telluride should never have been one of the two. Don't get me started on why Telluride is a very weak ski area.
 
egieszl":2gi3lqx4 said:
This article lost all credibility with me.

Steiner and I disagree on many points, but his taste in ski areas is far more credible than egieszl's. Mammoth is easily within top 10 in North America in categories that relate to actual skiing.

admin":2gi3lqx4 said:
I'm surprised that you haven't tried to jerry rig Zrankings to "correct" the fact that it confirms more north facing terrain at Alta than at Snowbird. :lol:
I'm the source of the exposure percentages. It's where the north facing terrain is and how you get to it that affect how the areas ski in melt/freeze conditions. Percentages are not terrain absolutes either. When Snowbird added Mineral Basin, it raised the south facing and lowered the north facing percentages. It's not like they took away any north facing terrain and made Snowbird a lesser area for spring skiing.
 
Tony Crocker":2ve42jsm said:
admin":2ve42jsm said:
I'm surprised that you haven't tried to jerry rig Zrankings to "correct" the fact that it confirms more north facing terrain at Alta than at Snowbird. :lol:
I'm the source of the exposure percentages.

So you actually admit publicly that all this time you've been talking out of your a$$? :shock:
 
Top 10 lists are basically high-calorie/low-nutrition click bait. At least this one is (Zeppelin and other typos aside) well-written, engaging, and has a bit of logic behind it courtesy of Tony's number crunching. Of course, Admin would dispute Tony lending any logic whatsoever :lol:.

That said; if we're taking his reasoning at face value -- a) Other than adding a new lift, terrain doesn't change; it's good or it isn't. b) We're looking for reliably consistent snowfall, not 600 inches one year and 150 the next. -- I don't see how this list can change much from year to year. We'll always be looking at more or less the same resorts that have already been written about hundreds of times.
 
Just looked at the ZRankings site. This write up on Telluride is horse shit! Who is the writer whose credibility is really in question.

http://zrankings.com/resort/show?id=163 ... ski-resort

And the write up on Mammoth says "The altitude is so high (8,900 feet at Main Lodge) that Mammoth is the only Pacific State ski area that gets no winter rain." It's not a regular occurrence, but it will rain at the Canyon Lodge and Chair 15 area on occassion.
 
The patrol site at Main Lodge has recorded 14 days of rain in 31 years from November to April. That's about as close to zero as you can get. Is it more at Canyon or Eagle? Sure, but it's still not material and the vast majority of ski terrain at Mammoth is over 9,000 feet anyway.

I'm not sure what's so objectionable about Steiner's Telluride write-up. I don't rate Telluride top 10 because its snow record is very average. As in all of these rating exercises, Steiner's view of how important various factors are different than mine. I have found occasional bad content in his write-ups and tried to get him to change them.

We should get ChrisC and egieszl to debate Telluride. That would be a real :snowball fight: :brick: :lol:
 
It will rain anywhere "on occasion." I have seen it rain at Alta in January. Does it happen often? No. Can it happen? Of course!
 
That's an excellent analogy. Rain incidence at Mammoth is probably similar to that in LCC. Any skier who is worried about either should probably take up another sport.
 
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