Search results

I agree with ChrisC's sell to Sbooker here. Surely Sbooker has read enough of my late season Mammoth reports (including this week!) to see the upside of late spring skiing in right places (meaning not Australia!). Recall that on one of those trips I forgot my ski boots and had to rent...

Amazingly Mammoth website says Chair 5 will run Memorial weekend even though Chair 2 will not. Presumably they think Solitude still has enough snow for grooming. The exit trail under the lift from the ungroomed runs was very thin yesterday and will burn off before the weekend. Maybe there will...

The overnight huts do not open until July 1 at the earliest. But you should be able to drive to the trailheads.

With the two days described above it was not surprising that there was a hard freeze overnight. The weather forecast was correct that the wind finally abated and it was clear with highs in low 40's though the day started below 30. We had heard that Stump Alley was on its last legs, but it...

There’s been nearly a month of that irony. There was was a 1-2 foot storm in the Front Range at the end of April. No one reopened and A-Basin never expanded upon the 9% that was open April 11.

Big Bear and Mt. High clientele is ~75% snowboarders. At least 2/3 of trail acreage at Bear Mt. has park features. Mammoth, drawing some of that same SoCal demographic, has about 40% snowboarders. It definitely has one of the top parks in North America and is used regularly for Olympic...

Part 3: US Northern Rockies: This is a difficult region to generalize because: 1) Only Jackson and Targhee have season 1976-77 data. For many places, extensive data exists only Dec.-Mar. 2) This is a region where more areas have independent weather patterns. 2025-26 snowfalls by area...

Not an exciting prospect, per my recent inquiry. The summer skiing will be 700 vertical at a very intermediate 4-1 lift ratio. My summer experience tells me those runs better be salted or they will ski like glue at that mellow intermediate pitch.

Per the Vanat report, the core alpine countries had 157.1 million skier visits and the US + Canada 78.4 million in 2023-24. So we might expect double the spending vs. the more than triple that occurred. I think a key and enduring point of that article is that in the Alps the original lift...

Part 2: California: 2025-26 snowfall ranged from less than 60% at low elevation to about 80% at high elevation due storms with high rain/snow lines. with some of these storms being in November/December. Mammoth was only slightly below average in open terrain for the season overall...

I started this exercise in preparation to sending Joel Gratz a lot of detail once I have all the 2025-26 data. Last summer they published a feature about the best overall western snow seasons and surprisingly did not get it right that 2010-11 was the outlier standout. I'm sure OpenSnow will be...

Not a great AI summary above. It was Front Range/I-70 that had its worst ever season. Southern and western Colorado were worse in 1976-77 and 1980-81. Arizona Snowbowl's 57 inches in November were the most of any ski area in the western US! It was not a good year overall with only 95...

Here's are the worst western seasons through January: Nov.-Jan. Percent Normal California Pacific Northwest Interior Canada U.S. Northern Rockies Utah Northern & Central Colorado Southern & Western Colorado Northeast US West West All 76-77 38% 19% 72% 61% 28% 52% 55% 154%...

Definitely drought in 1976-77. There's no dramatic split between higher and lower altitude places like you see this year. In 2025-26 Colorado was the only region where it was primarily drought, and even there the SWE numbers are more than in 1976-77 even if the snowfall numbers are not.

More details on Utah 2025-26 vs. other seasons here.

This reinforces my view that the first step toward cult area status is an imbalance in expert vs. intermediate terrain. As a well traveled skier I see Whistler as a notch tougher for intermediates than the gold standards of Vail and Mammoth. But takeahike46er's local view and skier visit...

Mammoth just announced it will stay open another week to May 31. Here's Mammoth's lean season history: snow Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May max base 75-76 27.00 14.50 13.50 54.00 50.00 38.50 6.00 203.50 65.00 76-77 0.00 0.00 26.00 27.00 37.00 0.00 40.00 130.00 36.00 86-87 0.00 0.00...

I'm still waiting on some 2025-26 data to finish out this exercise for California and Utah. Alta/Snowbird: alta snow Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. max base 60-61 75.00 40.00 1.00 62.00 113.00 35.00 326.00 62-63 31.00 17.00 85.00 39.00 93.00 136.00 401.00 76-77 13.50 17.00 50.50...

That's an interesting point. When the areas were separate there was some Alta vs. Snowbird type rivalry between them. I'll concede that Alpine was the one closer to an Alta vibe even though it's much more intermediate friendly than Squaw. I think Squaw and Snowbird have always been close...

It's not the "most expert terrain," it's the proportion of expert vs. intermediate terrain. Strong cults don't form around areas that have wide appeal to intermediates, period. I challenge James to name one. I only saw a little bit of Sugarbush, but I'll bet it has way more intermediate...