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It's safe to say that Patrick's boycott will last to January 2029. Political comments are not censored here, but I have moved them to the appropriate thread. Patrick's FB page says he was in Montreal Aug. 22-23 but in Banff as of yesterday. I think he's going to Parker Ridge, where he...

I have no experience in the VC business. But it's hard for me to see how value could be extracted from a breakup of Vail. Did Vail way overpay for some of its properties, especially the two in Europe? Sure, but that can't be undone. A buyer won't get that many $$ from selling the overpaid...

The more stories I read, the more glad I am we are going as late in the season as we are. The lake was frozen Sept. 6-7, 2007 despite the quite warm weather at the time.

Who is going to Switzerland Dec. 12-20 and being addressed in the above analysis? I'm guessing that with those dates and required to buy 30+ days in advance, ChrisC would never do this in December. The rental car flexibility is priceless in terms of ski quality, and no one has exercised that...

Going into this storm, seasons totals were 322 inches at Portillo and 202 inches at Valle Nevado.

Very late in the trip planning, Jimmy Petterson informed me by e-mail that we HAD to do this if we were going to be in southern Spain. It was a tight squeeze. We were driving south from Madrid to Grenada Aug. 16 to visit the Alhambra the next day, but our flight home from Madrid was on the 19th...

I have never been remotely proficient in a sport as I have been with skiing since 1979. There may have been a pathway in golf given my amateur progress at pitch-and-putt but I knew I would have to invest time and get a lot of instruction to break bad habits. But this was coincident with the...

I won't argue with that one. It's not an accident that my first was at age 46. Both Liz and I should have done Baja in 1991, but I didn't quite "get it" in that pre-internet era and my kids were 2 and 6 years old at the time. Liz and I are travel junkies. All of the 17 eclipse trips I have...

Spencer Creek mid-August snowpack is lowest since 1989.

I reread Jimmy's chapters on Argentina and Chile yesterday. Like skiandgolfnut, he waxes ecstatic about Hotel Portillo. Hotel Portillo is a relic of a bygone era where ski areas served mostly all inclusive onsite guests. The best analogy in my experience would be the late St. Bernard Lodge...

We are renting a 4x4 so hopefully will not need chains. Portillo is not that big or difficult to navigate. It did not occur to me to hire guides any of these places in Chile in 2007. Everything is above tree line and visible so you can decide for yourself what’s in your comfort zone.

We are staying in Farallones the nights of Sept. 16-18 if you want to meet up. You should look into that Hotel Valluga as it's the best rated hotel there. Are you there only one week and leaving Sept. 21 when we go into Portillo?

Liz still recoils in horror at my 14-hour day before we met IRL between Hakuba and Niseko on a bus and 4 trains with 73lb suitcase (I had been scuba diving in Palau first) plus double ski bag. The ski bag fit easily in the train overhead compartments but obviously the train changes were quite a...

Enough that we have committed to Sept. 16-24. Sure, especially if you consider Valparaiso too. If limited to 5 days I'd go 3-2 the other way. Why? 1) Portillo has a deeper snowpack and is also less vulnerable to wind messing up the off piste. 2) Portillo overall has better terrain quality even...

I’m way out of the loop on this topic. In SoCal the shop sales would typically start in late February or March but in the bad years it could be late January. But after the Sport Chalet chain went belly-up in 2015 there are hardly any specialty ski shops left here. Since then my purchases have...

Is that 24-30 hours of actual train travel time split up over multiple trips? Is there a time window like a week or two when it must be used? That’s an intriguing deal which Sbooker should definitely consider. Japan’s rail pass is unlimited within a time frame of 1, 2 or 3 weeks IIRC.

I'm sure that run at the top of Schilthorn is just fine in March most of the time. Caveat emptor on the rest of the Jungfrau skiing unless you make the call on short notice like ChrisC did, just as we had outstanding conditions in Avoriaz/Chatel at the end of March this year.

@EMSC, didn't the Colorado ski shops have fire sales this spring after the disastrous season there?

It doesn't really work that way. In terms of climate change we would expect that the 1C temperature increase over the past 50 years would have raised the average rain/snow line by a modest 150 meters/500 feet. But of course every storm is individual and certain seasons can lock into a pattern...

Schilthorn is higher and colder than the rest of the Jungfrau ski terrain. But the terrain around Murren itself had the worst boilerplate that we encountered in our 3 days in the Jungfrau. Off piste anywhere lower than the Riggli chair was unthinkable. I'll hazard a guess that ChrisC...