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Driving is a means to an end. One of those ends is ski quality, which is often enhanced by flexibility of decisions made within the reliable weather forecasting window (Harvey's jaunts for Ontario lake effect being an example). Lots of people like driving far more than flying for this reason...

We were unlucky with Pila: upper lifts were closed for wind. We were lucky with Via Lattea: localized 18 inch Retour de l'Est and minimal competition for the powder. But ChrisC makes the sale. I suspect we are far more likely to return to Pila than the Via Lattea. We noticed those closed...

That was 2024: 1 Friday, 8 Saturdays, 10 Sundays and 2 Mondays. Harvey must have at least partially retired before 2024-25. Day count jumped from 21 to 38 and only about 1/3 of the ski days were on weekends. In both seasons about half the days were at Gore or the nearby sidecountry near...

Another difference between my Alps trips and James' is that he is traveling solo. A lot of my Canadian road trips from 1997 - 2014 were like that. I zealously minimized hotel expenses on those trips and also was not looking for gourmet dinners. There's a much greater incentive for amenities...

+1 I can not imagine a better setup for a skier with a non-skiing spouse.

My first reaction was that with recent travel inflation (recently discussed here), $100K is not a pie-in-the-sky travel budget these days. I also checked and found that since retirement starting 2011, our ski expense has averaged $23K and other travel expense $35K per year. In that scenario...

Hotels and restaurants are where I most notice the post pandemic inflation. Some resort areas have hotel pricing double or triple a decade ago; Big Sky and much of Colorado come to mind. It's less dramatic in the hinterlands, but it's still getting to the point where anything under $100 is...

From what I read of 2024, nearly all of Harvey's ski days were on weekends and at Gore. I also get the impression he doesn't like to do any more driving than James does. He resists the idea of skiing somewhere between his home and his place at Gore, grand total 3 hours driving on a ski day...

You lay the tarp on the ground, drive on top of it, open the hood and trunk of the car, then close them over tucked-in tarp edges.

We stayed in Visalia Wednesday night and drove to Mineral King Thursday morning. I had been up there for a quick look in 2006, but we were committed to most of a day this time because 7 miles of the road is closed for repairs 10AM-4PM weekdays. We were escorted one way at 9:25AM after about a 15...

You won't find it because nobody else records it twice a month and saves it for 20+ years. :bow: That unfortunately means I don't have it for anyplace I didn't think was worth my attention in 2004. For the Northeast the ones I have tracked : Jay, Stowe, Sugarbush, Killington, Okemo...

I've had the lie flat business class once, as a Delta free upgrade LAX - Tokyo in 2016. I slept as soundly as in a bed for 5 hours, deliberately not trying to adjust into the new time zone because I planned to visit the 5AM Tokyo fish market Liz had visited 4 days earlier. But my day was a...

That's exactly what I think. The fact that I don't know anyone else from that particular exclusive ski culture is not a criticism. I know many people who ski exclusively in particular locations, mostly at Mammoth and some like former admin in LCC. I also know many people who hate air travel...

No, just that they are not on industrial scale. The tradeoff of the more natural and historic settings is that much less of the lodging is ski-in ski-out.

Probably because of the scattered lodging bases, one of which is a historic medieval town.

Liz took a long time getting down that slope in April 2022. When she did, it was 4PM and we were parked at Nendaz. We still had the 2,700 vertical ungroomed run to Tortin and 3 other lifts after that ahead of us. So I did that as fast as I could, beating a couple of the lift closures by 10...

I anticipated that reaction, and so provided hard data to support my view. You can argue that it's better for a skier to live in Vermont than L.A. due to proximity/convenience, but there's no case vs. the locales where snowave has lived for the past decade. It is a high bar when you live in...

Cardrona ski terrain has at least doubled with the two new terrain pods on the left side of that map. Before this it was the smallest of the 4 Southern Lakes areas. My day there in late July 1997 was under fairly low tide conditions. I was not motivated to revisit in 2006. I think my...

On the evening of June 3 our Visit Visalia hosts took us to a Single A minor league baseball game, where the Visalia Rawhide (Diamondbacks affiliate) defeated the Inland Empire 66ers (Angels affiliate) 2-1. Visalia mascot: This lady umpire was busy around the bases. Single A games have only...

Yes the reputation for spring is well deserved. See comparison with Stowe in percents open in late season. But for a skier it seems a classic example of a great place to visit (at the right time!) but would you want to live there? Lots of bitter cold yet barely half open before February?