2024-25 Season Recap

tseeb

Well-known member
I'm starting it again as I think my season is over even though Mammoth could be open another 2-3 weeks.

Days: 46 vs. 47 last year and 46 the year before that. Not getting to my goal of 50, even with roadtrip to UT and CO where I skied 16 of 18 days including one at Palisades on way. My only days off on trip were to hike at Arches National Park and to drive home from Snowbird. Still want to try for 70 next season as I'll be 70 in exactly 100 days.

Vertical: 1,123,900, over 50K more than last season. I averaged 24.4K/day, highest since 2002-03 when I averaged 24.5 although I only skied 20 days.

Days on $449 Senior Tahoe Value Pass: 16, way down from preceding years - Kirkwood 10 2/3, Heavenly 5 1/3, Northstar 0 for first time in years.
My last Vail Tahoe day of season I skied both Kirkwood and Heavenly as I also did my first days of season in both 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Days on $1K+ Full Ikon: 30 - Palisades Tahoe 8 (Alpine side only 3), Altabird 5 (3 were Snowbird side only where I will likely only ski next year in LCC as I downgraded to Ikon Base), Mammoth 5, *Copper Mountain 4, Aspen 3 (one day was both Buttermilk/Ajax, other two Highlands then Snowmass), Sierra-at-Tahoe 2 (first year it was added to Ikon and my first time after fire), *Steamboat 2, Deer Valley (from new base) 1 - *first time at Copper and Steamboat

By month
Nov - 1 (Last day of month)
Dec - 3 (My first ever daytrip from So. Tahoe to Mammoth for Ikon early-up and free breakfast)
Jan - 5 (Skied five of first six days of 2025 and had 14" new at Alpine on very busy first Saturday)
Feb - 8 (Kirkwood with 10" new on the first Friday of month)
Mar - 13 (All in first 14 days. What happened rest of month? New snow 3 days at Copper and first day at Aspen.
Apr - 10 (First two days were great mid-week Kirkwood powder days with very low elevation snow. Also new snow for Alpine's closing day)
May - 6 (Same as previous season. This year was two trips with first day Palisades, night at So. Tahoe, then next two days Mammoth)
 
AreaSum of DaysSum of Vertical x1000Sum of Powder x1000
Mountain High (West)
1
13
0
Mammoth
17
430.3
5
Snowmass
2
44.4
2
Aspen Mt. (Ajax)
1
16.7
1
Sugar Bowl
1
17.3
5
Palisades Tahoe
1
15.1
0
Snowbird
4
66.1
10
Alta
2
28.5
3
Mt. Bachelor
3
67.5
0
Vail
1
20.6
9
Copper Mt.
2
43.2
1
Arapahoe Basin
1
16.3
1
Steamboat
1
20.7
2
Apex Alpine
1
17.3
0
Big White
2
43.6
0
*K3 Snowcat
2
20.7
13
*Amirsoy, Uzbekistan
5
38
15
*Chimgan, Uzbekistan
1
1
0
*Ski Dubai
1
2.3
0
Totals
49
922.6
67


The 49 days was lowest in retirement aside from the 41 in 2020 due to Liz' shoulder injury and the mid-March COVID shutdown. The reason this time was nearly a month of non-ski vacation late January to mid-February. The other time this happened was in March of 2015-16, but that season had a strong November start at Mammoth, so I skied 54 days and 1.07 million vertical. This season it took a very active spring to even get to 49 days.

Powder was on the low side, lift served 6.0% vs. long term average 8.6%. There were only 3 significant lift served powder days, one at Iron Blosam, one at Vail and one in Uzbekistan. At Iron Blosam my age/altitude breathing issues mean I cannot hammer a powder day there bell to bell, especially when the last half of it will be chopped up snow requiring far more effort. I did ski bell to bell powder on Vail's less demanding terrain.

Last year I predicted that the 1 million vertical benchmark of my retirement seasons would no longer be routine. I had no chance this season with the 49 days and the 7 of them in central Asia totaling a meager 41,300. The 8 post Iron Blosam days in Colorado averaged 20,200 and the 16 April/May days averaged 23,500. As in the past couple of seasons, the proportion of groomers is higher than historically, and I can probably quantify that sometime with an apples-to-apples comparison of April and later ski days at Mammoth. Liz says she has never seen such consistent quality of spring skiing and I can probably research that too. Of course those spring days were not selected at random.

The 19 different areas in 2024-25 are the least in retirement and the 4 new ones bring my total to 290. Liz skied 47 days with 7 new areas, now totaling 233.

I had 34 days on Ikon, second only to 37 in the much longer 2018-19 season, so the average price of an Ikon day was an excellent value $34.
 
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