Western U.S. Road Trip From A Swiss POV

jamesdeluxe

jamesdeluxe

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This skier from Zurich on the Alpinfans forum is posting reports from a two-month road trip (I ran the link through Google Translate) across the western U.S. armed with base Epic and Ikon Passes along with an Indy Pass. Here's where he started:
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So far he's been to China Peak, Dodge Ridge, Lee Canyon, Arizona Snowbowl, Sipapu, Santa Fe, Wolf Creek, Purgatory, Crested Butte, Powderhorn, Vail, Aspen, Sunlight, Loveland, and Eldora. The thread is subtitled "Coast2Coast USA" so we can assume that he'll also visit the East Coast and maybe the Midwest too.

It's always interesting to hear a foreigner's view of our ski areas and towns so I'm looking forward to the rest of the trip. Visitors from the ski-endowed Alps are sometimes snooty and judgmental but this guy seems to be describing this season's good, bad, and ugly (including the Telluride strike) in a balanced way.
 
He's driving an AWD rental that most likely has M+S rated tires. That is enough to get through most chain control as long as tires have some tread. I just flash four fingers at the Caltrans guy at the checkpoint, and they wave me through. If they ever ask if you have chains, you need to confidently say yes, whether you do or not and they will let you through. If you get stuck and do not have chains, you could be cited and fined. Not sure that rental car companies in US are as co-operative with possible chain control violation tickets as those in Europe are with speed cameras tickets.
 
US car rental companies are not very good at providing vehicles optimally equipped for winter mountain driving. Having either dedicated winter tires or chains would be appropriate in some locations.
 
With two months and a rental car, why on earth did he go through the Southwest and Colorado instead of up to Canada? I guess he had a family commitment to be in Santa Fe over New Year's Eve. At least he dumped SoCal from his plans!
It's always interesting to hear a foreigner's view of our ski areas and towns so I'm looking forward to the rest of the trip.
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Yes, I like his commentary and pictures and will review in more detail when I get the time.

He's definitely trying to run up his ski area count. He must have skied the major Sierra areas some other time. He's even listing which lifts he skied. That's a stat so hard core I've never thought about tracking it.
 
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jamesdeluxe said:
The thread is subtitled "Coast2Coast USA" so we can assume that he'll also visit the East Coast and maybe the Midwest too.
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Given his choices, it feels like a combo of wanting to see some vistas and ignore any reality on the ground as to where the snow is. He's pretty hard set on which ski area on what day for the most part even if they literally have no snow. Very inflexible approach to any 2 month road trip IMO, which also seems very typical of germanic thinking.

Now that he has wasted a day at Eldora maybe he can hit Greek Peak at some point too, lol.
 
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