Where in the west

Harvey

Harvey

Administrator
Staff member
Maybe this should be on the other forum. I sorry I don't really know how to search the forum and past posts. Tony had expressed an opinion in the last year or so about where easterners would be happiest moving. As I recall he thought places in the rockies (Colorado, SLC) had better skiing, but when other considerations were added, the answer might change.

Can anyone help me find that post? Was hoping to share with my wife as we are dreaming about a less east coast life style.

Would love to hear opinions on where to find the best set up. My profession probably needs a city like Portland, Seattle, but hopefully not too big. Wife could find employment in a rural or urban area, but we'd need two incomes. We want to drive 4 hrs or less to great skiing, reasonable schools and reasonable cost of real estate. Don't mind living outside the city, probably prefer it.

Thanks in advance.
 
Harvey44":slbcbhje said:
we are dreaming about a less east coast life style.
Click to expand...

Given your location (near Gore?), I'm interested in hearing what you consider a less "east coast lifestyle." Are you mainly concerned about better skiing (terrain, conditions, etc.) or something else?
 
jamesdeluxe":1x25qwla said:
Harvey44":1x25qwla said:
we are dreaming about a less east coast life style.
Click to expand...

Given your location (near Gore?), I'm interested in hearing what you consider a less "east coast lifestyle." Are you mainly concerned about better skiing (terrain, conditions, etc.) or something else?
Click to expand...

Good point James. Seeing the "east coast lifestyle" comment and not knowing the location of North River, I just assumed it was downstate New York near the big cities/coast. Since that's not the case, a little more clarification might help with suggestions.

J.Spin
 
North River is in the shadow of Gore, (in the am anyway). We've got 5 acres with two buildings - a 12 x 18 cabin with a woodstove, and a 9 x 12 building that is essential our "utility head." Shower/Bath, Electric, Water, Septic, Small fridge. And we have an outhouse. We spend 30-50 nights a year there. In the situation it is in right now...we've taken it as far as we can without building on it. Could sell it for 10x what I paid for it now, which wasn't much.

Our 2.5 bedroom in Central NJ is just barely big enough for me, my wife CB and our daughter Neve. That's your east coast lifestyle. Still not too bad - I walk to work and live and work in a very laid back town with great access to mountain biking and road riding. No commute is one key to life. Wife drives 12 mins. Still I hate the traffic...and fighting to get in and out of NJ when going after snow.

The original idea was to use the cabin to ski backcountry and lift service, and take GREAT August and Sept vacations....for say 15-17 more years. Then when I retire either move up there and build, or just keep it the way it is depending on how we do financially over the time between now and then.

FYI - Gore is an undiscovered gem. Maybe semi-discovered now. If I lived up there at retirement and winters were average (say like the last 20 years)...I'd get more than my share of freshies and never get bored. There is good lift service, lift serviced BC and BC. BC to us has a different definition than it does to most of you. Limited use of skins, but camping, and seeking out hardwood routes through the wilderness with map and compass, looking for clear downhill lines. The lift service BC is challenging (tight trees) and I'm sure I could ski there until I die without boredom. It's a great community and the value of real estate up there should keep climbing with "improvements" coming to the mountain.

I'm at a crossroads in my career where I've got to decide if I want to participate (ownership) at a higher level with the company I am with. If I decide not to...I may have to leave. I know for SURE that I won't leave my current company to go work for another ad agency here in NJ. I'd trying something different in my field.

I could move to North River at retirement, but not now - I need to make more to support the family.

After rereading all of Admins links - (thank you VERY much) - I want to add Burlington in the mix, but probably nothing else in the east. I mean if you are going to sell the house and deal with everything - I don't want to trade a 5 hr ride for a 2 hour ride - I want to have great day skiing close. From what I can tell some of the Burlington gang have a functional dawn patrol going on a work day....heaven.

What I want is a city of unknown size, but big enough to have an ad agency or marketing company or marketing department in it. (Getting greedy - I'd really like to be involved with a company marketing something I believe in...solar panels, mass transit. I'd like to be part of the solution on climate change.)

I don't want to live in the city but close enough for an energy efficient commute.

I want to be BETWEEN the city and the mountains so I don't have to drive THROUGH the city to get to the good stuff. So for example if Portland was the answer - I'd like to be on the east side of town - not far from the end of whatever mass transit there might be. (Do cities out west even have mass transit?)

I have a daughter - I need reasonable schools. I 'd love to have real estate that is cheaper than the northeast corridor, so we don't get killed selling one house and buying another.

Hope that's not more than you wanted.

Thanks again - what a great resource (this forum) for this kind of tough decision.

Harv
 
Jason....I had to laugh. To me - something 12 x 18 meters would be a house! It's feet. One room with a futon, table and a woodstove, plus a loft with a double bed. Cute as hell. Wish I knew how to post a pic.

After rereading my own post...I am taking a lot for granted. Life is pretty darn good.

Still I think I should know what I want so when the chance comes we can go for it. The reasons we chose (our current property) wisely is because we really knew the area after years of going up there. It's not realistic to think you can pick a great piece of property without a lot of advance beta.
 
It sounds to me like Colorado could be an option for you. If you lived on the west side of Denver (Golden, Evergreen, Lakewood) you'd be about 1.5 hours from Summit County skiing (less in good traffic). There is a future Light Rail line planned out to Golden if you needed to work downtown, until then bus or car will get you there pretty quickly.

Summit County is growing and may have work options doing the marketing at a company gig. You may even be able to work with one of the ski areas or the companies that own them (Intrawest, Vail Resorts). Then you'd be minutes from skiing. I even know of an attorney that is commuting to Denver for work with an apartment in Denver but then the family lives in Dillon.
 
Jumping on the Colorado bandwagon... Boulder could be a potential as well. Lots of marketing Jobs - I know some real well known firm just opened up shop a year ago and has like 150 employees already (I forget the name, but I'm sure you could find it with a quick search, supposedly real well known national firm). Boulder is very into bike/walk/bus, etc.. commutes, and also very into promoting environmentalism issues, etc... as you indicated you'd like to do.

Not the biggest area, but Boulders local hill Eldora has plenty to keep you occupied most of the time and of course the rest of the big name areas (plus a few smaller ones) are only 1-2 hrs away. Eldora actually has bus service from downtown Boulder as well if you want to go that route (lots of HS/colledge kids use it). The killer in Boulder is the housing prices. Similar to being on one of the coasts. If you can manage being 10 miles away from the city, the prices drop about in half though...

Obviously there are a lot of options out there. SLC probably has some options that meet your specs and I'm sure Admin could tell you details on those, though like living on the west side of Denver, you have plenty of big city lifestyle thrown at you. Reno, NV is close to a lot of great skiing too, though I personally wouldn't really want to raise a kid in a gambling environment/town (but that is just me). Seattle could be OK for you too if you don't mind grey winters (fine summers though)... living on the southeast side would put you reasonable distance to Crystal Mtn which is an awesome hill, etc...

Team Summit & I could probably tell you a lot about the front range/central Colorado scene if you are interested in that route at all.
 
I settled in SLC for all the reasons mentioned. But, big city life? No way. SLC proper is about 180,000 residents or so. How big is Boulder these days? (I spent some years living there as a child and know it's a whole lot bigger now.) The entire Wasatch Front, stretching 100 miles (by only 10 or so miles wide) is barely over 1.5 million. Most of the Intermountain Region's advertising/marketing agencies are here. Raising kids here is the antithesis of doing so in Reno. I've got 7 world-class ski resorts within 25 minutes of home, 4 of which are accessible via mass transit, and the number jumps to 10 plus 1 tiny one if you're willing to expand your radius to 75 min.

For me the choice was clear.
 
I should have added to my comments about the "city life" here that even though my mailing address is SLC I could literally hit a pitching wedge from my front yard and the ball would land in the Wasatch National Forest, yet I'm 10 minutes from the downtown core.
 
Well, that's where your more intimate knowledge of the details for SLC comes in. Every time I've visited friends in SLC I get a much more 'big city' style/feel of traffic & Interstates, strip plazas, etc... than you describe. My friends must have chosen their specific locations less well? Don't know for sure - just my personal perception based on specific trips/locations.

Boulder is very anti growth (strict rules/limits on new housing) so it's a lot smaller than you probably think. But then that is also why housing prices in the city are so high. Doing a quick wiki search says the city is only 92K people and the 'metro area' of Boulder is ~280K people (which would have to be the entire county plus some other nearby areas). If you live/work near home it has a small city/suburbia feel in the area, but with Denver sports/amenities only 30 min away. Of course if you include the massive population all the way from Cheyenne Wy to Peublo you end up with something approaching 4 million on the front range. Given that a lot of them are skiers/boarders you end up with increasingly worse traffic jams on I-70 into the mountains the last few years. Thus why I personally like skiing the local hill just outside Boulder most of the time with primarily early/late trips to the central mtns.
 
I hope that my comments didn't come off as flippant, for they weren't intended to be.

I would've thought Boulder was bigger, but I stand corrected. I lived there in the early 70s, at a time when there was absolutely nothing along the highway connecting Denver and Boulder, and when Louisville was just a few farms. Clearly those areas look considerably different now.

The Salt Lake Valley is indisputably strip mall heaven. As regards Interstates SLC is at pretty much the crossroads of the Intermountain West, both literally and figuratively. I-80, running E/W, and I-15, running N/S. Other than I-215, a u-shaped belt route running around a southern semi-circle, that's our full complement of Interstates.

One benefit of being such a crossroads, and the fact that there isn't a damned thing for a few hundred miles in any direction, is that our amenities and cultural opportunites far outweigh those of most other small cities of our size.
 
No worries Admin.

I’ve had this exact discussion via email a couple years ago with a couple of friends in the East about my area of the west vs other options out west vs just sticking where they are, etc… I like this particular type of discussion as it creates some lively debate, lets you learn about other areas of the country, perceptions of other areas of the country (or perceptions of your own area of the country :-) as well as people’s personal preferences (what are ‘requirements’ for someone else vs ‘who cares’ items for yourself or etc…).

I agree that especially the towns (cities?) 10 or 20 miles outside of Boulder have had much more change and sprawl happening and I would guess in another 25 or 30 years Denver metro will essentially truly begin to absorb Boulder and it’s surroundings (vs being somewhat connected/somewhat open between the two still). Of course the 36 corridor will be the first place to be eaten up - being interstate class highway direct to Denver (Louisville, Superior, Broomfield all starting to sprawl). But, for the next couple of decades I really like where I ended up (~12 miles outside of the ‘republic of Boulder’).

Anyway, enough about my area. I didn’t mean to hijack the entire thread. I’m curious as to if Harvey44 is looking for someone to uncover a “hidden gem city” in the west that no one thinks of (say a Spokane or Boise??), or more looking for more details about the ‘obvious’ potentials in Colo, Utah, PNW, etc…
 
Wow. Harvey, love the description of your camp. Sell/rent/lease it to me sometime!

Seriously, do you XC ski too? Garnet Hill is wonderful, and as I've been to Gore only four times, I'm always looking for a chance to get up there. 5 hours or so for me, driving from Rochester.
Tom
 
EMSC....Hidden gems are cool. The reality is I never thought I would consider moving out west, but we just got our annual visit from our friends who moved near Shasta...Medford(?) Oregon....and the call is getting stronger. They are in a situation where he is retired, and she is a much sought after diabetic speciality nurse, so she can work wherever she wants. (Seriously they are in the middle of nowhere and she had three good job offers with 45 mins driving.) We aren't in that position.

Not sure why, but I'm somewhat prejudiced against Colorado and Utah. Maybe it's the desert. Didn't like Denver, but I know that's not the best part. The resorts seem like just resorts too. If I end up in Denver I'm still battling the crowds on an interstate to get to the snow right? Boulder too?

PointPeninsula...Basically I'm cross country skier who starting riding the lifts in November when there was no snow in the woods. I know a LOT about the Siamese Ponds Wilderness and have spent many winter night camping out there.

I never skied at all until I was 30 - first time was at Garnet Hill. Never rode a lift until I was 40 - first time at Gore on Karhu XCD GTs - 210s and leather boots. Still to this day haven't done a day of alpine. I'm getting close to 49 now. Skiin' on plastic and midfats has opened up the trees to me.

The Lodge is great especially with the new owner. Our camp is great too - you might be able to guess what road it's on. If I new how to post pics, I would.

LOVE this input. Keep it comin.
 
Couple of more quick inputs. Denver weekends=battle with interstate traffic - though you are going to some of the best known/run resorts in the US which is a bit different than anything back east. If you can get off weekdays though, no traffic issues or lift lines (exception maybe march spring break lift lines mid-week). Boulder has the same route to the big areas, but the local area is up a 2 lane canyon road - traffic is surprisingly not bad on it.

One other Colorado 'city' to consider is the southwest corner - Durango. small city of maybe 20-25K. Absolutely gorgeous area to be. Durango ski area is not too phenomenal, but then you have SIlverton up the road, telluride a couple hours, and Wolf creek a couple hours in the opposite direction. Not sure of the job market in the area - definitely nothing significant for my profession. You'd have to re-learn any and all backcountry skiing out here and especially in Durango - some of the most avalanche prone mtns in the world (but WOW when you are skiing them!).
 
Harvey,

It's interesting how much we have in common. I started XC in high school, on the 'racing' team. I generally finished in the middle of the pack, but enjoyed it immensely. My first trip to a downhill resort was backpacking through Smuggler's Notch in 1975, and hiking down one of the trails at Stowe. With full pack. Stepping sideways! That was the day before they opened. Looking back on it, I bet there were a lot of upset skiiers expecting first tracks but dodging the boot holes.

I mainly skied the local parks here in the Monroe County area for years - Mendon Ponds was always good. In my 20's I worked the midnight shift at Kodak, so I would go down there at 8:30 in the morning and enjoy a couple of inches of fresh powder on the trails. This predated the trail grooming they do now, of course. My first exposure to grooming on XC trails was Garnet Hill, probably 10-15 years ago.

I didn't start downhill skiing until four years ago. We just don't get the reliable snow we used to get for good XC in the area, so I thought that would be a way to enjoy snow again.

Maybe it's time to rediscover some backcountry adventures. Winter backpacking was a blast. I still remember the view at 7 AM on the AT, with a few inches of fresh powder on the trees. I also remember my first morning, when I wasn't aware that I should have slept with my boots inside my bag, but that's another (painful) story.

Have fun scouting out your new western home. I'm envious.

Tom
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top