Where in the west

[Tony Crocker]

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.

Nowhere is this more true than L.A. I'm on its NE edge, so my weekend commute to Mammoth is easier than 30 years ago because it was 2-lane highway for 3/4 of the distance then vs. less than half now. But the people in Orange County and coastal L.A. have to go through rush hour hell before they get to the desert.

Not sure why, but I'm somewhat prejudiced against Colorado and Utah. Maybe it's the desert.

That 's the appearance of all the cities in the intermountain West: Reno, Albuquerque, Boise, Spokane, Calgary. Be grateful for it. That's the reason you don't have rain in the ski areas during the winter or stifling humidity in the summer. You want green? Those mountains you're skiing in the winter are lush and beautiful in the summer.

From the other "where to live" threads I've learned a few things. One is that L.A. is an unusual ski market with its sharp disparity between the quality of daytrip and weekend skiing. Listening to people here makes it clear that people want daytrip if at all possible. The other point (I think from Riverc0il) was the value of having a variety of areas to choose rather just a few (L.A./Mammoth is again an extreme example).

In terms of variety, 3 big clusters (SLC, Tahoe and Front Range/I-70 Colorado) stand out. I put Colorado below the other 2 for 2 reasons:
1) Terrain. Colorado has no lift served mountain in the league of Squaw or Snowbird in terms of scale of expert terrain. And in terms of exciting terrain with abundant powder, nothing comparable to Alta or Kirkwood either.
2) Crowds. The Colorado group must get at least 8 million skier visits. Tahoe gets about 4 million and SLC less than that.

SLC is #1 metro area by a mile. More skiing in good conditions over a longer period of time each year than Tahoe or Colorado. Plus much shorter commute times, in terms of both distance and potential traffic issues. Real estate is still cheaper than many of the alternative cities.

I'd still rate Reno #2. I think it's economy is more diverse than some of you think. Its economy is defintely growing, but its casino sector is stagnant. Laughlin now produces more casino revenue than Reno. But I can understand the concern about gambling/casino influence.

I've outlined the Denver vs. Seattle debate before. Denver has more variety and more consistent snow conditions. Seattle has better high end terrain and many more big powder days if you have any flexibility in your schedule. Vancouver is better than either because Whistler is within daytrip distance.

Sacramento is Tahoe skiing but with commuting conditions similar to or slightly tougher than Denver. Probably better than Boulder considering the latter's extra distance.

Calgary and Spokane have extensive skiing diversity in a 3-4 hour radius. The close-in (less than 2 hours) is better from Calgary.

SF of course has at least as much as Calgary and Spokane at 3-4 hours, but no close-in. Being on the east side of the Bay is very important from a ski perspective.

Portland's close-in is not all that great, except for the bonus of year round at Timberline. But the 3-4 hour (Crystal and Bachelor) is quite good.

If skiing is a major motivation in an East to West move, I would insist on one of the above metro arreas.

 

[Geoff]

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.

You'd probably shank the shot, hit some church elder, and be forced to tithe 20% of your income to the church for life.

I'm in Boulder all the time. The traffic on the Boulder Turnpike is awful and the sprawl is getting nasty. Boulder-proper is still a very nice place.

 

[Tony Crocker]

You'd probably shank the shot, hit some church elder, and be forced to tithe 20% of your income to the church for life.

The elephant in the room of Utah rears its head again. Any of you who have spent time with admin know that the cultural paranoia about Salt Lake is overblown. Rural Utah is a different story, but SLC and Park City are < 50% LDS.

For what it's worth my mother went to high school in SLC in the 1930's. She made 3 lifelong friends there, 2 of whom were also in SoCal when I was growing up. Her sister and parents are buried in SLC's Mt. Olivet cemetary. None of these people are LDS.

My grandmother died in January 1988 at the age of 92. My mother (who hated cold weather) refused to take the ashes to Salt Lake for burial in the winter. The burial was on May 2. I skied Alta's closing day of May 1 in 20 inches new, along with some well-baked leftovers at Snowbird on May 3 :lol: .

 

[Admin]

The elephant in the room of Utah rears its head again. Any of you who have spent time with admin know that the cultural paranoia about SLC is overblown. Rural Utah is a different story, but SLC and Park City are < 50% LDS.

Geoff's comment was very tongue-in-cheek, for he knows all too well -- his mother lived for a time in Park City.

 

[Sharon]

Harv,

You got it pretty good right now. There isn't much for you in No River as far as work is concerned, so if you are thinking about moving west, definitely consider SLC and also take a trip to Portland, OR or Seattle, WA...they have some decent proximity to high mountains and they are lovely cities to live near and tons of outdoor opportunities.

Only problem with moving west is the cost of housing. It is a bit ridiculous. SLC may be better in this department.

IMO, SLC is a big city (I live in a city of 30,000 people in a county with 90,000 people more than 30 miles from the nearest interstate). It has sprawling with big box and strip malls and interstate highways and typical traffic of big cities. But the proximity to skiing and other mountain sports can't be beat, and it is no wonder that Skidog, Admin, Marc_C and others love it so much. You would have plenty of job opportunities. The LDS culture is apparent, but is more of an entertainment factor (IMO). Only some of my friends have issues with Mormons (women who have male-LDS co-workers or bosses have some really unhappiness at times with their cultural differences). But there is quite a great community of non-LDS skiers who are mostly transplants from eastern cities. You will not be alone.

 

[Tony Crocker]

SLC is not really a big city IMHO. Traffic in places like SLC and Portland is much less than say, Seattle or Denver. The tradeoff is less in the way of arts/cultural attractions and major league sports. My guess is that most of the people on FTO would prefer the SLC/Portland size, which also tends to have cheaper real estate.

 

[jasoncapecod]

interstate highways and typical traffic of big cities

Springsteen concert ended around 11pm in NYC last night.. Traffic was bumper to bumper for 1.5hrs getting out of NYC. Thats traffic in the big city. :wink:

I hate traffic

 

[ChrisC]

SF of course has at least as much as Calgary and Spokane at 3-4 hours, but no close-in. Being on the east side of the Bay is very important from a ski perspective.

SF requires you to deal with Sacramento traffic. Since Sacramento sprawls for about 40-50 miles along both I-80 and 50 -- with I-80 having significantly worse traffic -- Even an weekend early departure from SF puts one into evening rush in Sacramento. On Sunday evenings, Donner Pass can be slow -- but there are 2 lane drops in Sacramento which cause sometimes greater delays. I detour down to 50 soon after Auburn.

Day skiing is possible from SF: Sugar Bowl and Sierra-at-Tahoe are under 3 hrs. From the SouthBay, one could day trip to Dodge Ridge and possibly Bear Valley in slightly under 3 hrs. However, this is not too pleasant. Hence, there are a lot of ski shares in Tahoe.

 

[ChrisC]

Boise, ID is another city to consider.

It's metro area is about 500k persons and has a decent economy. The core downtown area is quite attractive. Lots of interesting neighborhoods. (Complete with organic co-ops).

There is good skiing nearby:
Bogus Basin. http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards ... php?t=3236
30 min above the city. More impressive than most day areas with multi-faceted dual mountains with 2000' vert.

Brundage & Tamarack. http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards ... php?t=3237 2 hrs. These areas are almost in the NW weather flow and lack the fog (as I understand.) The town of McCall was a very attractive year-round lakeside area.

Sun Valley. 3 hrs. 3000 vert of immaculate cruising.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I have only skied Sun Valley, but I still suspect Boise rates below the other metro areas I listed. It would be next on the list, ahead of Albuquerque.

Bogus does not get a lot of snow.

I haven't seen Brundage or Tamarack, but I suspect they are not in the class of Schweitzer. I also thought they might be more than 2 hours from Boise, but I could be wrong.

Sun Valley is a unique ski experience everyone should have sometime, but at that distance I'd prefer Crystal and Bachelor (Portland) or Red Mt. and Whitefish (Spokane).

 

[Idaho Cliff]

… I still suspect Boise rates below the other metro areas I listed. …
Bogus does not get a lot of snow. …
I haven't seen Brundage or Tamarack, but I suspect they are not in the class of Schweitzer. I also thought they might be more than 2 hours from Boise …

Tony,
How one rates Boise depends on what you are looking for. Notwithstanding a recent Micron layoff, I think the job market is fairly good. The original poster wanted to live between the ski areas and the town. There’s opportunity for that. For example the towns of Eagle, Emmett, or Horseshoe Bend to the NW of Boise are quite small but somewhat closer to Brundage and Tamarack. Boise has an outstanding greenbelt and trail system for hiking and biking.

Bogus may not get as much snow as the other areas, but it will surprise you. Most of the runs are on Northerly aspects and have snow when it looks like there wouldn’t be any.

You are correct that Brundage and Tamarack (not yet anyway) (or even Bogus) are in the class of Schweitzer. However they each have their strong points. Brundage is an excellent “intermediate level powder area”. It probably gets the best quality snow, better than Schweitzer or Big Mountain, but not as good as Grand Targhee. It might be the best one to learn powder skiing and to venture into the trees. I expect that the powder doesn’t last as long as it did when I used to ski there. They have added a new Lakeview Bowl and Lift on the SE side of the mountain which should be good skiing unless it’s a warm winter. There are lots of Cross Country Ski opportunities near McCall. Previously it was not a favorite spot for those that liked steep moguls.

I’ve only skied Tamarack once, on spring corn, but I was very impressed with the variety of terrain on several of the runs. It was very interesting, skiing trails that had steeps and flats and lots of turns. I think once one learns the terrain, or hooks up with a local, they could find some really good tree skiing and backcountry ski opportunities. They also have about 25K of cross country ski trails and snowmobile trails and rentals. Both Brundage and Tamarack have cat skiing.

Bogus probably has more challenging runs, and more steep mogul runs, than the other two, but probably not quite as good quality snow. That being said, I probably skied more powder at Bogus when I patrolled there in the 1970’s than any other area. They have cross country ski trails too.

On the way to Ketchum/Sun Valley one goes by Fairfield and north of there is Soldier Mountain Ski Area. It’s smaller than the other areas, but might offer some variety. They have Cat Skiing. Also note that the area west of Fairfield has some good snow kiting spots.

The AAA mileages and time from the Boise Airport (3201 Airport Way) to several destinations is as follows:
Brundage: About 2 ¾ Hrs, 130.9 Mi; McCall: 2+ Hrs, 110.3 Mi; Tamarack: 2+ Hrs, 103.2 Mi, Donnelly (access to Tamarack) 1 ¾ Hrs, 97.8 Mi. These areas would be at least 10 miles and 20 minutes closer if one lived NW of Boise.
Bogus is: 48 Min, 22 miles; Fairfield is: < 2 Hrs, 99.0 Mi (I’d guess that Soldier Mtn would be another half hour), Ketchum (Base for Bald Mtn at Sun Valley) is: 3+ Hrs, 151 Mi.

Web Links:
Brundage: http://www.brundage.com/ Tamarack: http://www.tamarackidaho.com/ Bogus Basin: http://www.bogusbasin.org/ Soldier Mountain: http://www.soldiermountain.com/
City of Boise: http://www.cityofboise.org/ Boise Newspaper Outdoor Section: http://www.idahostatesman.com/110/

Hope this may help someone,
/s/ Cliff

 

[dparz]

Why not Southern NH?

Close to 20 pretty decent resorts (loon, waterville, Killington, okemo, Stowe, Stratton, Sugarbush, etc....
Excellent Jobs in/around rt 495
also Some excellent school systems

Not west coast, but I don't understand the need to be on the west coast, many of those places are landlocked (no Ocean 30min away), high plain deserts

The resort towns where there are jobs are prohibittively expensive (i.e. JacksonHole, SunValley, I70 corrider)

 

[Tony Crocker]

Sharon and dparz are going to look at most of the western options close to skiing as unpalatably expensive, because of real estate prices relative to where they live now.

Harvey44 lives in northern NJ, which I suspect is in the ballpark with the L.A. market where I live. So hopefully he could handle Seattle if he wanted to, and Portland and SLC might even look cheap to him.

The Salt Lake advertising campaign got some more ammunition yesterday.

 

[dparz]

Seattle and Portland have horrible traffic, especially Seattle (I think they blame all the Californians who escaped the high home prices in Silicon Valley, basically moved their problems North) (I worked for Intel for 14 years, we moved most of the engineering up their becasue it was easier to recruit transfers to versus $$$ SiValley)

Also you can go 3 months without seeing the Sun in these places, yes cloud cover for 3 straight months! -- and it drizzles all the time, many people cannot handle it, there is a reason Gore-Tex was invented up there. However, very nice resteraunts, coffee, microbrews. Ocean is freezing, maybe 50 degrees in middle of summer. Coastline is beautiful, rugged, sanddunes, cliffs.

Great Hiking. fishing, windsurfing, golf, kayaking, etc.
Skiing is OK (Been to Batchelor and Mt Hood) lots of moisture in snow and the elevation makes for freezing or cement like conditions much of the time. Caveat - never been skiing in WA

 

[Sharon]

I have only skied Sun Valley, but I still suspect Boise rates below the other metro areas I listed. It would be next on the list, ahead of Albuquerque.
(snip)
Sun Valley is a unique ski experience everyone should have sometime, but at that distance I'd prefer Crystal and Bachelor (Portland) or Red Mt. and Whitefish (Spokane).

For Harvey, Sun Valley may be a fantastic opportunity to live in a very interesting place very close to world-class skiing. The valley leading up to Sun Valley (Wood River Valley) (Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue) is a very growing area with lots of arts/entertainment/businesses sprawling out of Sun Valley. Since he is in advertising, he should be able to find meaningful work in that area and be very close to skiing. Boise is not that far away, but it is a bigger city if he needs city amenities. From what I saw when I was there last year, the area south of Sun Valley may be of interest. Harv, I recommend that you go there and check it out.

In the meantime, check out my up and coming resort feature on Sun Valley. Should be published soon. Our Editorship seems to be cranking out one per week.

 

[Tony Crocker]

If Harvey can go rural, close to ski areas, Sun Valley certainly wouldn't be my choice. You've got one mountain (albeit an interesting and distinctive one) that averages less than 200 inches snowfall. Sun Valley has occasionally been described as "the best eastern ski area in the country" because it's mainly a groomer and mogul hill (with fall lines 2x as long as the East), fairly dependent on snowmaking, hardpack surfaces (not the ice/boilerplate because it rarely rains) during extended dry spells.

Remember Riverc0il's variety point. For example, Glenwood Springs or other communities downvalley from Aspen, with Beaver Creek/Vail an easy Interstate 1-2 hours away. I'm sure there are many other cases.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Harvey, more questions for you.

Have you or your wife ever lived outside of the northeast? Would you exchange better terrain and/or conditions for a more interesting (and that adjective can be defined any way you like) town or vice versa?

During my years in the Rockies, I really liked the northern NM region. Obviously, you're not going to get consistent SLC-esque conditions there, but that'd be my tradeoff -- to live in a real "place" with a strong cultural identity (more than endless strip malls) in exchange for a penalty on Tony's snow/terrain scale.

Most on this board would probably reject this idea, but I could deal with Santa Fe and Pajarito as my lift-served home hills with Taos and Angel Fire up the road and a longer drive for more options north of the state line.

I fondly remember three straight years of nonstop mountain biking, x-c skiing, hiking, the smell of roasting chiles every autumn, etc.

 

[Tony Crocker]

My guess is that the best "cultural fit" for most northeasterners would be the PNW, Portland and Seattle. Harvey's offline inquiries tended in that direction. Within the mountain states, I see James' point.

Skiing on average is a close comparison to the Idaho/Sun Valley options descussed above. The top area (Taos) is comparable, but the secondary areas are better in Idaho. If you're far north as Santa Fe the ski commute distances in New Mexico are shorter. NM's warmer climate is better for the multisport enthusiasts, as James mentions.

 

[Geoff]

My guess is that the best "cultural fit" for most northeasterners would be the PNW, Portland and Seattle. Harvey's offline inquiries tended in that direction. Within the mountain states, I see James' point.

Skiing on average is a close comparison to the Idaho/Sun Valley options descussed above. The top area (Taos) is comparable, but the secondary areas are better in Idaho. If you're far north as Santa Fe the ski commute distances in New Mexico are shorter. NM's warmer climate is better for the multisport enthusiasts, as James mentions.

FWIW, I really enjoyed Ski Santa Fe. That's a place where I'd consider retiring. Wolf Creek isn't a horrible drive when the cover is thin locally. It's a real town with tons going on and a real airport is only an hour away in ABQ. Summer is their high season and I could rent my house for 3 months to cover my housing expenses for the year and get my New England salt water fix.

 

[ChrisC]

Calgary and Spokane have extensive skiing diversity in a 3-4 hour radius. The close-in (less than 2 hours) is better from Calgary.

Spokane might be geographically well positioned, but I would rather be almost anywhere else for economic and day-to-day life reasons.