just finalized my western trips plans

[thetrailboss]

i'm a planner. i know its risky for snow, but i need to for $ reasons, time off work reasons, other people's needs reasons.

all ski days are either ikon pass or silverton spring pass unless otherwise noted

Trip #1 - December 23-30 - Copper & Winter Park
- 6 ski days (possibly 7 if we ski day of arrival)
- with girlfriend
- total cost for my share of everything (lodging, air, car) = $900

Trip #2 - January 18-21 - Copper and A-Basin
- 3 ski days
- with girlfriend and a colorado couple we are friends with
- total cost for my share of everything (lodging, air, car, a-basin day ticket) = $550

Trip #3 - February 16-24 - Banff, Kicking Horse, Revelstoke
- 7 ski days
- solo
- total cost for my share of everything (lodging, air, car, day ticket at kicking horse) = $1400

Trip #4 - March 27-31 - Silverton
- 3 ski days
- 1 heli drop run ($39, came with my pass, which was $150)
- with 4 friends who live in colorado and are absolutely ripping skiers
- total cost for my share of everything (lodging, air, car, heli drop) = $700

so that is 19 days of western skiing spread over 4 trips, for ~$3500, all paid for in advance. its not cheap by any means, but its also not particularly expensive all things considered. incidental expenses will be incurred but are incurred every day of my life when i decide to eat food or drink beer or gas car

i bought the silverton pass because it was $150 and comes with 3 days each at smuggs (blackout holiday periods) and mad river (weekdays only). then my co friends were like 'lets go to silverton'. im excited but a bit scared. i need to condition. lift to ~12000, hikes to 13500. only one lift, and while there is terrain that is accessible without the hiking, the place is really about ridge hiking. need to start training properly

Nice! Silverton is pretty cool.

 

[NYDB]

Great deal making/finding OP. All of your west trips combined are about what it's going to cost me to take entire family to solitude/Brighton for 6 days over Feb break.

I think I am going to try to book a 3 day solo trip before xmas as well. I'll watch where to snow hits, but it looks like either snowbird or Copper. From what I've been seeing, pre Christmas there are good deals to be had.



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[p_levert]

Trip #2, Copper/A-basin for three days, that sounds like the air-sucking trip to me. The A-basin base is at 10,780 ft and Copper is at a still-high 9,712. For a three day trip, that will be hard on the body. I recommend doing the first day at Eldora, also on your Ikon pass.

 

[KustyTheKlown]

elevation has never been an issue for me with lift served skiing. the hiking at Silverton is the physically challenging thing for me

 

[jaytrem]

elevation has never been an issue for me with lift served skiing. the hiking at Silverton is the physically challenging thing for me

When I was there it didn't appear that any of the groups were hiking particularly fast. Seems like most of their guided clients aren't the super back country hiking types. I'm sure you'll be fine. Cool place. Only negative for that part of the trip was that there was something dead in the wall of the hotel. My room was fine, but nastiest smell ever in my sister's. Worked out well price wise though, they comped that room!

 

[Zand]

Working on a few Ikon-based trips myself. I took a 5 day trip last year, hoping to maybe do 2 4-day trips this year. I have nearly 5 weeks off built up for next year (horray for roll-over vacation time) so we'll see how I can finagle that into lots of long weekends. Money depends on where friends live next year. Not having to rent a car or get rooms would be a huge savings and would allow me to fly out once or twice more, especially to Denver which is incredibly cheap to fly to.

 

[NYDB]

Got it, figured it was work thing more than preference. I always looked at is if I take the whole week, I get 2 weekends out there rather than 1. My go to week was always the week before presidents week. Figured I would get the extra Monday without having to take an extra day. Trickier now if I want to bring the kids. Got flights to Cali in April. We'll head to airport right from school and then they'll head to school right from the airport. We'll see how they do with the red eye, they're 7.

That reentry will be tough. on the teachers.

I booked a red eye too coming back from feb break (otherwise the flights go from just merely expensive to ridiculous) but we land on a sat. mine are 10 and 6.

 

[jimk]

Trip #2, Copper/A-basin for three days, that sounds like the air-sucking trip to me. The A-basin base is at 10,780 ft and Copper is at a still-high 9,712. For a three day trip, that will be hard on the body. I recommend doing the first day at Eldora, also on your Ikon pass.

Yeah, flatlanders (like myself) can struggle to acclimatize on a three day trip and only feel good on the last day driving back to the airport. On the other hand, if you go hard for 3 or 4 days straight, you're kind of ready for a day off anyway.
Sidebar question, any of you flatlanders who fly to ski have a comment on the following: do you think you hold some acclimatization from prior trips made a few weeks before? Do you feel better, quicker on your second trip vs. your first trip out to western elevations each winter or do you go through full acclimatization each trip? I'll tell you one thing, I definitely feel a little better getting off an airplane and skiing in UT vs. skiing in CO. At most UT ski areas you are skiing at an elevation that is approx 1000-2000' below the terrain you'd be skiing at most CO areas. And if sleeping in SLC suburbs you'd be sleeping at approx. 4000' below many CO ski towns. Tip, Avon and Steamboat are good-for-sleeping Colorado ski towns

 

[KustyTheKlown]

That reentry will be tough. on the teachers.

I booked a red eye too coming back from feb break (otherwise the flights go from just merely expensive to ridiculous) but we land on a sat. mine are 10 and 6.

i fly back from MLK on a red-eye and have 3 hours to get clean get dressed and get to work. it is going to absolutely suck. we have a red-eye coming back on 12/30 (technically its the night of 12/29 but we leave at like 12:05) and land at 6 AM. but we are off the 30th-1st so its all good.

 

[FBGM]

Congrats on the sex. I’ll bake ya a cake.

 

[Whitey]

Yeah, flatlanders (like myself) can struggle to acclimatize on a three day trip and only feel good on the last day driving back to the airport. On the other hand, if you go hard for 3 or 4 days straight, you're kind of ready for a day off anyway.

This helped me for the 1st day or two. I ski with a backpack when I ski out west. Easy to throw this in there. I've found them at "the Pilot Store" on-line. If you spend your 1st night at some elevation that helps. If you leave the east coast, get off the plane, and then immediately go skiing - you'll feel it more. Drink lots of fluids too, that helps.

 

[Killingtime]

Sidebar question, any of you flatlanders who fly to ski have a comment on the following: do you think you hold some acclimatization from prior trips made a few weeks before? Do you feel better, quicker on your second trip vs. your first trip out to western elevations each winter or do you go through full acclimatization each trip?

Felt sick my first day in Park City but not sure if it was the elevation or the amount of beers I had. Steamboat last year was no problem.

 

[KustyTheKlown]

Drinking on the first night has destroyed me in the past. So excited to be there, get into some nice co beers and whiskey, worst hangover ever. I don’t drink on night 1 anymore

 

[Zand]

Went to WP and Copper last year and it was my first time out west. Slept in Golden the first night before heading into the mountains. Altitude didn't bother me very much at all. Bending down to buckle my boots was a much tougher task than usual though lol. The only thing that really got me was not being able to sleep. I guess that is a symptom of altitude problems so maybe I was affected in that way but never felt sick or anything. Best part is I felt like I had way more energy there...skied hard for 5 days straight and could've gone more. Then I barely survived 6 runs down Superstar in May.

Put the beer away for a couple days and drink as much water as you can. And it still won't feel like enough water.

 

[crank]

Last year I made 4 trips out west for a total of 18 days. Would have skied a few more but one of the trips was to Taos with limited terrain so we hiked a couple of days there. Was also super fortunate in a low snow year to get powder and great conditions on each of the following 3 trips. I did 3 days at Sun Peaks, 4 days at Taos, 5 Days around SLC (Skied with Jim K a bit there), and 6 days at Telluride where we were extremly lucky to get the best conditions of a not great winter snow-wise.

This coming season I have 1 trip booked to Val d'Isere, FRA for a week and am planning to meet up with a good friend in Jackson Hole some time in January probably for 5-days maybe a bit longer.

 

[BenedictGomez]

This helped me for the 1st day or two. I ski with a backpack when I ski out west. Easy to throw this in there. I've found them at "the Pilot Store" on-line. If you spend your 1st night at some elevation that helps. If you leave the east coast, get off the plane, and then immediately go skiing - you'll feel it more. Drink lots of fluids too, that helps.

The fluids help, but save your money on those canned O2 = total placebo effect if you think it "helped" you.

Felt sick my first day in Park City but not sure if it was the elevation or the amount of beers I had. Steamboat last year was no problem.

It was the beer. You're not likely to get altitude sickness in Park City as it's < the 8,000 bogey they say typically starts the range.

 

[Killingtime]

Drinking on the first night has destroyed me in the past. So excited to be there, get into some nice co beers and whiskey, worst hangover ever. I don’t drink on night 1 anymore

Yeah, lesson learned on that one.

 

[Whitey]

The fluids help, but save your money on those canned O2 = total placebo effect if you think it "helped" you.

Care to elaborate?

 

[BenedictGomez]

Care to elaborate?

There's no scientific reason for that to work and there's no research suggestive it could or should work. That's always your first warning sign with crap like this. What do the studies say? Wait, what, there are no confirmational studies (or studies at all)? = almost 100% certain scam (e.g. Echinacea = scam, Airborne = scam).

It was first developed as a way to scam Asians who live in polluted cities into breathing "clean air", and then they imported the idea as a "high altitude cure" to expand the scam market. It doesn't really make much medical sense either for a variety of reasons, for instance it's not so much "lack of oxygen" that's a problem, it's the relative pressure that really gets people, and what do those cans have, a minutes work of "breaths" in them? It's not like an oxygen concentrator hooked up to a power source.

 

[mikec142]

What's the point of this post?

I haven't been on AZ much since this past season...I take my summer break. Frankly I find Kusty's post to be fascinating. I think it's amazing that he can plan this far ahead and ski all these days out west for so cheap.

I'm a 48 year old, married, father of two teen girls. Both my girls are in HS and the academics are so fast paced these days that they (and my wife) get anxious about missing school. So I'm kinda boxed into (if I want to go out west as a family) going during Christmas break (no guarantee of good snow) or President's Day weekend. Our spring break is in mid-April. A trip for the four of us could easily be $7-10k. That's not something I take lightly. So to see that people can still get some great skiing in for relatively cheap is refreshing.

Excited for the season and to be back on AZ!