I am very fortunate. I have been out west twice. Once to ski Abasin, Keystone, Copper, and the next was Utah to ski Snowbird, Canyons, PC, Deer Valley, and Snowbird. Those were great trips, but my parents own a 2nd home near Bethel, ME. So with a 3 1/4 hr drive up, I can ski SR, Wildcat, Mt Abram, Black Mtn of Maine, and have the options of hitting Loon, or Cannon on the way up. I really enjoyed the trips out west, but with the cost and other considerations, it probably won't happen again. Also, I live 15 minutes from the Crotch, which is VERY convenient.
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Rental cars for western travel
- Thread starter MommaBear
- Start date
I'm thinking that is just a new account for someone that has been here for a while and not actually someone that just found this board now...
abc
Well-known member
Based on what evidence?
Just to be clear, I was referring to dblskifanatic (since that's who BG mentioned had a recent join date) and not Teleskier.
My only intention was to point out to BG that he's probably seen Teleskier's rants before despite the recent join date and isn't necessarily surprised to see a rant since this certainly isn't the first one, but rather is surprised because he doesn't think the content of the rant is valid.
It's dlague, which, I assume from the winking face graphic, BG already knows.
abc
Well-known member
OK.
I was slow to pick up on that.
I was slow to pick up on that.
Yea, I wasn't naming the name in case he had an actual reason for changing it (although in that case he probably wouldn't have used the same name that he already uses elsewhere). :razz:
big_vert
Member
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2007
- Messages
- 183
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- 18
You get what you pay for.
Is the effort worth it? Really? REALLY? Wow. Even bad western conditions are still waaaaaay better than the normal northleast drek. Lived in NE for 40+ years and the last 10 wouldn't bother to go north. Life's too short for that, even with a bud with a ski-in/out on Bear mountain.
If you can't find a way to make a west trip work, you're doing it wrong. Really wrong.
Chains - go on ebay and get the ones that look like oversized tie wraps. work fine and easy on and off. Rentals - All of the places at SLC have a lot of 4wd vehicles. No issues. Only advice if DO NOT go to Budget in downtown SLC, they'll rip you off with the car and airport fees and everything else. Same at Budget at YVR - notorious for ripping people off for non-existent problems and damage
This stupid nonsense argument again?
Welcome it's summer again.
New England snow does suck. Please. Stay in NJ. Fly to Utah. Don’t ski here.
These last two frustrating weeks, I just happen to have been trying to book my personal trips to Kirkwood and Whistler for next year, so it’s on my mind.
I should have specified ‘which western’. Thus I was specifically thinking of CA and BC here.
Agreed. My “cheapest available car” FWD rentals from Denver have all been fine, always, no matter what ski resorts I drive to in CO.
I feel I can drive anything in any snow especially FWD, but last year’s bald tire RWD Cadillac from Seattle (last car at airport at 2am) to Whistler was really pushing it (not even I would do that again). Trying to keep up with the front pack of cars out of Vancouver in ice and snow led to start to finish white knuckles and stay-100%-on-top-of-it driving skills (after a midnight flight of no sleep, which put you at Saturday 6am Vancouver get-to-mountain highly competitive rush hour traffic)… would have been more fun in a different car.
More lies and BS.
The real reason that you might find yourself alone on your flight to Whistler is that Whistler has begun to price itself out of the US market.
Last year (ie, a few months ago)… the most affordable room I could find in Whistler was 5x/night price of the usual places I stay in to ski locally here.
Despite that high price, my place was not even in Whistler Village but a drive away … yet worse still, turned out to be a whole building of 100% Airbnb absent landlord rentals… so it turned into a glorified college dorm filled with drunken US college students coming across the border for the lower drinking age… the place was replete with drunken hall fights and smashed drinking glasses thrown around in hallways at night… and sirened police visits whose multiple police cars blocked my car from driving to dinner. Etc. Etc. Sure, you can say this happens anywhere, but to be able to garner that high price for such down-market ‘features’… illustrates how “not cheap” Whistler really is in actual reality.
This is Whistler - which you have the nerve to use as your example of “cheap western trips.” Not true! FAKE ACCOUNTING!
A NE Motel-6 is no Westin, but also doesn’t think it can charge Westin prices. But out west, they think they can! And Motel-6 would have been a lot safer, quieter and cleaner than what I rented there.
(For the record, I would have been fine with this place as a ski dorm ‘dive’ per my old NE days, if they charged similar $15/night commensurate for what the venue actually was, not western > $200/night).
And yet you keep insisting with the falsehood that western skiing (and Whsitler in specific) is cheap.
Maybe that was just last year? Nope. I was just recently looking again, thinking I might be early enough to find some hidden values in Whistler for next year… and surprise, surprise… the same over-priced and/or crap rentals and hotels are available now for the same sky-high prices - despite being a year away - as I found for my trip last year.
I dare you to put up or shut up. Everyone else besides you must be “doing it all wrong.”
Pick any place in Whistler Village, or even in much-further away and ‘cheaper’ Creekside (where I/everyone endured 2.5-hour gondola waits before their first turn in snow), that is within ski boot walking distance to any chair or gondola of Whistler, that has overnight parking for your rental car, that is a standard private room with private bathroom of even the most basic NE “Motel 6” variety … I’ll even let you skip other ‘usual’ desirable “destination ski trip” essentials such as a hot tub/etc … in February for less than $200/night total in Whistler. Go ahead!
And since you often only just take simple shallow web swipes at it, factor in everything - not just the headline price - add up the full accommodation price including BC taxes, how much the place charges for parking per night when you read the fine print, the rental cleaning fees, service fees (etc) and divide that “true total” by the number of nights to compute the true hotel cost. How much is that? Versus a typical less-than-$100/night NE motel, hotel, or B&B?
And this is just one item of western trip cost - only the hotel.
If you saw my trip report from this year’s Whistler trip (not posted here), it details the shocking high prices I paid for ‘brown water’ Canadian whiskey and basic groceries such as cheese, milk, and eggs in town. Skiing in Vermont wins just for its more ordinary price for cheese alone!! No wonder the Canadian border guards check for and restrict cheese brought into BC province. It’s not just the “sin tax” items that are sky high.
How out of whack is Whislter accommodation?? The Toyko-style pod hotel in Whistler… the very fact they even HAVE a Tokyo-style pod hotel tells you something…. where you actually slide in to a hole in the wall to sleep in a coffin sized ‘pod’ … with no room to stand up to put ski pants on for example… never mind not having your own private bathroom, shower or toilet… has the nerve to charge $300/night for a “front entry pod,” or $340/night for a woman-only pod on my current search. A YEAR ahead! This place is always in the top list of ‘affordable’ (they must mean “western affordable”) Whistler places.
What does $340/night buy you in a New England motel, hotel or B&B?? Well at least you can stand up in it to change your clothes and not have to wait in a line to use the bathroom or shower!!
Sorry - it’s not being truthful to insist Whistler is cheaper out there than here.
You then go even further to say a flying trip is cheaper than a driving trip. Not only is it apples to oranges as others said, it’s patently untrue. How much does it cost JUST to park your car at JFK for the week, as one simple factor alone?
Prove me wrong… I’ll love to see all these cheap $100/night Whistler rooms I somehow missed last year and am missing now. Safe parking on premises, can walk to lifts, private bathroom, at least 50/50 in reviews, you can stand up in it to change your clothes… just the same as any cheap New England motel room where you can park over night for free and park at the ski area for free.
Try doing that there in Whistler!
So I gave up on Whistler for next year. Sadly I’m going to miss skiing with my New Zealand friends - but I just can’t get myself to do an exact over-priced-for-crap repeat like last year (same high-priced but down-market places, huge lift lines, expensive groceries, alcohol, milk and cheese, long flights, crappy drive, high risk of bad wet rainy coastal snow) - the value is just not there.
Try doing that Kirkwood! So now onto Kirkwood… I also recently tried to put together my first visit there, for next year.
I found some places in the 5x of NE range. Great. Except last week, when I tried reserving a room in Kirkwood (the same guy appeared to own most of them), the guy called me back and laughed at me. “You think you can ski here and stay here for that price!! Dude!! That’s the summer price… no way you can stay here for under $400/night in winter!!”
‘Yeah sorry, dude, I was only using your own published prices, no matter’.
Prove me wrong in Kirkwood… I finally gave up in Kirkwood for next year’s trip too… and am going elsewhere.
And say I had I pre-booked in Kirkwood for $400/night… I’d still have to worry about Sierra Cement and lack of snow… their poor hotel reviews which say it’s dirty and not maintained… its hot tub always broken… no food options nearby (etc) … and yet he gets $400/night?!? “Dude!!!” No way that sells in New England.
AND as I said at the beginning of this thread regarding AWD, I’d also still be afraid that I might get snow… since when they do get snow in Tahoe, it dumps… such that the police shut down the roads, so you can’t even get up there to ski it. Which do you hope for, or fret over, for the whole year before your pre-booked trip? Do you want it to snow… or not snow?
This is considered “a skiers paradise” for people to cross the globe for, and pay those sky-high premiums for?!?
Never mind the original question… will you even be able to find an overpriced AWD SUV, at the airport, when your plane landed at 2am, when it snowed all day, and all the non-bald-tire rentals are gone, leaving you with the sole remaining crappy bald-tire clunky Cadillac? etc. etc.
This is “Cheaper and easier than New England” - whose leg are you trying to pull!!
And yes - I should be agreeing with you - to keep the NYC/NJ crowd in Utah and not clogging up our roads and trails when there is beautiful snow here.
Yeah, as if WHICH airport was of any consequence to the argument. JFK and EWR are interchangeable here, ie, a major airport socked in by major urban traffic. Pardon if you come across as more NJ than NYC to me (not that the two are really any different).
>Jackson
If you were from here, you’d know that most of us would immediately respond “Yes, the XC snow in renown Jackson *IS* truly excellent” but of course, we’d be meaning the awesome Jackson NH. Which being the person who knows NE as well as you clearly do, you totally did mean that, and didn’t mean Jackson Hole, right?
I’ve had “more than a few” ski years where the very BEST SNOW of the year I skied was in New England, despite my multiple $$$$ western trips in the same year, where you ask yourself sitting now out west having paid a pretty penny... “Now why didn’t I just stay home to ski where all the awesome snow is this week?”
But sure, New England snow does suck. Please. Stay in NJ. Fly to Utah. Don’t ski here. [As you hypocritically did this spring].
These last two frustrating weeks, I just happen to have been trying to book my personal trips to Kirkwood and Whistler for next year, so it’s on my mind.
I should have specified ‘which western’. Thus I was specifically thinking of CA and BC here.
Agreed. My “cheapest available car” FWD rentals from Denver have all been fine, always, no matter what ski resorts I drive to in CO.
I feel I can drive anything in any snow especially FWD, but last year’s bald tire RWD Cadillac from Seattle (last car at airport at 2am) to Whistler was really pushing it (not even I would do that again). Trying to keep up with the front pack of cars out of Vancouver in ice and snow led to start to finish white knuckles and stay-100%-on-top-of-it driving skills (after a midnight flight of no sleep, which put you at Saturday 6am Vancouver get-to-mountain highly competitive rush hour traffic)… would have been more fun in a different car.
More lies and BS.
The real reason that you might find yourself alone on your flight to Whistler is that Whistler has begun to price itself out of the US market.
Last year (ie, a few months ago)… the most affordable room I could find in Whistler was 5x/night price of the usual places I stay in to ski locally here.
Despite that high price, my place was not even in Whistler Village but a drive away … yet worse still, turned out to be a whole building of 100% Airbnb absent landlord rentals… so it turned into a glorified college dorm filled with drunken US college students coming across the border for the lower drinking age… the place was replete with drunken hall fights and smashed drinking glasses thrown around in hallways at night… and sirened police visits whose multiple police cars blocked my car from driving to dinner. Etc. Etc. Sure, you can say this happens anywhere, but to be able to garner that high price for such down-market ‘features’… illustrates how “not cheap” Whistler really is in actual reality.
This is Whistler - which you have the nerve to use as your example of “cheap western trips.” Not true! FAKE ACCOUNTING!
A NE Motel-6 is no Westin, but also doesn’t think it can charge Westin prices. But out west, they think they can! And Motel-6 would have been a lot safer, quieter and cleaner than what I rented there.
(For the record, I would have been fine with this place as a ski dorm ‘dive’ per my old NE days, if they charged similar $15/night commensurate for what the venue actually was, not western > $200/night).
And yet you keep insisting with the falsehood that western skiing (and Whsitler in specific) is cheap.
Maybe that was just last year? Nope. I was just recently looking again, thinking I might be early enough to find some hidden values in Whistler for next year… and surprise, surprise… the same over-priced and/or crap rentals and hotels are available now for the same sky-high prices - despite being a year away - as I found for my trip last year.
I dare you to put up or shut up. Everyone else besides you must be “doing it all wrong.”
Pick any place in Whistler Village, or even in much-further away and ‘cheaper’ Creekside (where I/everyone endured 2.5-hour gondola waits before their first turn in snow), that is within ski boot walking distance to any chair or gondola of Whistler, that has overnight parking for your rental car, that is a standard private room with private bathroom of even the most basic NE “Motel 6” variety … I’ll even let you skip other ‘usual’ desirable “destination ski trip” essentials such as a hot tub/etc … in February for less than $200/night total in Whistler. Go ahead!
And since you often only just take simple shallow web swipes at it, factor in everything - not just the headline price - add up the full accommodation price including BC taxes, how much the place charges for parking per night when you read the fine print, the rental cleaning fees, service fees (etc) and divide that “true total” by the number of nights to compute the true hotel cost. How much is that? Versus a typical less-than-$100/night NE motel, hotel, or B&B?
And this is just one item of western trip cost - only the hotel.
If you saw my trip report from this year’s Whistler trip (not posted here), it details the shocking high prices I paid for ‘brown water’ Canadian whiskey and basic groceries such as cheese, milk, and eggs in town. Skiing in Vermont wins just for its more ordinary price for cheese alone!! No wonder the Canadian border guards check for and restrict cheese brought into BC province. It’s not just the “sin tax” items that are sky high.
How out of whack is Whislter accommodation?? The Toyko-style pod hotel in Whistler… the very fact they even HAVE a Tokyo-style pod hotel tells you something…. where you actually slide in to a hole in the wall to sleep in a coffin sized ‘pod’ … with no room to stand up to put ski pants on for example… never mind not having your own private bathroom, shower or toilet… has the nerve to charge $300/night for a “front entry pod,” or $340/night for a woman-only pod on my current search. A YEAR ahead! This place is always in the top list of ‘affordable’ (they must mean “western affordable”) Whistler places.
What does $340/night buy you in a New England motel, hotel or B&B?? Well at least you can stand up in it to change your clothes and not have to wait in a line to use the bathroom or shower!!
Sorry - it’s not being truthful to insist Whistler is cheaper out there than here.
You then go even further to say a flying trip is cheaper than a driving trip. Not only is it apples to oranges as others said, it’s patently untrue. How much does it cost JUST to park your car at JFK for the week, as one simple factor alone?
Prove me wrong… I’ll love to see all these cheap $100/night Whistler rooms I somehow missed last year and am missing now. Safe parking on premises, can walk to lifts, private bathroom, at least 50/50 in reviews, you can stand up in it to change your clothes… just the same as any cheap New England motel room where you can park over night for free and park at the ski area for free.
Try doing that there in Whistler!
So I gave up on Whistler for next year. Sadly I’m going to miss skiing with my New Zealand friends - but I just can’t get myself to do an exact over-priced-for-crap repeat like last year (same high-priced but down-market places, huge lift lines, expensive groceries, alcohol, milk and cheese, long flights, crappy drive, high risk of bad wet rainy coastal snow) - the value is just not there.
Try doing that Kirkwood! So now onto Kirkwood… I also recently tried to put together my first visit there, for next year.
I found some places in the 5x of NE range. Great. Except last week, when I tried reserving a room in Kirkwood (the same guy appeared to own most of them), the guy called me back and laughed at me. “You think you can ski here and stay here for that price!! Dude!! That’s the summer price… no way you can stay here for under $400/night in winter!!”
‘Yeah sorry, dude, I was only using your own published prices, no matter’.
Prove me wrong in Kirkwood… I finally gave up in Kirkwood for next year’s trip too… and am going elsewhere.
And say I had I pre-booked in Kirkwood for $400/night… I’d still have to worry about Sierra Cement and lack of snow… their poor hotel reviews which say it’s dirty and not maintained… its hot tub always broken… no food options nearby (etc) … and yet he gets $400/night?!? “Dude!!!” No way that sells in New England.
AND as I said at the beginning of this thread regarding AWD, I’d also still be afraid that I might get snow… since when they do get snow in Tahoe, it dumps… such that the police shut down the roads, so you can’t even get up there to ski it. Which do you hope for, or fret over, for the whole year before your pre-booked trip? Do you want it to snow… or not snow?
This is considered “a skiers paradise” for people to cross the globe for, and pay those sky-high premiums for?!?
Never mind the original question… will you even be able to find an overpriced AWD SUV, at the airport, when your plane landed at 2am, when it snowed all day, and all the non-bald-tire rentals are gone, leaving you with the sole remaining crappy bald-tire clunky Cadillac? etc. etc.
This is “Cheaper and easier than New England” - whose leg are you trying to pull!!
And yes - I should be agreeing with you - to keep the NYC/NJ crowd in Utah and not clogging up our roads and trails when there is beautiful snow here.
Yeah, as if WHICH airport was of any consequence to the argument. JFK and EWR are interchangeable here, ie, a major airport socked in by major urban traffic. Pardon if you come across as more NJ than NYC to me (not that the two are really any different).
>Jackson
If you were from here, you’d know that most of us would immediately respond “Yes, the XC snow in renown Jackson *IS* truly excellent” but of course, we’d be meaning the awesome Jackson NH. Which being the person who knows NE as well as you clearly do, you totally did mean that, and didn’t mean Jackson Hole, right?
I’ve had “more than a few” ski years where the very BEST SNOW of the year I skied was in New England, despite my multiple $$$$ western trips in the same year, where you ask yourself sitting now out west having paid a pretty penny... “Now why didn’t I just stay home to ski where all the awesome snow is this week?”
But sure, New England snow does suck. Please. Stay in NJ. Fly to Utah. Don’t ski here. [As you hypocritically did this spring].
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abc
Well-known member
Sucks when one try irony and they take it literally.
I rest my case.
(Summer thread all over)
Smellytele
Well-known member
Teleskier you are the winner of the internet with the longest post ever.
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Edd
Well-known member
I haven’t been to Whistler for a long time. I’ve also never done a western ski trip alone, which certainly makes it challenging to stay cheap. If cost is a top concern, South Lake Tahoe has some reasonably priced lodging.
We almost always use HomeAway and I aim for $100/night per person, and that can fetch you some decent properties. I’m not always successful there but it’s usually doable.
Also, though, our group is kid-free and we avoid weekends and holidays like the plague, which keeps some of the costs down.
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We almost always use HomeAway and I aim for $100/night per person, and that can fetch you some decent properties. I’m not always successful there but it’s usually doable.
Also, though, our group is kid-free and we avoid weekends and holidays like the plague, which keeps some of the costs down.
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BenedictGomez
Well-known member
His post was TLDR, so I didnt bother, but the snippet you posted from him is entirely false.
While JFK is a"major airport socked in by major urban traffic", the same can not be said for EWR, which is usually an absolute joy to drive to, certainly when compared to JFK. I've literally missed a flight to JFK when I lived only 20 miles to it & I left several hours early. That doesn't happen with EWR, there are too many approaches, and not nearly as bad of traffic in NJ than in NYC.
It's probably best that a guy with all these geographical prejudices and budgetary constraints just stay at home in Rhode Island.
abc
Well-known member
Well, I end up doing it solo 2 years ago. It was definitely "not cheap" at $200/night, IN Whistler Village, about 20 steps from the lift, a gorgeous studio with a real kitchen. Wish I had someone to split it with to bring it down to $100/head/night, which is my usual target.
Being IN the village presented me with a "1st world" dilemma. Do I sample the many good restaurants in the village? Or do I cook? In the end, I did half and half.
The only thing I can say is I booked about 3 days advance. So I probably picked up a cancellation (or two, as I recall having to decide on a few comparable options). BTW, it's March. Not exactly peak season, but nor was it low season either.
Edd
Well-known member
I meant going alone is tough to do cheap. I worded that poorly. Late March/ early April is my go to period for western trips due to my wife’s schedule. A couple of years I’ve done an additional early trip without her.
Some (a good number on AZ) see these trips as strictly about the skiing but for me it’s a travel opportunity also. Especially if it’s 5+ days. I like to check out the area.
Lake Tahoe is my favorite destination so far. All of these areas are different but there’s no place like LT. Needs a direct flight from Boston, though.
ThinkSnow
Member
As is every topic here on AZ.
As a SW engineer you've never seen that before?
Well if you didn't start your interactions as attacking, people might read it differently.
There was no hint of irony there.
You know another thing that might help, adding a Worcester-invented smiley face. Tends to be a clue in written media when it's faceless "I don't know you, and you don't know me" media.
Just say'in.
Well if you didn't start your interactions as attacking, people might read it differently.
There was no hint of irony there.
You know another thing that might help, adding a Worcester-invented smiley face. Tends to be a clue in written media when it's faceless "I don't know you, and you don't know me" media.
Just say'in.
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