Skiing in the United States
I guess I am a bit of a snob
when it comes to skiing in the US: I don't consider any of the ski resorts East
of the Mississippi River anything more than bunny slopes for East Coast
dudes. While I have skied quite a few of the places out east, I found that
they invariably had long lift lines, small and crowded runs, and meager elevation drops.
That is not to say that I haven't met some great skiers from that part of the
country and enjoyed their company, but my experience has been that the typical Easterner's idea of
skiing is sitting in the lodge's pub, trying to impress each other with their
clothes, and even sporting a false cast now and then. We in the West call
these types the "Rhinestone Skiers"! Of course, I generalize and
have been chastised for it by various Eastern skiers, and in some cases, rightly
so. Suffice it to say that skiers, irregardless of their origin, stick to
runs that their experience and abilities can handle without ruining the
enjoyment of skiing for others.
click on the ski resort
to
view photos/information
Alta is a cult ski area. Serious skiers speak of it in hushed tones. It may not
be as big as Vail or have Jackson Hole's vertical drop, and it is not a
destination resort, though less than an hour from Salt Lake City's airport. But
when it comes to deep, dry powder it has few equals (one is Snowbird only a
kilometer down Little Cottonwood Canyon).
It has some good intermediate slopes such as Big Dipper and Rock and Roll, but
Alta is famous for steep un-groomed chutes, on and off the trail map.
The Greeley Bowls and the chutes off Spiney Ridge are attractions: to ski these
in fresh powder - or even in falling snow - is the stuff of an off-piste skiers'
dreams. High Rustler is another.
Yet the resort has one of the cheapest lift passes in the Rockies. (Many old
hands hike to secret powder caches.)
Aspen needs to be de-mystified. Although there is nominally no beginner terrain
on Aspen's most famous mountain, Ajax, the skiing is not outrageously macho or
difficult. It is a great mountain for anyone who can ski with a modicum of
skill.
The reason beginners are advised not to ski Ajax is because the homeward bound
runs at the end of the day are like race-tracks.
The town of Aspen may be pricey, but it is not snooty. There is not a single
place in town - even the Caribou Club - where a tie is de rigueur. And film
stars who turn up at local restaurants are treated like anyone else.
The four mountains Ajax, Buttermilk, Highlands (added to the Aspen Ski Company's
portfolio last year) and Snowmass - offer diverse good skiing, with few rivals
in the Rockies.
Breckenridge carves out a big slice of the American ski market.
Its attractions are easy to list: four different ski mountains (Peaks 7,8,9 and
10); a charming main skeet, with 350 original Victorian buildings renovated or
reconstructed; good restaurants; and proximity to the other "Ski The
Summit" areas of Keystone, Copper Mountain, and Arapahoe Basin. It is also
only 140km from Denver.
The four mountains are quite different: Peak 8, the first to open, has terrain
for all grades of skier, including Imperial Bowl, the highest in-bounds skiing
in the USA at slightly less than 13,000ft.
Peak 9 is more gentle (with a few nasty surprises) and Peak 10 has more
difficult terrain.
Crested Butte is a paradox: it is small yet marketed internationally, and has
some of the gentlest and most challenging skiing in the Rockies. Its fame comes
from its extreme skiing and two celebrities from very different backgrounds.
Bill Johnson, America's first Olympic downhill gold-medallist (Sarajevo, 1984)
and amiable enfant terrible has been the resort's "ski ambassador" for
some years, and former president Carter and his wife Rosalyn are regular
visitors.
Crested Butte has one of the biggest programs for disabled skiers in the
country. It is also celebrated for its free skiing for all comers at the start
of the season - a way of attracting skiers to spend money in the shops and
hotels from mid-November to mid-December. (This gimmick is beginning to attract
the wrong kind of clientele.) Few resorts can offer both such pussy-cat and
petrifying skiing.
Like the breathtakingly beautiful lake it overlooks Heavenly ski area is
intersected by the California-Nevada border, which gives the resort an odd
stereoscopic ambiance.
The two views from the top of Monument Peak are startlingly different (Lake
Tahoe on the California side and the Nevada Desert on the other) and the base
area of South Lake Tahoe also contrasts wildly.
On the California side of the Stateline, gambling is illegal. The Nevada side,
however, is a Las Vegas-like miasma of light-bulbs announcing vast hotel-casinos
and gambling joints.
In winter, sunny California days often produce low temperatures at night.
Heavenly makes the most of this with one of the biggest snow-making systems in
the country. Two thirds of the area's boasted 240km of trails have snowmaking.
Heavenly's terrain in both states is good intermediate cruising, but on the
Nevada side Mott Canyon and the recently opened Killebrew Canyon provide an
ungroomed enclave for experts.
In fresh powder, Heavenly's skiable terrain expands further when tree skiing is
possible among the stunted white-barked pines.
Jackson Hole ski resort at Teton Village has built a reputation as one of the
best ski areas in the US.
It is not only the skiing dynamic though it is, or the vertical drop of 1,270m
(not high by European standards, but the biggest in the US).
It is the mix of slopes and scenery (the magnificent Teton mountain range);
wildlife (moose, coyotes and America's largest elk reserve), wild-west
atmosphere (wooden sidewalks and cowboy bars in the town of Jackson, 16km away);
and wilderness (Yellowstone National Park is not far away) that provides
Jackson's addictive atmosphere.
Jackson is mainly for intermediates and experts in search of excitement and
"air" as the Americans describe "lift off" on skis.
Jackson's most famous chute is Corbet's Couloir, where skiers must leap anything
from 3m to 6m.
This ancient volcano is one of America's biggest ski resorts - 10km from one end
to the other, divided into four areas. lt is in a remote and wild part of the
Eastern Sierras not far from Yosemite, arguably America's most beautiful
national park, which you can visit from late May.
There is often plenty of sunshine. Mammoth has dramatic scenery of its own,
especially the jagged, toothy Minarets.
The resort is 480km from Los Angeles where most of its clients come from. If it
were much nearer, even Mammoth's extensive slopes (30 lifts serving almost 150
runs) would be in danger of being over-run.
Many Los Angelinos and San Franciscans drive for six hours to get there at
weekends.
There is a lot of challenging skiing (Avalanche Chutes, Wipe Out, Paranoids and
Gravy Chute) but plenty of easy-does-it cruising runs too, such as St Anton,
Broadway and Forest Trail. A sister resort, June Mountain with easier trails, is
only half an hour away.
Mammoth did not get its name as a result of being so spread out. During a gold
rush in the late 1870s one mining company so dominated local claims that it was
called the Mammoth Mining Company.
Snowbird has almost everything: excellent snow (13m a year), challenging bowls
one of the widest intermediate trails in the country (Big Emma); a large, fast cable car
(eight minutes to the top of Hidden Peak - 3,350m)and attractive
scenery: it is also only 46km from Salt Lake City international airport, which
means that you can get a full day's skiing on your arrival day and leave late on
your last day.
If Snowbird has a flaw, it is its purpose-built architecture, dominated by the
Cliff Lodge, a steel and glass monolith with 532 rooms: in European terms,
Snowbird is more Flaine than Filzmoos.
Snowbird's most challenging in-bounds skiing is in its steep-sided bowl areas:
Gad Valley and Peruvian Gulch, where chutes serve as launching pads for those
who like the "free-fall" dimension of skiing.
Those who prefer a quieter existence can still take the tram and ski Chip's Run,
enjoying the same vertical drop and scenery as more aggressive skiers who opt
for the Silver Fox or Primrose Path descents. Skiing Snowbird after a fresh fall
of snow is exhilarating.
Of 15 ski areas scattered around the shores of Lake Tahoe - a spectacular
stretch of water 19km wide and 35km long - Squaw Valley, at the North Shore, is
the most challenging.
Squaw's six mountains encompass every conceivable terrain: from the alarming
moguls on the steep face of KT22 to the nursery slopes at High Camp on Emigrant
Peak.
Squaw also has some "radical" skiing off the Palisades, the setting
for many of the leaps that end up in gung-ho ski videos.
Squaw places emphasis on skiing more or less anywhere on 4,000 acres of open bowl
terrain rather than specific runs, but it does claim 160km of trails.
KT22, Snow King, and Granite Chief provide almost entirely challenging terrain,
while Squaw and Emigrant Peaks are benign The other mountain, Broken Arrow, has
a good mix of trails.
Squaw claims to have the biggest fleet of grooming machines in North America,
and its 33 lifts can carry almost 50,000 skiers an hour.
Sun Valley is perhaps the only American ski resort with more mystique than
Aspen. In its day, it had film stars, senators and celebrities flocking to its
slopes like butterflies to buddleias.
They came by train and stayed at the Sun Valley Lodge, often as guests of the
resort. The resort was built by Averell Harriman, president of the Union Pacific
Railway, after a long search to find a resort which would attract passengers
during the lean winter months.
Mount Baldy is a mountain with a good steep pitch and more than half a dozen
bowls and a wealth of intermediate cruising runs
A chief snow-making programmed and a luxurious new mountain restaurant, Seattle
Ridge Lodge, have helped put Sun Valley back on the map.
Ernie Blake, a German-born Swiss who worked as an interrogator for Allied
Intelligence in the war, invented this surreal enclave in the middle of New
Mexico's Sangre de Cristo mountains 32km from the adobe town of Taos and the
breathtaking Rio Grande Gorge.
He invited the brothers Mayer to help him run the ski school and threw in a few
British trail names. The result: an exotic mixture of cultural influences from
European to Pueblo Indian that has made Taos a cult resort.
There is a lot of good, steep skiing, but new arrivals can be daunted by the
apparent steepness of Al's Pun
The easy skiing does exist: runs like Bambi and White Father are delightful.
Then there are steeper runs than Al's. The reason good skiers come to Taos is
for the steep, deep and ungroomed. The scalps that every "serious"
skier wants to collect are difficult to get to and to get down: the so-called
Ridge Runs.
One of the best is Thunderbird Trees. The most challenging skiing is off Kachina
Peak, which is rarely open and involves a hike of at least an hour.
Blake, who died four years ago, swore he would never ruin it by building lifts
there.
Act One, Scene One: native American Indians roam this wild but idyllic box
canyon in a remote corner of South West Colorado. Scene Two: silver is
discovered, the Indians are dispossessed and a wild mining community springs up,
huddled beneath the mighty San Juan Mountains. Boom turns to slump and thriving
mining town becomes windswept semi-ghost town.
Act Two - The Present: Telluride becomes a sophisticated cult ski resort and
claims to be "the most beautiful place you will ever ski". Telluride,
where Butch Cassidy robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank in 1889, with a red-light
district which was never short of customers, has turned respectable almost
genteel. Yet in the old main street, dominated by the "New" Sheridan
Hotel, little has changed.
The ski slopes, famously steep in places such as Gold Hill and the Face black diamond
trails off lifts 7,8 and 9 (you can see Telluride between your ski
boots if you look down from The Plunge) - also have acres of carefree cruising
such as See For Ever.
San Joaquin Village is surrounded by some of the easiest skiing.
For many, Vail is the best all-round ski area in North America. It is one of the
largest, claiming to be the biggest single-mountain resort in the US.
Critics who claim Vail's skiing is bland in spite of its size get a five-letter
word in response: bowls.
Vail has some of the best back-bowls in North America - seven altogether: Game
Creek, Sun Up, Sun Down, Tea Cup, and more recently, China, Siberia and Mongolia
Bowls. More open next year.
These areas, shaped like large soup-bowls, are left ungroomed in the hope that
they will be filled with fluffy powder or deep, soft snow.
Vail is a young resort which sometimes prompts its biggest rival, Aspen, to poke
fun at it.
Recently - with stagnation creeping into the American skiing industry - the two
areas have developed a tentative alliance and are marketed as twin-center
resorts.
Vail was built in the early 1960s in the image of a Tyrolean/Bavarian hybrid.
The resort has a cosmopolitan atmosphere and varied cuisine. The skiing is a
cruisers' delight, with more than two thirds of the 110 runs graded beginner or
intermediate.
The Summit County resorts of Breckenridge, Keystone, Arapahoe Basin and Copper
Mountain are all within 50 or 60km.
There are numerous ski areas, thankfully as
yet undiscovered by the hordes of East Coast bunnies. I enjoy skiing and hate
waiting at lift-lines, while some lounge lizard is trying to figure out how to
board the lift. I have some particular favorites places: at Big Mountain in Glacier National
Park (Montana), Grand Targhee on the west side of Teton Mountain (Utah and
Wyoming). They are relatively unspoiled, have
a variety of runs, and some of the greatest views around. Thus, I am not
going to say much more about them and hopefully, protect my skiing future
there....but I suggest you check out these sites if you interested in some
great un-crowded skiing.
http://www.thebigmountain.com/
http://skimt.com/
http://www.srv.net/~jpat/teton.html
