mustski
Angel Diva
Easy enough to ski but filled with every yahoo on the planet who wants to go home and say they skied K2. I avoid that run like the plague. In facf, we prefer to download via the funitel rather than ski Mountain Run which takes us right below Saddle and everyone careening out of control at Mach Schnell onto Mountain Run.
We generally ride the funi up first thing and warm up with a few runs on Gold Coast, which is right outside the funi. We then move to Siberia (if it's not looking stupid crazy) and do a few runs there before heading to Shirley Lake, Solitude, and Granite Chief. If Siberia is stupid busy, we head straight to Shirley Lake, Solitude, and Granite Chief. If the snow is nice and soft, Solitude is a great off piste blue area. It has some really fun bumps and the runs aren't too steep. Towards the end of the day, we sometimes head back to Siberia if it has quieted down. My hubby really likes Headwall and will spend quite a bit of afternoon time there. As much as we like Red Dog, we rarely hit it except in early season or Spring. No real reason other than we prefer to ride up the funitel and go from there. Sometimes we hit Red Dog on our way out at the end of the. day, when everything else gets too crowded.
On weekends, we prefer Alpine because it seems to spread the crowds out better. Olympic Valley has quite a few choke points on crowded days. At Alpine, we warm up on the various runs off Roundhouse - lots of good blue runs and shorter off piste stuff which are good for checking conditions because you can quickly pop back on to a groomer if it is too "coral reef" like. Shortly thereafter, we ride up the Summit Lift and ski the bowl runs. If the conditions are good, we will hit some of the shorter off piste runs (again to check conditions) before hitting some of the longer bump runs.
Ride Treeline Cirque (far right looking up the mountain) all the way to the top to get to the Sherwood area. You will pass by a midpoint unload, don't do this yet but look left to see if Lakeview is open. Sherwood tends to soften up first as it gets a lot of sun and again it is easy to pop off the side of the groomer to check if the bumps have softened up at all - and pop back on if not. Sherwood is a great area if you like a GIANT bowl! There is some tree skiing also but it is mostly bowl.
From Sherwood, you can ski over to Lakeview ( if it's open)
After skiing out of Sherwood and Lakeview, you can take Scott chair up which has a good variety of blue groomed to black ungroomed. The Chutes are pretty visible and easy to avoid.
Be sure to reserve parking if you will be skiing on a weekend. It opens Tuesday at noon, but the free parking spaces go pretty quickly so get on it right at noon.
Weather (and DH's back) permitting, we could meet you at Olympic Valley and my hubby could take your son to some of the more extreme terrain. That way he would be with someone who knows the terrain. I'm still recovering from an injury and sticking to groomers. I'll PM you my phone number.
Pat
