tinymoose
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
From this western skier who skied in the east once (Killington/Whiteface):
- moguls are easier our west because they are not usually hard as rocks
- most things are easier out west because there is less ice - not no ice, but less.
- don’t expect trails to be well mark
- you can generally make anything into a trail, and there are a lot of unmarked chutes and pathways and bowls that might make, say, an intermediate run more difficult if you veer off the side
Moguls out west are sooooo nice. I'm still not the worlds greatest bump skier, but so much more doable than the concrete blocks of ice we have out here at times.
I feel like runs on the east coast are so condition dependent. Take, for example, White Lightning at my home mountain of Montage. I believe it's about 32 degrees as far as pitch, although it's not all that long. I can ski it fairly comfortably and somewhat aggressively if it's groomed and not icy. Not so much if it's groomed and a sheet of ice. I can also manage it if it has bumps on it that are soft, or at least not a frozen block of ice. But if it's covered in big giant ice bumps with huge troughs, I won't go near it. Whereas out west it seems like snow conditions are a lot more consistent and consistently better.