I think that was the former trend, but according to the national ski areas association, the number of skier visits went up 3.5% last season
www.thesnowpros.org
I agree! I should have noted my comment was sarcasm! But I have been told recently by a resort management type that numbers were down. I think that was to justify something but…. My experience is lots of people on the hill.I think that was the former trend, but according to the national ski areas association, the number of skier visits went up 3.5% last season
U.S. Ski Industry Reports Record Visits for the 2021-22 Season
U.S. Ski Industry Reports Record Visits for the 2021-22 Season The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) reported record visitation at U.S. ski areas for the 2021-22 season, a total of 61 million skier visits. This is an increase of 3.5 percent over last season’s national number. Skiing and...
Snowbasin has in 9 years gone from one of the quietest places I've skied, to one of the busiest, and the biggest change was when they first went on Mountain Collective and we started seeing an uptick in skiers from nearby resorts, then to Epic when weekdays became the new weekend with weekends being madness, to Ikon this year and it's been overrun by people escaping the BCC and LCC drives. So guess what? Now the drive to Snowbasin (for those of us who know better) has turned into a race to get out of bed and get your ass up there early. Even weekdays one has to get up earlier and earlier. Lift line management is non-existent (it's a free-for-all) finding a place to sit down for breakfast or lunch is impossible, and getting out of the resort at 4:00 on a Saturday is a lesson in patience. My husband had a lesson last Saturday that ended at 4, he got to his car at 4:30, and proceeded to move 3 miles in an hour. So yeah, Ikon has pulled in tons of skiers who would never ski Snowbasin and it has taken away a lot of the joy of it. It has always been a commuter mountain, and the locals are NOT happy. The feeling is that someone invited 8000 guests to your home for a party, and 10000 showed up.
Ha, my apologies! You are right, I have heard grumbles about numbers being down in some places, but it sure didn’t seem that way when you look at full parking lots and full tables in the lodge. It’s hard to tell how crowded a place is from just the lift lines - sometimes that’s a function of choke points, wind holds, etc. And faster lifts don’t necessarily correct the problem of overcrowding. If people aren’t complaining about waiting in line or sitting on a slow chair, they are on the slopes, complaining about how there are too many people skiing next to them!
This. Arriving early enough to get a parking spot has turned into an arms race, and then you have to hope that the resort has enough lifts spinning to spread people out. I have certain landmarks that I need to hit by a certain time on my drive, otherwise I know that it's going to be miserable.
Yes, and add in regular road closures for avy control and everyone heads out earlier and earlier to line up for road opening, blocking neighborhoods and traffic. And it seems like the road closes for 6" of snow these days... which is a good thing that it's so common this year for the drought and snowpack.... but makes for a many hour drive each direction, just to go a few miles. And that is WITH parking reservations.
You can, but if you try to leave LCC resorts at closing, you're looking at a several hour drive down the canyon on most weekend days. With a lot of it spent just trying to get out of the parking lots.
^^100% agree with this. This is why I have the Indy Pass. I aim to get to resorts 45-60 min early to get good parking, eat my breakfast, get gear on, ect... I have been to Waterville, Pats Peak, and Berkshire East and I haven't seen the craziness than I used to see at Mt Snow, nor have I had to pay for parking. At this point in my life, I get just as much enjoyment out of the smaller resorts vs the larger mega pass ones. On Saturday, Berkshire East parking lot was full when I left at 3 but most runs I skied were mostly empty all day. I have been pleasantly surprised with the conditions at all Indy resorts.
Same here. CalTrans has gotten a lot more conservative in the last few years and closing the road at times when I think it would have been open 6 years ago (hahaha, I say that like a cranky old-timer even though I've only lived here for 7 years.
) Related, I think there are more people going up, driving like lunatics, crashing, and closing the roads.Also same. For the 2020-2021 season, I had a weekday pass at Sierra at Tahoe, which was super mellow except for one powder day. Last year and this year, I'm at another independent resort. The best part is pulling off the highway to go to the indy resort while everyone else is going to sit in traffic for the next hour and a half going 20 miles to the big name resort on a Saturday. I still try to get away on weekdays if I can, but being able to ski with friends on weekends is also really special.
It works some places in Tahoe, but I don't think it does until closer to 1. And then you have to deal with the heavy traffic leaving the resort at 4. This is probably for the big-name resorts, I was able to easily leave the ski area at ~4 last Saturday and get to my local destination.
What happened to me this past Saturday was that I left a friend's cabin near the indy resort, which is 10 miles closer to the Bay Area than the highway exit for the big name resort, at 5:30pm, and the traffic was surprisingly *heavy*. Better than a Sunday evening because it was moving 65-70mph, but definitely heavy. I suspect that the traffic I was mostly cars leaving one of the big name resorts. In the morning, I pulled into the parking lot of the indy resort at 8:50 and had rockstar parking. I had even stopped on my way to pick up breakfast and get gas (and because for reasons I can't explain, two of my cards were declined at the pump, I actually went inside the station to pay). I mean, those were time sucks.
Not a strategy that works well in the East, unless you want to ski scraped down icy trails in the afternoon exclusively. The best conditions are at open, so I get out then when possible.
