Looking to take kiddos and the non-skiing hubs on a trip end of March. Based on the suggestions here, I thought we might check out Smugglers Notch. As we are MD and it's about a 9 hr drive. For some reason that seemed more pleasant than trying to plan a trip out west... but that may just be me dreading airfare... Anyone have experience visiting Smugs late March / early April? It seems if they don't have snow the cancelation policy would cover us or we could do a credit and shoot for the next season. Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts.
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so... smugs in march?
- Thread starter HMSCster
- Start date
marymack
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I went April 1st weekend last year. Trail coverage was not a problem, though it did rain one day. Crowds were low (even on the sunny day). Just be aware that their lifts are very slow and the ski back to the Morse side can be a slog (sometimes its easier just to take the shuttle back).
This is obviously very late but I wanted to chime in for future reference. We usually ski at Smuggler's Notch every year in mid-February, but have gone in mid-March as well. There is generally as much snow there in March as there is at our usual February time, so I would totally chance a late March trip. If you get a rainy day just plan to go to the fun zone and pool (along with everyone else - but on the bright side, the resort probably won't be terribly busy at that time).
If your kids are on blues or above you will be even better off because you'll be able to stick to the upper mountains if Morse is in rough snow shape at that time. We had a rough couple days of snow following that crazy warm rain recently, and skiing on Morse versus Madonna/Sterling was night and day (we got literally knee-deep powder Wednesday-Saturday, so all was well in the end).
If your kids are on blues or above you will be even better off because you'll be able to stick to the upper mountains if Morse is in rough snow shape at that time. We had a rough couple days of snow following that crazy warm rain recently, and skiing on Morse versus Madonna/Sterling was night and day (we got literally knee-deep powder Wednesday-Saturday, so all was well in the end).
Thanks! This is quite timely. I decided to cancel our plans to Tremblant since we have epic passes to use and that extra1.5 hour on the car sounds awful.
No problem! Just to echo the previous comment, the lifts at Smuggs ARE slow, there's no getting around it; but if you want to make the return crossover from upper mountains back to Morse a bit less of a slog, and if you/your kids are up for a short, steep cute, you can do Madonna as your final run, Upper Chilcoot to Waterfall (the chute), and then take Ruthie's over to Midway/Curley's Cutback - instead of skiing all the way down to Madonna base and crossing the bridge etc on the flats. Ruthie's was super icy the whole time we were there, and not exactly my favorite slope - actually kind of a hellscape tbh - but I still found it a nice alternative to the flats at times, especially with my kids, who are not great on flats yet (physically or emotionally).
