Big Sky 3/9 and Big Wrap-up

The last day of our ski trip and it started snowing an hour before the lifts open. And dumped for three hours. A really good refresh to the mountain, so we headed to Challenger (the winds had died down from yesterday). The wind loaded aspects had 6 inches of new on top of a fine carve-able base. We spent most of our day here finding new run after new run while also revisiting some old favorites.

The big wrap-up: 3 states, 3 ski areas, 9 out of 11 days skiing, over 310,000 vert, over 34K vert per day average, and no new injuries.

Sun Valley was our biggest surprise. No shortage of black diamond bowls and treed bump runs (maybe because of the record snowfall?). And some really good black diamond groomers. Looking back at our vert per run revealed Sun Valley had the most efficient lift system of any of the resorts we visited.

Jackson Hole is overhyped, crowded, and expensive. I'm sure the out-of-bounds skiing is special, but in-bounds it doesn't have anything over my local mountain (except Corbet's). And I swear it had more blue square groomers than Sun Valley.

The one knock on Big Sky is the area is so wide, you can spend a lot of your day doing big Ws across the mountain with long cat tracks in between. It's fun to do when you first get here to check out the snow in the various regions and figure out where you want to ski. But once done, best to pick an area and stay there for the day. One of the things that makes Big Sky unique (besides the light crowds) is some of the amazing slope-side homes in the Moonlight Basin area. $5 million homes built right next to the slope at 8 - 9,000 feet. Then, head to the opposite side of the resort where it borders the private Yellowstone Ski Club and see even bigger houses. One under construction is 20,000 sq. ft. Really?

Tomorrow, we head 40 miles north to Bozeman, then turn left on I-90 for home. A great 2 week trip.

Gotta say...all in all sounds like a great trip....and I should say welcome back soon.. Not as good as a Zap trip, but still a good trip. ..but.. ..could you please extend your trip for another week or two? Sh.t is getting ready to hit the fan up here the next week or so :'(....and my oh my it has been so nice ;D.....

Great report - thank you!

Cheers for the love for Sun Valley! Glad you had a great time. It becomes a very different mountain on above average snow years. It doesn't need a ton of snow, so is still usually OK for long groomers, fun bumps, and great long days of 30k vertical. But when SV has a good snow year, the lower mountain and side-country makes into a huge mountain, great vertical, and all sorts of terrain.

We found some fun lines at JH but the crowds were a bit much for me.