How to make the best of one of the worst Western US snowpacks in history…

King Con Ridge at Park City, March 2026

OK, this wasn’t the best season ever by a long shot, but persistence and resetting expectations regularly kept us in the fun zone most of the time.  In fact, out of 67 ski days I can only remember 3 that were truly horrible.  And in the end we did end up with about 75-80% of average snowfall at the resorts around Tahoe that stayed open late.

The problem wasn’t precipitation.  Most of the West ended up with close to average.  The problem was warm temperatures that caused rain and high elevation snow levels.  For example, Jackson Hole which is normally a very cold place received only 79″ or 52% of normal at the base vs. 338″ or 83% at the top.  Kirkwood recorded 323″ at their higher-elevation base vs. the base of Palisades at 6,200′ only receiving 148″.  We got 130″ at our house at 6,400′.

British Columbia in Canada did much better but we didn’t go this year.  The same goes for the Northeastern US where Jay Peak received over 400″ and almost all the resorts did well.

Closing day at Heavenly, April 5th 2026

25/26 Lowlights:

• Dec 21st at Jackson Hole featured rain and fog.  Our drive from the airport on Dec 19th was in pouring rain.  It rained just about every day we were there at the base, with good powder up high except for that one day.
• March 2nd at Snowbird featured fog, rain at the bottom, and near zero visibility on the upper mountain and Mineral Basin.
• April 1st at Kirkwood featured 13″ of Sierra Cement the likes of which we’ve rarely if ever experienced before.

Untracked powder at Heavenly, January 2026

25/26 Highlights included these memorable moments

• January 4th at Heavenly with 18″ of fresh, cold snow and untracked lines in my favorite secret spots
• February 20th at Heavenly after something like 80″ of snow fell in the 4 days prior.  The whole mountain was in play that day with the best tree skiing of the year on tap.
• March 3rd at Brighton with 11″ of fresh and rare (for this season) cold temps
• April 13th at Kirkwood with 18″ of fresh proving some of the best powder days are in April

“All the way” double-black run at Kirkwood, April 2026

Also, during long dry spells like we had this season, people tend to stay away and our local resorts were mostly empty midweek.  With the quality of grooming and snowmaking prevalent now, these are great opportunities to rip fast groomers and ski right onto the lifts.  No parking issues, no lines, and big smiles all around.

On January 19th at Northstar we were 11 days into what turned out to be a 33 day snowless period.  The snow was VERY firm, but they had groomed almost every run on the steep backside terrain and I got over 25,000 vertical in about 3 1/2 hours.  We are always prepared to break out our ice skis to maximize fun.

On January 29th after 21 days without snow we caught some remarkably good grooming at Sierra at Tahoe.  There were so few people there I felt bad for the resort, but we had a blast.  The low sun angle helped preserve what base had fallen around Christmas and our very low expectations were exceeded by miles.

“Stein’s Way” at Deer Valley, March 2026

The Big Trip

This year’s big trip was to Utah for 2 weeks.  It’s hard for me to take 2 weeks off from work, but priorities LOL.  Thanks Adobe!

This year we spent a few days at the mouth of the Cottonwood Canyons in Cottonwood Heights which gave us quick access to Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, and Solitude.  We wanted to use as many of our Alta/Bird full Ikon pass days as we could.  If you live in Salt Lake City, the Ikon pass is your pass of choice, giving you access to 5 of the 6 major resorts nearby, plus Snowbasin if you want to drive a little further.  We updated all of these reviews to keep ’em fresh.  This was the best skiing of the trip.

The rest of the time we based ourselves in the Park City area to ski the “Expanded Excellence” of Deer Valley’s huge expansion which came online this year, plus a couple of days at our old favorite Park City Mountain.  Unfortunately we hit some very warm and dry conditions at the end of our 2 weeks, and snow depth at these 2 resorts was truly historically bad. But we still had a lot of fun.  Between these 2 huge resorts there are over 600 runs.  Skiing the endless terrain and variety is amazing! There were a couple of small storm days in there with a couple of inches of fresh which turned out to be just about the last snow of the season for them.  They closed about 3 weeks after our trip ended with very limited terrain available.

Mid-winter conditions at Kirkwood in mid April, 2026

Late season

On March 17th it was 78 degrees at our house in South Lake Tahoe.  Snow at lake level was a distant memory and Heavenly was hanging on by a thread.  If you had told me that I would be skiing in Tahoe until May 17th I wouldn’t have believed you.  But as often happens, at the end of March the pattern changed back to winter and we had some of the best storms of the season.  The April 12-13 storm dropped 19″ at our house at 6,400′ elevation!  It was enough to keep Kirkwood going with full coverage even though Heavenly had closed by then.  Palisades hung on until May 24th. I made the trip up there a remarkable 7 times this year.  As of May 25th Mammoth is still hanging on and will stay open until May 31st.

A snowy scene near our house in South Lake Tahoe, April 2026

Final thoughts and future plans

Ski season is over in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s just about to get started down under.  We have a trip planned to Australia and New Zealand for the end of August.  We are going to need luck to be on our sides because they don’t tend to do very well in El Niño conditions, which are forecast to be very strong this year.  However, if I’ve learned anything after 55 ski seasons it’s that you can’t trust long-term forecasts so you might as well just do it and hope for the best!

Then we turn our attention to next season.  We have big plans because I will finally be retired and can focus on what I really want to do.  The hope is to get some of the 100+ list resorts done, plus we have a trip planned to the biggest ski resort in the world:  3 Valleys in France.  We will also try to get back to Telluride, Jackson Hole, Grand Targhee, and maybe some other favorites if time allows.  Our season pass choices for this plan were full Epic and Mountain Collective.  No Ikon next year because we just wouldn’t have enough time to use it.  Should be fun!

Dry in the west

Snowfall in the west has been hard to come by this year, but here in Tahoe we’ve been a little luckier than many other regions.  We had a major storm that arrived just in time for Christmas, and another one right around the President’s holiday week.  Those 2 10-day storm cycles dropped about 200″ of snow. There was a 40-day dry spell between those storms though, which sometimes happens in the Sierra.

Heavenly’s Canyonland run after some fresh snow, Feb 20, 2026

So there have been a lot of warm, blue sky days skiing groomers at Heavenly, Sierra at Tahoe, and Kirkwood on our ice skis.  We’ve been going out about 3 times a week.  It doesn’t get boring because we have 4 or 5 resorts to choose from with a massive amount of terrain between them.  It’s great just getting up there for the views, and Heavenly is only 10-minutes from our house.

Lot’s of skiing groomers at Heavenly this season with long dry spells

We’ve also been over to Palisades and Northstar a couple of times and have a ton of new photos and info to update the reviews.  Palisades is a 55 minute drive even on a busy Saturday.  Northstar is longer but you can get a massive amount of vertical there in 3 hours so it works out.

Steep skiing at Palisades Tahoe, January 2026

Jackson Hole trip

Jackson Hole has probably become our #1 choice for a ski trip.  We do it every year now just before Christmas because it has reliable early-season snowfall.  Even with the relatively poor snowfall this year, we couldn’t complain about conditions.  There was rain at the base, but it turned to snow not far up the mountain and we skied a decent amount of fresh.  This year was the first year I did the hike up to the Headwall about an hour after it opened for the season which was a great deep powder experience.

Rendezvous bowl at Jackson Hole, Dec 2025

We also got over to Grand Targhee for a wonderful day skiing the empty slopes over there.  They are not on the Ikon or Epic pass, so this is one of the few large resorts that doesn’t get crowded.

Soft snow at Grand Targhee, December 2025

What’s next?

We are heading out to Salt Lake City in a few days to spend 2 weeks skiing Alta, Snowbird, Park City, and Deer Valley.  This will be an opportunity to freshen all of the reviews, but especially Deer Valley which has almost doubled their terrain since we went last.  We will see if our opinion of that resort improves.

There’s still a lot of winter left and with our new location we should get a lot more days in than last year.  There is nothing better than carving turns on perfect groomers or deep powder so we will get it while we can!

XC skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, and biking are all activities we do right from the house but storm-day outings are the most fun

The 100+ Resorts

Last year we finished up our project to ski the Best / Top 100 ski resorts in North America, but there are of course lots more resorts that should have been considered for the list.  Even just looking at resorts that qualify based on stats alone, there are at least 29 that were left off for various reasons.

So we put together another list of most, but not all, of the 29 that didn’t make it, plus some resorts that don’t qualify but seem really cool and worth a visit.

I took a couple of weeks off last March and started skiing them.   When I was in Victor, ID I skied mostly at my favorites Grand Targhee and Jackson Hole, but did some day trips to the first 3 resorts on the 100+ list:  Snow King Wyoming, Pine Creek Wyoming, and Pebble Creek Idaho.  Each was a unique, fun, uncrowded experience.

The main lift “Skyline” at Pebble Creek, ID – March 2025

I’ve created a new List and Map you can find here.  This is super exciting for us and will give us another decade of adventures at least.

Trips planned

First up is a pre-Christmas trip to Jackson Hole.  This is becoming a routine with us because we did it last year also.  Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee have pretty reliable early-season conditions so it’s a fair bet that we will have some good skiing.  We did last year even though snowfall was less than normal for that time of year.

Pre-Christmas skiing at Jackson Hole – December 2024

The Big Trip will be late February to mid March:  3 weeks in the Salt Lake City area.  We have both Epic and full Ikon passes this year so we want to try out the new Deer Valley expansion which is doubling the size of the resort.  Is it a game changer?  We will find out and report back.  We didn’t have a very high opinion of Deer Valley before but I’m sure it’s going to move up in the rankings now.  We will also ski Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, and Park City while we are there to freshen up the reviews and rankings.

The first snow has fallen in Tahoe and the first North American resort to open is Keystone, which opened October 25th.  It won’t be long now!

Ariel and Rosie enjoying the first snow of the season on Oct 15, 2025

A note about the website

Running a website is really hard.  I’m a software engineer but keeping this thing going is a real challenge.  Any public site is under constant attack from hackers, and the software and hosting infrastructure has to be kept updated and has to expand as traffic grows.  We get about 1,000 visits a day and the site kept going down about once a week for the last year or so.  I apologize for the downtime this summer while I spent weeks updating everything and protecting it.  Things seem to be running well now, so hopefully it will stay that way and I won’t have to spend 2 hours a day babysitting it!

First snow in Tahoe along the Upper Truckee river behind our house – Oct 2025

Wrapping up the 24/25 season at Mammoth

As is our tradition, we had a ski/camping trip to Mammoth again this year to wrap up the season.  Due to warm temps and lack of snow causing early melt-out in the Sierra, this was a bit earlier than normal in early May.  That made it 41 days for me (Ron) and 23 for AiRung.  Not that many.  We were somewhat affected by our decision to make Bear Valley our home resort.  Due to weather conditions that left lower-altitude resorts without much snow to work with, Bear Valley didn’t have the good terrain on the Grizzly chair open very often and other than one spectacular powder day, it was a lackluster season at Bear.

Mammoth upper mountain, May 2025

Back to Tahoe!

I turned 60 this year and realized that with retirement coming up soon (again), I need to improve my home resort situation.  There really wasn’t enough at Bear Valley to want to ski there more than 1-2 days a week.  When we were in South Lake Tahoe we had 3 major resorts to choose from, which gave us all kinds of variety.  It was enough to make me want to ski every other day during my brief first retirement.

Long story short, we sold our house in Arnold and bought back into Tahoe.  We found the PERFECT place at the end of a street with only one neighbor and zero vacation rentals around us, on a large lot.  The house needs a lot of work, but the location makes it worth it.  We are 10-minutes from Heavenly.  Other options we looked at were Park City, Salt Lake City, and Victor, Idaho.  Those places have better skiing, but they aren’t really practical since we still need to have a presence in the SF Bay Area and they would require flying.  This is impossible with our dogs so we ended right back where we started from.  It’s also impossible to find a wooded lot like this one in any of those places unless you have at least $5M to work with.

New Tahoe house backyard, July 2025

New Zealand: Endless winter

When we realized our Ikon passes include some New Zealand resorts, we booked a trip.  We went in mid August which should theoretically have been the best time of the year for skiing in NZ.  Our home base was Queenstown on the south island, which meant we were skiing at Coronet Peak and The Remarkables.  Conditions were not great with only about 43″ of snowfall YTD (!) which is about 50% of normal.  Both of those areas have great snowmaking coverage though, and it was actually really fun.  There was even a rare powder day at Coronet Peak.  This was one of our best overseas trips ever.  We may just make Australia and New Zealand an annual trip.  It’s a great way to keep skiing year-round.

I plan to put together full reviews of both of those areas when time permits, but for now here are a few photos.

Curvey Basin at The Remarkables NZ, August 2025

Views of Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown from Coronet Peak NZ, August 2025

Plans for the upcoming season

Since we are back in Tahoe, we had to get Epic passes to ski our home resorts Heavenly and Kirkwood.  We had already purchased full Ikon passes before we decided to go back to Tahoe, so now we have lots of options.  We have trips planned to go back to Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee over Christmas, and Park City, Deer Valley, Snowbird, Alta, Brighton, and Solitude in February.  We will have our work cut out for us on that February trip!

Getting to some new North America resorts this coming season might be a challenge, but at least we already have Coronet Peak and The Remarkables to review.  Due to the fact that we are both still working, adding more of the 2nd tier resorts with over 1,000 vertical may be a stretch this year, but we will see if we can squeeze one or 2 in.

Milford Sound NZ, August 2025

The countdown to the beginning of the 25/26 season is on with just 3 months to go.  Can’t wait!

Finished!

It’s with mixed emotions that we announce the completion of the project!  Through 12 years, countless long drives and airline flights, and lots of challenges we stuck with it.  The reward is a collection of the best memories of our lives skiing these 100 fantastic resorts together.  It’s a little sad that it’s over, but we will continue to ski and review new resorts in North America to keep the adventures going.

Mission Ridge employees help us celebrate the completion of the project: March 2025

#100

We couldn’t have picked a better resort to finish the project at.  Mission Ridge is a gem on the eastern side of the Cascades rich in community and a fun atmosphere.  The employees gathered for photos and were generally thrilled that we made their resort our last of the project.  We met with the new general manager and marketing director and talked about the project and the resort.

Perfect groomer at Grand Targhee: March 2025

YOLO

Shortly after returning home we decided that life is short and you might as well have fun so we went back to Victor, Idaho and Jackson, Wyoming to ski Grand Targhee, Jackson Hole, and some of the smaller resorts in the area that did not make the list.  We stayed there for 2 weeks and hit a nice powder cycle the first 10 days and then a few days of spring conditions.  Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee combined in one trip is our favorite combo out of the list of 100 resorts.  This is the 2nd trip this year and we will certainly go again next year at least once.

The most beautiful barn in the world: The T.A. Moulton barn in Grand Teton National Park, March 2025

Going forward…

The project to ski 100 of the best ski resorts in North America together is complete, but there are plenty of smaller resorts that fall under the criteria to be on the list that are still well worth skiing.  The focus going forward will be to ski and review some of the more interesting ones.  The Top 100 criteria was loosened a little bit for the new 100+ list, but it still favors large vertical drops.  Just from this recent trip we already have Pebble Creek Idaho, Snow King Wyoming, and Pine Creek Wyoming to write up reviews for.  Pebble Creek was particularly great and would have been on the list if it had more than one ski pod.

Pebble Creek, Idaho: March 2025

We would still like to ski Alyeska which is the only resort in the west that we should have included on the list but didn’t, and maybe even a few of the Northeastern resorts that should have been included like Gore, Saddleback, Loon, Okemo, and Stratton if we feel ambitious.  This should keep us busy!

Back home…

After our great trip to Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee just before Christmas, we came back to California to do some skiing closer to home.  We hit Dodge Ridge on Christmas day which is always a great uncrowded day to ski.  It’s covered by our Cali Pass and we had vowed to make it there at least once this season.  It’s a rare resort where there is basically nothing we can’t ski, yet there is enough challenge to keep it interesting.  It was a nice relaxing day.

Soft snow at Dodge Ridge, January 2025

Over our Christmas to New Year break we skied our local hill Bear Valley 4 days and then we did one more day over the MLK weekend.  Yes, we skied all holiday dates which is not a great idea and something I would never recommend!  Unfortunately we are not retired any more so we do what we must.  Bear wasn’t too crowded except for one day which was pretty un-BEAR-able ha ha.  After this season we will have to update our review.  This is our 4th “home” resort that we will have a deep understanding of as far as the good and bad.

Early January groomer off the Polar Express at Bear Valley, 2025

The Japan trip

California experienced a long dry spell for most of January, so it was great to head over to Japan and ski some soft snow and legit powder.  We did a review of Niseko that contains pretty much the whole story.  Japan has been super-hyped on social media for the past few seasons so it was great to get over there an see what the place is all about.  Niseko receives an average of 550″ of snow a season so planning a trip there is a pretty safe bet and we did have some decent conditions by our standards.

Soft skiing in a snow squall at Hanazono Niseko resort, February 2025

California is in the midst of a huge storm right now which should set us up well for the next 5 weeks at home.  Bear Valley received 32″ of snow and will finally be opening Grizzly.  Yay!

Next up…an audible was called on resort 100

We’ve been watching the situation at our 100th resort Alyeska and decided that we needed to call an audible and make a last-minute change to the list.  It’s been raining on the lower half of the mountain consistently.  The weather forecast is for more of that.  One of the things we shy away from is frequent rain because when we make a huge effort to get somewhere remote like this, the last thing we want is to only be able to ski the top of the mountain.  Add to that the fact that airfare for 2 of us 5 weeks in advance is $2,400 and hotels there are expensive and it’s not really looking like a good choice as a best 100 ski resort.

View down to the Hanazono Niseko base area, February 2025

I’m pretty sure we will eventually ski it and evaluate it against the others for inclusion, but for now we are going back to Mission Ridge in Washington instead.  Mission Ridge has been on and off the list as it evolved over the years.  It is slightly larger than Alyeska with a similar vertical.  Mission was taken off the list a few years ago when we got tired of the finicky weather in Washington, but overall it actually looks a little more reliable than Alyeska and is much easier and affordable as a ski vacation.

We have already skied more than the 100 resorts we originally intended due to consolidations that happened after we began the project (Park City / Canyons and Squaw Valley / Alpine).  We also dropped Homewood which was threatening to become a private club but which is now coming back next year as public with a new gondola.

The project will continue…

All this means that we will continue to refine the list as we ski new places, and will have more than 100 reviews, but the spirit of the project remains that these are what we think are the best resorts in North America!

Waiting for the bus after night skiing at Hirafu Niseko, February 2025

Posing in front of Grand Teton, December 2024

It’s hard to believe, but we came up with the idea for this project 12 years ago.  Here we are again starting another fun-filled ski season!  If all goes well, this will be the year we ski resort #100 Alyeska, Alaska and finish the project.

Dodge Ridge, December 2024

Season 12 is already well underway…

I’m writing this from Driggs, Idaho where we are staying for our first ski trip of the season.  We already have some great skiing under our belts.  It started at our new home resort Bear Valley on December 7th.  Then a huge storm came in on December 14th for a solid day of powder skiing.  We hit Dodge Ridge on the way back to the Bay Area on the 15th.

Day 1 at Bear Valley, December 2024

3 days later we hopped on a plane to Jackson, Wyoming for 4 days of skiing at two of our favorite resorts:  Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee.  We were lucky because JH received about 50″ of snow in the days leading up to our trip.  It was still lightly snowing the first day and then we had 3 days of blue sky and light winds.  We’ve been here before but in the previous trips various planning mistakes were made.  This time we got it right and had a perfectly great time.  It’s something we plan to repeat often now that the project is about complete and we are free to ski our favorites.  From the Bay Area it’s a less than 2-hour direct flight to Jackson so it couldn’t be easier.

Both the Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee reviews have been significantly updated based on this latest visit.

Dreamweaver at Grand Targhee, December 2024

Plans…

Our next trip will be to Hokkaido, Japan to ski Niseko in late January.  This is something we always wanted to do and since we only need to ski one resort for the project this year, we were able to squeeze it in.

The final trip will be to Alyeska some time in March depending on the weather.  It’s a quick direct flight from San Francisco so we can plan this one later and ski a couple of days over a long weekend.

One of the greatest groomers in North America: Rolling Thunder at Grand Targhee, December 2024

As always, we look forward to this ski season and exploring the new places we find ourselves in!

The 23/24 ski season wrapped up earlier than normal for us on April 21st when both Heavenly and Sierra at Tahoe closed for the season.  Last year we skied until July and posted our year end wrap post more than 2 months later!  Mammoth didn’t get much snow this year so will be closing before our schedule allows us to do our normal ski camping trip sadly.

Bluebird day at Bear Valley, April 2024

Season Recap

Most of the Tahoe area resorts did OK with about 80% of normal snowfall, but it didn’t come until January which wasn’t great for our holiday plans.  We hardly used our Sierra at Tahoe unlimited passes this year because we got them to ski mostly holidays and they only had the beginner terrain open over Christmas.  Half of the snow that did fall at our house came in one huge storm in early March which blocked the roads and trapped us in the house for days.  So it goes for a sport that is dependent on weather!

So 38 days for me and 30 for AiRung is the lowest number in years, but we did at least make to to resort #99 Marmot Basin in mid March.  And there were plenty of great times at our local Tahoe resorts as always.

Nice snow at Banff Sunshine Village, March 2024

Alberta Trip

The trip to Alberta to ski Marmot Basin in mid March was a huge success.  We spent a week up there and re-skied Lake Louise and Banff Sunshine in addition to Marmot.  Ironically, the day we skied our 99th resort was super warm and slushy by noon.  Jasper recorded a record high temp of 68F.  We had been so worried about frigid temps and we got one of the warmest days of the ski season!

A warm day at Marmot Basin, March 2024

We were 2 days early because right after that temperatures plummeted and a prolonged storm dumped 20-30″ of snow at Lake Louise and Sunshine Village over several days.  Each of the next 3 ski days was a powder day.  Lake Louise is one of our top 10 favorite resorts and we were thrilled to ski it with fresh snow.

Powder day at Lake Louise, March 2024

On the drive up to Jasper from Calgary, we stopped at the Yamnuska wolfdog sanctuary which is something we always do when we see one.   We are both into animal rescue (we have 2 rescue dogs currently) and like to support those places.

Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary, March 2024

Big changes…

After the Alberta trip, we cherished the last 6 days we will be skiing in Tahoe for a while.  We’ve had a house there for 19 years and it was our primary residence for the last 4 of those.  For many reasons we decided to change it up and make our Bay Area house our primary.  We will be swapping out the Tahoe house for a place in Arnold, CA near Bear Valley.  It’s a lot easier to get to and an hour closer.  We loved Tahoe and have many of our best ski memories from the hundreds of days skiing Heavenly, Kirkwood and Sierra at Tahoe.

The last day at our favorite Tahoe resort Heavenly, April 2024

Next year

We have 2 major trips planned for next year: Resort 100 is Alyeska which will be our first time skiing in Alaska, planned for early March.  And after talking about it for years we are finally planning a trip to ski in Japan in early February if everything works out.  Can’t wait!

Thanks for reading and see you back here in the fall!

A Nice day at Banff Sunshine Village, March 2024

We’ve been busy having fun on the slopes since the last update.  Frequent small storms (and one huge one) in Tahoe brought our annual snowfall almost up to average.  Tahoe always seems to come through in the end!

AiRung skis the trees at Heavenly, February 2024

Utah trip

In mid February we spent a week in Park City and Salt Lake City skiing Park City resort and Solitude.  It snowed almost nonstop and we had fresh snow every day, including a couple of really deep days.  Our trip good luck is holding up!  We took the dogs with us which was challenging but will definitely make that trip one of our most memorable.

The Town lift at Park City, February 2024

Blizzard!

In early March we spent several days enduring an official NWS blizzard.  It snowed 68″ at our house with extreme wind.  We couldn’t drive anywhere for days because the roads were drifted in.  This wasn’t really fun, but it did set us up with some great conditions once the resorts were able to dig out.  Sierra at Tahoe was completely closed for 4 days and it took many more days of hard work before everything was back open.

Blizzard in Tahoe, March 2024

Rosie doesn’t mind the snow, March 2024

Santa Fe

A long weekend trip to New Mexico left time for a day of skiing up at one of our favorite resorts: Santa Fe.  There is something really special about Santa Fe and we keep going back when we can.  The mixture of steeps, trees, excellent groomers, views, and New Mexico sunshine is hard to beat.

Santa Fe New Mexico, February 2024

Next up…number 99

Our 99th resort is up next: Marmot Basin in Jasper, Alberta.  We will be flying to Calgary next weekend for a week-long trip starting at Marmot.  We will also ski Lake Louise and Sunshine Village again.

Hogsback at Heavenly, March 2024

A slow start in the Sierra

Nice grooming at Heavenly, December 2023

The last 2 years spoiled us.  By this time last year we had received 143″ of snow at our house.  The year before it was an even more massive 152″.  This year we’ve had only 2 “storms” and a total of 12″!

Dodge Ridge in the central Sierra isn’t even open yet and most of the open resorts have very limited terrain available, but we’ve gotten out a few times.  Our plan to ski Sierra at Tahoe over Christmas failed again.  Last year it was too much snow and this year too little.  Resorts with a lot of snowmaking like Heavenly are doing OK and we’ve been skiing there the most.  The views of Lake Tahoe are reason enough to go up and make some turns.

Snowmaking at Heavenly, December 2023

The plan

With only 2 more resorts to ski it’s a pretty easy plan this year. We will be heading up to ski Marmot Basin in Jasper, Alberta in mid March for our 99th resort.  In February we will be heading back to Utah to ski Solitude again. It’s changed considerably since we last skied there 13 years ago in 2011 and the review needs an update.  We might be able to squeeze in another trip somewhere in late February depending on snowfall which has been lacking pretty much everywhere in North America so far.

Bring on the snow!