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, 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
Milford Sound 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.
Coronet Peak NZ has some nice steep groomers, August 2025
The countdown to the beginning of the 25/26 season is on with just 3 months to go. Can’t wait!