killclimbz

I think we are leaning more towards a week than a long weekend.

Couple of criteria were trying to be met with this trip in mind.

1. A place that is a good value. Where you'll get a lot of bang for your buck. That is one of the reasons we haven't really looked at Jackson Hole, Aspen, or Breck/Summit county areas. You can find alright lodging at some (Breck mostly) but everything else is costly. Lift tickets are north of $80 a day this year at all those places.

2. A location that we can get to. Wolf Creek being a very inexpensive place does suffer a bit from location. The closest airports are probably 90 minutes from there and maybe not the most affordable or convenient to fly into. DIA or Colorado Springs are the major airports and they are 5 hours and 3-31/2 hours from Wolf Creek respectively. Though I will say, this place is killer, the snow is generally plentiful, lift tix and lodging are cheap. The backcountry is off the hook. Especially if you like riding in the trees.
Salt Lake/Ogden has a good combination of well price lift tickets, reasonable lift tickets, and great backcountry with plenty of snow. Not as inexpensive as Wolf Creek, but it is a great traveling bang for your buck. We stayed north of SLC three years ago, right down the road from Powder Mountain and Snobasin. Less crowds there and just fantastic snow. Not a bad option at all imo. Liquor laws suck there, so those who drive plan on bringing a ton of B E E R. If that turns out to be the choice of course...

DrGreeNThumB420

breck blows

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killclimbz

Not a fan of Breck myself. Of course if it was in Breck, Copper, Keystone, Vail, Loveland, Beaver Creek, Arapahoe Basin, Winterpark, Berthoud Pass are all within a reasonable distance from there. Still, I think the $$$ to good deal equation isn't really there. Not a lot of great deals to be had unless you have a season pass.

DrGreeNThumB420

yeah it would be $$ in breck even tho i would just stay at my place and drive there if we did decide to meet in summit county so if thats what everyone would want fine with me.....couldnt see my self pickin breck keystone abasin copper over loveland tho

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Grimdog

I would consider flying into SLC or what about the Seattle area? Would that be a consideration?

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RideGrl

I like Breck because Keystone is only 20 - 30 min away and they offer night riding so Riding early staying up till 9pm so its not to bad.

killclimbz

I would love to go there (and probably will this season), but the running consensus from locals is that it's not a great place for this sort of thing. I guess lodging isn't great and snow can range from bullet proof to waste deep pow. Hmmm sounds like anywhere else to me. Flights to Washington from DIA are relatively cheap, so I could be down for that.

Mr. Right

Yup. If we do this at Breck, Vail, Beaver Creek, Copper Mountain or Keystone I'm not even gonna go haha. We are looking to go where people won't be in line all day, we want to ride. Who wants to fly here from Canada to stand in line for 30 minutes at Breck and only get 5 runs in a day?

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kri$han

No offense to any other members here, but I think the primary concern is to find one person to champion this meet... make executive decisions and book the thing.

I nominate climbz for this cuz it seems like he knows all the major resorts and has experience with this type of big trip planning.

Almost as important as location is time we decide to go. I honestly would like to go somewhere between christmas and new years, but that might not be the most 'cost effective' option.

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Kris
Toronto Prelude Club

killclimbz

Geeze, I get the hut trip and now nominated for this?

Let's get an area chosen first. If it's Wolf Creek I'll work with Mr. Right on getting this set up. If it's SLC, well I'll start shopping around for a spot. I can say right now that I probably won't be able to reserve a place on my own dime. I'll be willing to put in a decent portion but we'll need to collect some funds to do it. My house is a constant drain with all the renovations and such that we are doing.

As far as dates go, that week you mentioned is a bit early unfortunately. Conditions can be good, but generally are not great. For us US locals, trying to book around Martin Luther King weekend would make sense. It gets most of us who have paid Holidays an extra day.