East .vs. West

First, my credentials:

While I know I do not have nearly the wide exposure to different ski areas and experiences as others do, this is my home page, and I can put up whatever I want :) . These are my opinions, based on the following skiing experience:

I started out skiing mid-Atlantic areas:

Massanutten and Wintergreen, VA

Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and Whitetail, PA

Canaan Valley, WV

Then moved to Colorado and skied 30 days (3 snowboarding) at:

Breck, Copper, Keystone, A-Basin, Vail, Winter Park, Steamboat, Loveland, Monarch, Crested Butte, and Ski Cooper.

Some of these I have also skied since moving back east in '93.

I also skied for 2 days in Feb '97 at Squaw Valley, CA.

For North Eastern skiing:

I skied in Feb of '94 at Sugarbush (3 days)

Dec of '94 at Sunday River (1 day - 50% of mtn open), Sugarloaf (1 day - very little open and I was sick),

March of '97 at Killington (1.5 days).

Feb of '98, I skied for 3.5 days at Alta and Snowbird (best skiing EVER).

And, 3 days in March of '99. I skied one day each at Wildcat, Sunday River (both spring conditions), and Cannon Mtn (ice conditions).

So, here we go:

Well, both have their strong points.

The East:
  1. The ski areas have more character,
  2. The ski towns have more character (in general – Breckenridge is a great town also, though),
  3. Most areas are more accessible (from east coast of course),
  4. Many individual trails have a lot of character. "Classic New England narrow, twisty trail."
  5. Tree skiing is different – greater variety of trees. Not all pine or aspen.
  6. (-) Snow conditions vary – can be excellent or rained on, or ice.
  7. (-) Some trails may be closed at any time during the winter.

The West:
  1. Good to excellent snow conditions,
  2. Steeps!
  3. Larger ski areas. On a more grand scale,
  4. Resort villages designed for skiing (if that’s a plus-?),
  5. Canada: Exchange rate,
  6. Scenery,
  7. Back country feel,
  8. Less crowded (some)
  9. (-) Resorts tend to be more generic. Many have the same feel. Vail is boring – has no character (or challenge)

The West has it over the East on the total ski experience, but Eastern skiing, especially the terrain, is very close.

One thing to note is that the ski area size measurement methods they use are different. In the West, they measure an area’s size as within the boundaries (border to border), whereas in the East, they only measure the acreage of cut trails. A good example of this is Sugarloaf, ME. They had around 550 acres until they started their "boundary to boundary skiing" campaign. Now they have 1400 acres without moving the ski boundary. This compares to many of the Western resorts – actually bigger than Telluride, Crested Butte, Taos, and others. 4 years ago, Breckenridge was 1600 acres. If Killington went boundary to boundary, they’d probably be as big as Vail.

So, the resorts in the East are not as small as you might think. I lived in CO for 2 years and skied a total of 30 days, then moved back east. Drove up to Sugarbush, VT the next winter for a 3-day trip. Had an EXCELLENT time, even with icy conditions (They had had GREAT conditions all year, until it rained on the mtn while I was driving up. It got cold again and most groomed terrain was pretty much hard pack, but the natural snow trails were in good shape.). 100% of the terrain was open, and I was thoroughly entertained. Only thing I missed was the steeps – nothing you’d even think of doing jump turns on. But, they try to compensate that with building narrow trials, like you don’t find out West.

Snowfall in the East? Many VT resorts get 250" or more. Jay Peak averages around 330" per year. The reason the conditions can vary more than in the Rockies is that the east also can warm up in mid-winter. It's called the mid-winter thaw and usually lasts for a week or so. This is one of the major reasons they have invested so much in snowmaking equipment. They have to recover quickly from the thaws, and they do it pretty well.

In all, I’d say the East areas are at least 85% as good as the Western areas. No one could truthfully say that the East sucks, because it doesn’t. But, if you’re flying anyway, I’d go West. I couldn’t really see spending a whole week at any resort, but the western ones are a bit bigger and more likely to have terrain that would challenge you to push it.