I went out west for the 1st time last year in early march-
Breck + a lot of terrain
+ Massive jumps
+ Meticulously manicured pipe
+ decent town
- park was empty (even on a Sunday), so it felt strange to me (but that also could be a positive)
- park features so massive that the park felt extremely short (but you could also see that as a positive)
- other parks are in random parts of the area, so it takes a long time to get between them.
- Those other parks are not that great
- Awful lift lines, plus the lift closest to the park is slow as hell and the lines are just as bad, if not worse than the other quads because of all the goofball beginners at that lift.
- Below the tree line you are constantly dodging joeys
Vail + huge place
+ I liked their park, it has a fun vibe, the lift went right to the top…you could pick between two pipes and a middle pipe with rails sticking out of the walls and rails in the middle (hard to explain, looked like something out of a video game), after that were some smaller jumps, then some rails, and that led into some med jumps.
+the kickers for the jumps had long transitions (a personal preference)
- cost a lot of $
- back bowls are flat bowls, steep for the1st 5% and then the other 95% you would get stuck in if it were a powder day (but that’s just the bowls I went in, im sure there are better ones)
- smaller park features, but still fun (I think Loon in early April had bigger jumps)
Arapahoe Basin
+really beautiful views
+ small place
+ all the skiers that I saw were extremely good
+ east wall/land of giants, im sure there is better stuff that you can hike to, but this area you can get to from the highest lift. You traverse as far as you feel like, then drop in. No real massive cliffs, but its litterd with smaller rocks and boulders that you can just pop off of all the way down.
- small place
- windy (well, that depends on the day)
- you better like moguls
- areas in western NY have better parks, but who cares.
