What’s up dude? Hope you and the wife are doing well. I think you said you dipped from Palo Alto but I could be wrong.
To OP, I moved to Phoenix to attend ASU. Never went to Arizona a day in my life before enrolling but it was one of the best decisions ever. I loved ASU, met my current wife and mother of my child. The school itself is a huge international university and you can shape your own experience for sure. If you want to get extremely into campus life and activities, live at the Tempe campus, and really enjoy the “college experience” you can 100% do that at the main Tempe campus. Your classes won’t be Ivy League level difficult but will still engage you and I love the diversity at ASU. You’ll end up in a small class with people from 6-8 different countries and a professor who lived 40 years in communist Russia or something. Just so much to learn from.
There is the possibility of just gliding through your coursework, getting average grades, and getting your undergrad as fast and painless as possible. I don’t recommend that attitude or route but ASU does afford you the luxury of a lot of online classes in your first year or two that are self paced and can be done relatively easily. You DONT have to make this your whole experience at ASU, however. Every semester I would have 1-2 bull shit classes that didn’t require a lot of brain power then 2-3 classes I thoroughly enjoyed and engaged with.
As far as Snowbowl, I am extremely biased as it’s my “home” mountain but I love it. I won’t lie to you though, from ASU Tempe campus it’s probably 2 and a half hours to the parking lot at snowbowl. Probably 2 hours to get to the town of Flagstaff then another 30 to get up through town and up to the resort. There are shuttles from the valley though so you don’t have to make the drive every time and can have some beers on the way home, nap, etc. I have made quite a few ski buddies just riding this shuttle.
The park scene is surprisingly sick. Snowbowl aims to have around 3 parks every season, or that’s been the case for the last 5+ years since being bought by the Purgatory guys. They will build a beginner park, intermediate, and then sunset is their main park with its own dedicated lift. Sunset doesn’t spin from day 1 of season to the end but they will build an XL jump line down the run if you’re into that. Makes for a fun day of lapping the chair, watching the booters, and seeing your homies. Features aren’t the very best in North America but they are creative, make sense, and most of the time placed well.
There are some other people from the Phoenix area on here who may have different opinions. I do acknowledge I’m in the extreme minority of people down in the valley who are up at Snowbowl 3-4 times a month. I’ve actually made a lot of friends in the park just being that dude from Phoenix who’s dedicated enough to make the round trip every weekend. Long answer short, if you love skiing it is totally doable and probably my favorite thing about living in Arizona. I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas with everything I could imagine and I can be skiing in the aspens and pines at 11,500 feet in like two hours. I never think “damn I wish I had ____” or “man I wish there was a _____ closer to me” if that makes sense.
I know this has been an essay but I really feel like this decision you’re making is one of the biggest ones in your life so some decent advice could go a long way. With everything I just said, my wife and I will probably move away from Phoenix to raise our daughter. Although everything I said above is true, it’s an extremely expensive place to live and the severe heat in the summer can be a lot on the body. For the last 8 hours of my life, though, it has been the perfect place for me and I highly recommend ASU. Send me a message if you got any more questions.
14456350:Dilldoes said:
[tag=260860]@DesertStix[/tag]
