Tahoe or Utah ski trip last week of Feb.

O

Obwon

Member
Homies and I are flying into LA to meet other homies then going drive to lake tahoe or utah. Utah is a couple more hour drive. It seems like utah gets more snow in general in feb. But tree skiing in tahoe looks kickass from vids ive watched. Guessing utah has better snow too, not as heavy. Looking for opinions from people who have skied both which way is the way or what are pros and cons of each area. Then specifics about resorts would be cool. Not sure why but I'm leaning towards tahoe. I'd say we are all advanced-expert riders. Deep pow is the goal
 
If you’re talking about tree skiing then I assume you’re not going to any resort for their park.

Snow in Utah is a hell of a lot lighter and stays better longer than anywhere in tahoe. Especially given the temps we’ve been having the snow will always be better in utah.

Like I said before, tahoe won’t have as good snow. I’m gonna be working under the assumption if you choose tahoe you’ll be skiing squaw because that’s really the only destination resort. It gets insanely crowded on the weekends pretty much everywhere on the mountain. Weekdays it’s not too bad; there are still lines but a lot less on the upper mountain. Squaw still has great terrain and you definitely wouldn’t be missing out on anything if you go there. It also has a park if you get tired of the rest of the mountain.

Alta doesn’t have a park, but apparently snowbird does. I’ve skied both resorts as well as the canyons side of pc, but I’m partial to Alta. Both Alta and snowbird have better terrain than pc outside of the terrain parks, so I’ll just focus on those. Altas snow lasts longer than the bird’s and if I were to choose just one resort it would be Alta, but you also have the Alta/bird pass so you don’t have to chose. If there are no freshies, lcc wind buff is still insanely fun to ski and great snow.

nighlife wise, there’s some apres at the base of squaw and Alta/bird, but in Utah you’re a lot closer to a major city. Keep in mind tho that there are a lot of Mormons in Utah, but I’m not 21 so idk any real specifics on either. Good luck and lmk if you have any questions
 
Thanks! Yeah we are looking for snow, tree skiing, good terrian, not a ton of ppl. We will be skiing mostly during the week. Not interested really in night life at all or park skiing. Mix of boarders and skiers in crew so alta probably a no go.
 
Mammoth is closest to LA and the snow there is lighter than Tahoe and stays better for longer. But that's if it does snow, which it hasn't for a month.
 
I’d say Tahoe. If you are skiing weekdays then I’d say hit up Squaw and alpine. Squaw is massive and towards the end of Feb we usually get a decent amount of snow. Hit up upper mountain and take a full mountain run as a warmup. 2,800ft vert in one run with super fun side trails and hits on the way down.

What’s your budget like? Where do you plan on staying? Hotel, air bnb? Hmu if you want some more suggestions on stuff (if you do choose Tahoe)
 
14384494:Vitiligo said:
I’d say Tahoe. If you are skiing weekdays then I’d say hit up Squaw and alpine. Squaw is massive and towards the end of Feb we usually get a decent amount of snow. Hit up upper mountain and take a full mountain run as a warmup. 2,800ft vert in one run with super fun side trails and hits on the way down.

What’s your budget like? Where do you plan on staying? Hotel, air bnb? Hmu if you want some more suggestions on stuff (if you do choose Tahoe)
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We are gonna fly into LA sunday feb 20th late drive Monday ski tuesday-sat and maybe sunday. Fly out Monday morning the 28th. Budget for lodging lift tix gas and food like 1500 a peice, dont need to rent vehicle. We are gonna bnb or stay in hotels whatever is better value. Awesome thanks man!
 
i would go to tahoe/mammoth. utah has been sub par snow wise, not worth the extra hours in the car. plus air quality in slc has been absolute dog shit as of late.
 
I’m going to SLC last week of feb just mad more sense bc all the resorts are within an hr of the city and pretty easy to get to
 
We ended up choosing SLC, got a good deal on bnb in Sandy. Going to do 3days at snowbird 2 at brighton. We're skiing tuesday-sat.
 
Brighton + Snowbird are good choices. Great variety of terrain.

Tahoe's advantage is that it is open super late into the season. July skiing anyone? In terms of middle of winter resorts, I'd take Utah hands down. Much more broad mountains and generally more options.
 
14384499:yungspliffy said:
How about 0 inches of snow in January for Tahoe
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You’re acting like utah has gotten any either? An inch or two but that’s it lol. Tahoe has gotten more snow overall.
 
Brighton trees go extremely hard. Weekdays at Brighton = no lift lines. Canyons PC is super fun and all of the double black stuff has no lift lines even on weekends. I haven't made it to Alta/Bird yet so can't comment but I hear amazing things. Brighton vibes are all time though, never really had a bad day there. Snow in the trees stays decent even in drought in my experience thus far.

TLDR: you basically can't make a wrong choice. Enjoy yourselves!
 
I would say your chance of having good riding conditions in Utah is much much higher than in Tahoe at any given point in the winter. Greatest snow on earth baby. Yea we've had a dry January but so has the rest of the west. This is my 8th winter in the Wasatch and in general I'd almost never bet against conditions here unless you're going to the tetons. Looks like the storm door is going to open up again soon too, hopefully it stays that way for a while and you get freshies for the trip.
 
14384976:Obwon said:
We ended up choosing SLC, got a good deal on bnb in Sandy. Going to do 3days at snowbird 2 at brighton. We're skiing tuesday-sat.
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Good stuff. I’d recommend skiing Brighton in the week. Big cottonwood gets ridiculously packed on weekends.
 
Update: So we did Tues Brighton, wed snowbird, Thurs Brighton, today snowbird I'm in the car on my way to Ogden right now, we are headed to powder mountain tomorrow.

Snowbird was gnarly. Two Blackhawk helicopters crashed in the back bowl, mineral basin Tuesday and was closed. They opened it right as we got to the top on Wednesday so we had two days worth of fresh and our drop in was deep, visibility was low but you just had to trust yourself, face shot kind of powder. Had a great time back there lapping baldy.

Today we traversed/hiked out of bounds at snowbird off mineral basin and had a few pretty epic runs. We had to hike out to the lift too absolutely worth it.

We got 6-8 at Brighton day 1 lightest powder I have ever skied. But you could like blow through it to crust sometimes. We had a blast found some sick pillow lines in trees little drops everywhere off of Milly. Definitely like a homie vibe there. Could see if there was just a bit more snow it would be unreal. We went back on day 3 and we're trying to find this kinda land bridge off milly to a zone that looked pretty untouched but we got cliffed out both tries. We had fun took in some cool sights, and had good snow up to the cliff bands. It was bluebird got some real good photos.

We had our best runs at snowbird it was also steeper more difficult. Brighton was more like we found stashes, had an awesome time, liked vibe. Overall couldn't be happier with Utah so far. Stoke is high, can't wait to check out powder mountain and do some cat skiing tomorrow!
 
14404614:Obwon said:
Update: So we did Tues Brighton, wed snowbird, Thurs Brighton, today snowbird I'm in the car on my way to Ogden right now, we are headed to powder mountain tomorrow.

Snowbird was gnarly. Two Blackhawk helicopters crashed in the back bowl, mineral basin Tuesday and was closed. They opened it right as we got to the top on Wednesday so we had two days worth of fresh and our drop in was deep, visibility was low but you just had to trust yourself, face shot kind of powder. Had a great time back there lapping baldy.

Today we traversed/hiked out of bounds at snowbird off mineral basin and had a few pretty epic runs. We had to hike out to the lift too absolutely worth it.

We got 6-8 at Brighton day 1 lightest powder I have ever skied. But you could like blow through it to crust sometimes. We had a blast found some sick pillow lines in trees little drops everywhere off of Milly. Definitely like a homie vibe there. Could see if there was just a bit more snow it would be unreal. We went back on day 3 and we're trying to find this kinda land bridge off milly to a zone that looked pretty untouched but we got cliffed out both tries. We had fun took in some cool sights, and had good snow up to the cliff bands. It was bluebird got some real good photos.

We had our best runs at snowbird it was also steeper more difficult. Brighton was more like we found stashes, had an awesome time, liked vibe. Overall couldn't be happier with Utah so far. Stoke is high, can't wait to check out powder mountain and do some cat skiing tomorrow!
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Thanks for bringing the snow with you!
 
Tahoe for way better scenery but Utah for better skiing, either way though I’m sure you’ll enjoy it wherever you end up

**This post was edited on Feb 26th 2022 at 2:54:06am

**This post was edited on Feb 26th 2022 at 2:54:34am
 
Pow mow was better than I expected based on vids I watched and such. It was a great way to end our trip. After four days of skiing hard I didn't want to see another mogul lol. There was good snow around the resort it's not super steep so you could bust through most of the soft bumps that were piled up.

We did two runs of cat skiing that were awesome. Run 1 we hiked up a bit and got some deep snow that was long and mostly untracked. On our way up on paradise lift we spotted a pretty gnarly chute that seemed like we could get to without much hiking and we were able to find it, rip it and celebrate with beers in the parking lot. The views were awesome you could see mountains forever in all directions. Thanks NS for your feedback and helping make our trip to Utah badass. It was way more than we could have asked for. Utah is metal af.

Is it cool to post pics? Like I dunno it might give away spots?
 
We decided to hit one more stop on the trip Mountain high resort in Wrightwood, CA gonna do some park rat shit
 
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