Which one, alta, vail, telluride, or crested butte?

M

MHskidude6

New member
im planning a trip to a mountain out west. I want a good mountain for big mountain skiing. Good snow, and hard terrain is what im looking for
 
VAIL is all groomers, the back bowls are really flat. course i didnt do any hiking or out of bounds shit. but it is somewhat flat.

jacksone hole or park city definately

park city has some GREAT powder
 
oh haha, forgot there were choices.

i would say telluride because its somewhat uncrowded and the powder stays there for weeks. plus they have some pretty crazy terrain
 
never skied alta, but it prolly gets more snow then crestted butte or teluride, but butte is absolutly insane, if its a good snow year, so dont go unless they have a crapload of snow
 
if you hit alta (which is prolly the best choice to begin with) you can also hit snowbird, and even brighton if you want. you'll have more challenging terrain than you can handle. if you choose CO I would go with telluride.
 
alta gets sick nasty snow.

telluride has sick nasty bumps

butte has sick nasty steeps

vail has a nice gondola.

i'd go with alta though. because i've been to all four and had the most fun there.
 
i would say stay in SLC..so if LCC closes you can go to BCC or snowbasin or powder mountain or any of the ones in park city-the canyons and all of them. Or you can just hit up alta, snowbird,brighton,solitude,and snowbasin-you cant get better than that it such a close radius-guaranteed one of the best times youll ever have
 
if your looking for good pow, alta has the best. park city and snowbird arent too far either if u want to hit up the sick park in park city
 
FYI.....Crested Butte is having a really good snow year so far and it could be an epic season. Headwall has been open for almost 2 weeks now, which is super early. Teocalli Bowl is open, again, extra early. The North Face Glades will be opening in a day or two.....very early. We've gotten almost as much snow as Alta so far, but the snow is lighter here so it has settled more for a smaller base. Alta/Bird are still the dope shit though so either way you can't lose.

And CB has a bunch of sick new jibs this year. S, House, Down-Flat-Down, Up-Gap-Down.....All boxes in the range of 30-40 feet.
 
Fuck Telluride and Vail, If you wanna ski Alta or the Butte Currently in SLC and am glad that some mountians still care bout gnarly terrian, lived in the Butte before and dear lord there stuff there that still scars the shit out of my anal spyncter
 
I've skied all of the mountains you listed except for Telluride, and I ski Vail on a regular basis so, here is my humble opinion.

Vail is awesome. Whoever says it is flat doesn't know where to look. Vail has more inbounds cliffs than any other 5 mountain resort (my home mountains). The bowl skiing can't be beat, and there is steep stuff in Sun Up Bowl, Sun Down Bowl, and all over Bluesky Basin. Vail is also many times the size of Alta and CB, and you couldn't possibly ski it all in one trip.

Crested Butte has some absolutely insane terrain. The north face area is where the US EXtremes are held, and there are some ridiculously steep lines over 50 degrees with unavoidable drops that are sometimes in the range of 20-40 feet (look up Body Bag if you go there just to see what I am talking about). Great skiing at CB.

Alta is a skiing mecca. Every skier should go there at least once. It gets about twice the snow of any of the Colorado mountains, and the average steepness trumps just about any Colorado resort. Alta and Snowbird (they are connected at the top) are the only two places in Utah that I hold on a higher level than the best of what Colorado has to offer.

I've never skied Telluride, so I don't have much of an opinion. I would think that Alta and CB are a little bit better for steeps.

I guess it comes down to this- How many days are you going to be skiing, and honestly, how good are you at skiing steep lines? If you aren't amazing, you aren't going to be able to ski the harder stuff at CB. There is stuff there that Seth Morrison has backed down from because the conditions weren't perfect. If you are ok and can handle yourself on an average rocky mountain double black, go to Atla. If you get bored at Alta, you can hop the ridge and ski Snowbird. If you are going for a really long time though, I would say hit up Vail because it is so big and won't get old, and if you want a change you can head over to any other 5 mountain resort and use your Vail lift ticket there.
 
Alta/bird, a lot of alta goodies are a little more hidden and the bird's stuff is pretty obvious for the most part. If you are looking for lines that make your knees shake check it out
 
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