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Poll How many ski areas do you ski in a season

How many ski areas do you visit in a season

  • 1, I ski only my home mountain

    Votes: 5 5.2%
  • 2-5, My pass has a couple of areas on it and thats as far as I go

    Votes: 48 50.0%
  • 6-10, I get around

    Votes: 28 29.2%
  • 11-15, I really get around

    Votes: 11 11.5%
  • 16-20, Home mountain? I am there from time to time.

    Votes: 2 2.1%
  • 21 Plus, When I am not skiing I am at the airport on the way to ski.

    Votes: 2 2.1%

  • Total voters
    96

DanoT

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I like the idea of calling it a different area if the resort has different name
bonus points for Blackcomb, Todd, Mackenzie, Whitetooth, Snow Valley, Gibson Pass and maybe at least 2 extra for Big Mountain.

An interpretation for those that might not know:

Wasn't it Whitefish, changed to Big Mountain, changed back to Whitefish?

Fernie was originally Snow Valley.

Whitetooth was the local hill at the bottom of Kicking Horse. Since the ski resort is located adjacent to the town of Golden, they were originally going to call it Golden Peaks. The Sun Peaks management were not happy with a name that they feared would be confusing for the skiing public and after discussions with KH owners they settled on the idea of naming the new resort after the nearby Kicking Horse Pass.

Mount Mackenzie is the name of the mountain that Revelstoke Mountain Resort is built on although I think the original ski area at the base of the mountain was called Powder Springs and the snowcat skiing on the upper Mount Mackenzie was I think just called Revelstoke Cat Skiing.

When Nippon Cable bought the then 31 year old Tod Mountain in 1992 they first called it Sun Peaks at Tod Mountain. Among the locals we figured it won't be long before it becomes Tod Mountain at Sun Peaks and then because all of the new development is 2 miles up the road from the original Burfield base it won't be long before the Burfield base becomes the not often visited long time locals pretty much private ski area, and that is exactly what happened.

Gibson Pass, I have no clue what or where that place is.
 

noncrazycanuck

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That's the ski area in Manning Park.
It was called Gibson Pass. I don't know if that name is still used at all as I haven't skied there since the 70's.
A smaller hill but it often gets nice snow and is fairly remote so low traffic. The old 2 chairs still looked exactly the same last time I hiked in the area.
They have always struggled to keep it operating

I don't remember what Blackcomb was initially going to be called
 

TonyC

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So I say count in whatever way you fancy - just don't expect others to apply the same basis.
I agree, but I try to be internally consistent in my definitions. I find it illogical that lift connected areas in the Arlberg should be considered separate while non-lift connected areas in Chamonix should be considered one, though.

Brighton and Solitude don't even share the same lift ticket. So can't be "one".
I have skied Brighton/Solitude on a combined ticket (direct analogy to Alta/Snowbird) a couple of times, but not recently.

Park City/Canyons or Sugarbush/Sugarbush North
In those examples many people skied the areas when they were separate by even the strictest definition: no lift connection, separate lift tickets, separate management.

Mount Mackenzie is the name of the mountain that Revelstoke Mountain Resort is built on although I think the original ski area at the base of the mountain was called Powder Springs and the snowcat skiing on the upper Mount Mackenzie was I think just called Revelstoke Cat Skiing.
It was just called CAT Powder skiing. I skied two days there in 1999. I also skied a day in 2001 with Montana Backcountry Adventures, which was snowcat skiing in what became Moonlight Basin.

If I ski snowcat terrain first, then later when it becomes lift service, I count 2 areas. A name change of a lift served area remains one. How may areas have tacked the words "Resort" or "Mountain Resort" onto their names in the past 20+ years? A ton IMHO, Fernie as DanoT noted being but one example.
 
Last edited:

at_nyc

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I have skied Brighton/Solitude on a combined ticket (direct analogy to Alta/Snowbird) a couple of times, but not recently.
They key being, those are two mountains.

You can buy Solitude ticket, or Brighton ticket. Or you can pay EXTRA for a "combined" ticket that would allow you to ski both.

I always look at Snowbird and Alta as the defining case. Even though the two areas are linked by lift, and you can EASILY ski back and forth, practically everyone consider those as TWO mountains. I think the main reason being they're different owners!

And you can buy ticket for one, or the other (different prices too). The fact you can buy a combined ticket to ski TWP mountains in the single day doesn't change the fact you're skiing two mountains in a single day.

Unfortunately, that's strictly north America modal. In Europe, a lot of the areas are really a "collection" of individual mountains! And for a lot of the tourists, they can't tell where one mountain ends and the other starts!
 

Sibhusky

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An interpretation for those that might not know:

Wasn't it Whitefish, changed to Big Mountain, changed back to Whitefish?
No. It opened in 1947 as Big Mountain. Prior to that the name floated around as various things like Hellroaring, but that was when it was a place you climbed up to stay in a cabin run by the Hellroaring Ski Club. Before opening there was the idea it would be Hellroaring, but that idea was tossed prior to opening.
 

graham418

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I have 7 hills that I ski at locally (still a 2 hour drive, for the 700' bump!!) 2 are public and 5 are private clubs. I think thats a purely Ontario thing, apart from Holimont. If anybody else knows of private clubs, chime in.
I try and do 2 trips out west , and 2 in the east, so close to 10 different places .
 

fatbob

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I agree, but I try to be internally consistent in my definitions. I find it illogical that lift connected areas in the Arlberg should be considered separate while non-lift connected areas in Chamonix should be considered one, though.


.

It's partly a feature of the fact that lifts can go where roads and other connections cannot I.e. over or around mountains. Lech to Warth is a VERY long taxi ride in winter or 5 minutes in the new gondy. If Wasatch interconnect happened would upu start to accept that Park City and the Cottonwoods were all the same place or would they still hold onto separate identity as Alta and Bird do today despite being connected? It's only really a debate because we're all slight obsessives.
 

at_nyc

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It's partly a feature of the fact that lifts can go where roads and other connections cannot I.e. over or around mountains. Lech to Warth is a VERY long taxi ride in winter or 5 minutes in the new gondy. If Wasatch interconnect happened would upu start to accept that Park City and the Cottonwoods were all the same place or would they still hold onto separate identity as Alta and Bird do today despite being connected? It's only really a debate because we're all slight obsessives.
It's also partly a feature of the fact there're a lot more independently run ski lifts in Europe, which isn't the case in North America.

Instead, while north America has a lot of small scale, independently run ski mountains, but only a small number of them happen to be just over the ridge from its neighbors (e.g. Snowbirc/Alta, Brighton/Solitude, and what used to be Moonlight/Big Sky, Squaw/alpine etc).

When these neighboring mountains are bought up by the big ski corp, and in some cases linked by lifts, it became ONE mountain instead of two. This last feature only happened relatively recently. So people are still stuck with thinking about the independent mountains before the link up (by lift or by ownership)
 

KingGrump

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I have 7 hills that I ski at locally (still a 2 hour drive, for the 700' bump!!) 2 are public and 5 are private clubs. I think thats a purely Ontario thing, apart from Holimont. If anybody else knows of private clubs, chime in.
I try and do 2 trips out west , and 2 in the east, so close to 10 different places .

Yellowstone club and Hermitage Club come immediately to mind.
There are others. Some completely and some hybrids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_ski_area_(North_America)

One not listed in the link is Stratton Mountain Club. I consider it a hybrid.
Membership requirement Separate lodge for their members. Exclusive express lanes in lift corrals.
Shares the ski area with the non-members.

I am sure there are many others hiding in plain sight.
 
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Philpug

Philpug

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Snowbird &Alta go together like peanut butter & jelly, spaghetti & meatballs, Heartbreaker & Livin Lovin Maid (She's just a women), We will rock you & We are the Champions and of course from Big Daddy, Lamb & Tunafish.
 

TonyC

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If Wasatch interconnect happened would you start to accept that Park City and the Cottonwoods were all the same place or would they still hold onto separate identity as Alta and Bird do today despite being connected? It's only really a debate because we're all slight obsessives.
I would count all those Wasatch areas as separate, and I count all non-lift connected areas at Chamonix as separate. When you're connected by lift but not marked ski terrain (Warth-Lech, Zurs-St. Anton) I view that as separate. Lech and Zurs are lift-integrated so I say that's one. Stuben is the gray area in the Arlberg IMHO, geographically separate with very tenuous lift/ski connection until the gondola from Rauz to Stuben's upper slopes was built in 2015.

And as noted before, if I skied areas when they were separate, I continue to track them that way when they combine. Part of this us due to my tracking vertical. If you're in ski terrain and it's not obvious which area it belongs to, that a strong argument you're in one area not two.

Snowbird &Alta go together like peanut butter & jelly, spaghetti & meatballs, Heartbreaker & Livin Lovin Maid (She's just a women), We will rock you & We are the Champions and of course from Big Daddy, Lamb & Tunafish.
+10 to this. I LOVED having the Mountain Collective ticket being a combined AltaBird ticket for the past 4 seasons. Half or my days those years were divided between them. The change in MCP does lower the price but also the flexibility of the past 4 years. Hopefully the upgrade will be half price for MCP area passholders, but I have nagging feeling it won't be.
 

noncrazycanuck

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I used to keep track of countries - But like ski hills does it really matter the BDR and DDR are now one, and Czeckosolvakia is 2. It averages out.
Much easier than Yugoslavia and the USSR.
Pretty sure most of us know if they know a ski hill, an area, a region or not.
If you want to break it down in any smaller increments than continents it works for me .
 

John Webb

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Nevada City CA
In a former life-on east coast I'd do 5 or 10 a year. Now with day tickets being so pricey a pass is required if you're sane.
So with a pass I now rarely do more than 3 or 4 areas.
 

Stev

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Snowbird &Alta go together like peanut butter & jelly, spaghetti & meatballs, Heartbreaker & Livin Lovin Maid (She's just a women), We will rock you & We are the Champions and of course from Big Daddy, Lamb & Tunafish.

Like Snowboarding and Skiing.

...or Snowboarding and Skiing and only Skiing.
 

Jim McDonald

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Got in about 36 days last season at Niseko, Shiga Kogen, Flims/Laax, Alta, Solitude & Snowbasin. Not bad for a working stiff.
 

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