On Monday, September 5, 2016 at 1:44:35 PM UTC-7, lal_truckee wrote:
On 9/5/16 1:16 PM, Richard Henry wrote:
On Sunday, September 4, 2016 at 5:26:10 PM UTC-7, Richard Henry wrote:
On Sunday, September 4, 2016 at 6:34:37 AM UTC-7, Toller wrote:
What is a reasonable compromise between travel time and great skiing? Something more than Arizona Snowbowl. I happen to like groomed trails, so the amount they do is an important factor also.
Thanks.

Curiously, you are about equidistant between Big Bear areas and Northern New Mexico areas.

How about a tour of second-rank areas? Mt Charleston in Nevada, then June Mt in California, Mt Rose back in Nevada, and Mt Shasta in California. I guarantee no one has ever done that tour before.

Had to look Shasta up - last I noticed was back in the late 70s when the
avalanche took out the lifts; I didn't notice when local money opened a
low key ski area on the flank: so, go ahead and send ski folks up to Shasta.
In any case, Shasta the mountain should be on everyone's bucket list.

You gotta respect a ski area where the lifts go nowhere near the top, and it still gets wiped out by avalanche.

The only time I have been there is summer of 1972, when my brother and I were both in the Navy. I picked him up at Mare Island where he was in DS school and we drove up on a Friday afternoon. The next day before dawn we started an attempt to climb Shasta. I underestimated a few things - how far away Shasta is, how high the mountain is, and how much snow was left on the mountain late in the summer - one of the few places in California with glaciers, and we had no ice gear. I was in the middle of an odd Navy assignment then - overnight watches 4 nights in a row, then 4 days off, so my rhythms were totally whacked. I dropped him back at Mare Island late Sunday, and then had to drive straight through to get back to San Diego in time.