Last April, I was invited by the California Travel & Tourism Commission to visit a handful of ski areas around Lake Tahoe. The invite, which promised that “early Spring offers an ideal time to explore the Golden State’s downhill boarding and riding experiences,” looked pretty similar to any other spam email you’d receive promising a free trip. However, the last line – “Visit California invites you on a Lake Tahoe press trip to go beyond the downhill slopes” – caught my attention. This trip, it seemed, was legit. I jumped on the opportunity, and spent three April days skiing three Tahoe resorts.
I had skied out west before, mostly in the Rockies, but had never made it out to California. Despite a dismal snow year last season, late-season skiing out west was in many ways similar to spring back in Maine – t-shirts, mud, hardcore skiers and riders, no lift lines. However, I was struck by some of the differences between skiing on the two coasts. I wouldn’t echo the hyperbolic line that “it’s a whole different sport” depending on the geography, but some of the differences were conspicuous.
When I stopped for lunch during my day at Heavenly Mountain, I picked up a beer from Bar 9150′ at the base of the Tamarack Express chair. The bar is so named because, despite being in one of the base areas, it sits 9,150 feet above sea level. It’s also about 1,000 feet below the resort’s highest peaks. At Squaw Valley, skiing started at the Gold Coast lodge, elevation 8,200 feet. Even at the relatively tame Northstar California, the village itself is at 6,300 feet.
This is in contrast to Sugarloaf’s snow fields, the highest lift-accessed skiing in Maine, which sit pretty at 4,237 feet.
Everything seems bigger out west, where massive, above-treeline bowls are the norm. While part of me missed the tighter trees and winding trails back home, there’s something cool about standing atop a peak with a 360-degree view, knowing you can point your skis in any direction and go.
There’s also a big difference in villages. Listen, I love the Foggy Goggle. Adore the Bag and Kettle. Heck, I got married under the Swig ‘n Smelt Pub at Saddleback. I love the feel of Maine ski villages. However, they’ve got nothing on the experience of California’s ski areas. While Maine’s resorts give you the bare necessities, the areas around Tahoe are luxurious.
Northstar’s base area looked like it was airlifted from the Swiss countryside. Bars, shops and restaurants bordered cobblestone streets, where a ski valet offered to carry your skis from the rack to the gondola.
You’ve heard of drive-thru fast food? Squaw Valley has a ski-thru Starbucks. Order your coffee at one window, ski a few feet, and pick it up at the next one. The resort has a massive base area with everything from dive bars to five-star dining.
I don’t think the village should be the primary attraction – it should be the skiing – but there’s a definite appeal to a ski day that doesn’t need to end when the lifts stop.
Which brings me to terrain. The East Coast has a reputation for being more “hardcore” than the West, and that rang true for me. Admittedly, by April many of the expert areas at Tahoe had closed for the season. However, the expert terrain at all three resorts was … fine. Challenging in spots, and often breathtaking, but a black diamond out west and a black diamond at Sugarloaf are different beasts. Anecdotally, stories about the Northeast’s icy slopes breeding strong technical skiers seem right.
One other big difference? Technology. All three resorts have upgraded to RFID lift tickets, which allow lift access without a ticket barcode scan or visual check. Not only that, but the tickets track skiers’ progress around the mountain. At the end of a day at Northstar, an app on my phone showed me my runs, average speed, loads of other stats, and even photos taken by on-mountain photographers. The number of tickets being tracked on the mountain is also used to good effect – the app will spit back average lift wait times based on how quickly skiers are moving.
If there’s one thing I could bring back to Maine from the trip, it would be this kind of stat tracking.
And one way they’re the same? Weather. I spent a lifetime believing the skiing out west was better than the skiing in Maine, full stop. University of Maine at Farmington Ski Industries peers, my father and everyone in between regaled me with tales of waist-deep champagne powder under clear blue skies. Not so! I discovered that skiing out west can be as crummy as skiing at home. There’s ice. There’s rocks. There’s “Sierra Cement,” a rock-hard, dense version of packed powder that rivals any ice on Bronco Buster.
Another similarity? The ubiquitous Sugarloaf sticker. That blue triangle was all over California and Nevada, peppering lift towers, trail signs and bar tops.
Josh Christie is a freelance writer and lifetime outdoors enthusiast. He shares column space in Outdoors with his father, John Christie. Josh can be contacted at:
joshua.j.christie@gmail.com
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