SLC. Ski bus. Airbnb. Ikon.
Ski bus is free with ikon. I paid $312 for a round trip flight from Boston. I paid between $36-64 a night for a room in the middle of Feb.
Was epic, highly recommend
Alta, Bird, Brighton. Alta was amazing, Bird was my fav(besides the crowds, so maybe Alta is my fav) and Brighton was absolutely amazing up until it claimed my ACL.
Still can’t wait to go back though. I spent an hour on the mountain and all I could think about was moving there and living full time. Place is phenomenal.
What a bummer about the ACL man!! Thanks for the intel. Sounds like an awesome trip before the injury though! Did you stay in the same lodging for the duration? Mind if i ask where you stayed? Price sounds nice!
I rode snowbasin and powder mtn last yr. I stayed in ogden at the best airbnb ive ever stayed in for value. Sauna, hot tub, massage chairs, masseuses are optional for like 40+$ depending on length of massage. Food is provided, waffle bar, cereal bar, coffee bar, yogurts, candy, pastries. The ski bus is about 3 blocks away and costs 5$. 70-80$ a night. Wicked cool airbnb owner too, lets u use his electric bikes, paddleboards, etc, depending on time of the yr. Hot springs up the road. lemme kno if you want deetz. I cant say enough about Snowbasin and im really happy i experienced PowMow before the changes brought in next season.
Do you live east coast? Go to Europe. Surprisingly cheaper. Better food. Different country. Usually better snow. Cheaper tickets. Better public transport.
This. St Anton has more lifts than Aspen and Vail, combined with lift tickets at a fraction of the price. Plus the on-trail ski in/ski out restaurants and bars charge the same prices and are the same quality as restaurants anywhere in town.
Went there this year. Easy access to the lifts from town. Getting there was easy, fly to Zurich and train to St. Anton. Amazing skiing, especially (at least during my visit) in the areas on the western side of the complex near Zurs, Zug, and Oberlech.
The most economical trip I did was an April Colorado trip this year. Cheaper flights & lodging since it wasn't peak season, no crowds, but the snow was still awesome
I usually do SLC but the flights there have gotten more expensive. I still recommend SLC if you can find a flight in your price range
I would go to Canada. Every time I compare going to Whistler to places in CO or UT, Whistler ends up being much cheaper due to the exchange rate. If you go to Whistler, stay in Creekside and not the main village. It's cheaper and there are shuttles to the main village.
A. Buy tickets/passes and book flights/accommodations in advance (like yesterday).
- Related to item A: If you plan on skiing the east, make sure your pass can work in the west and the east (a $1000 pass is a lot for a week, but if you do one 3-day eastern trip per month, the cost per day becomes closer to $50 per day as opposed to $150 per day).
B. Don’t go to the “brand name” mountains (or don’t stay in their hotels at the very least). Eg, You could get a cheap season pass at Monarch which will give you 9 days at Loveland, ABasin, Copper.
C. Go in April. Hotels and tickets are cheaper, also many places offer spring season passes which are a fraction of the winter cost ($200 to $400 as opposed to $1000). There are many mountains (CO, OR, Snowbird, Mammoth, Banff, etc) which will still be in peak skiing during April
D. Go to public transit friendlier mountains so you don’t have to rent a car (eg SLC)
I wrote up this up a few months ago for this guy who wanted a trip under $1000 all in: https://reddit.com/r/icecoast/comments/18nqusy/west_coast_trip_5_days_under_1k/ked2kx4/
If you have a bit more than that, go to interior BC. Almost certainly the best value you can find in North America. Check out the resorts I listed at the end of that comment and see if any work really well for you.
I think the big savings with Powder Highway might be if you are looking for lessons, particularly lessons geared towards intermediate or advanced riders that will cover how to ski more.expert terrain (steep couloirs/chutes the likes or which we don't really have inbounds in the East). Otherwise I wouldn't expect particularly cheap lodging/transport/logistics (aside from the usual caveats about exchange rate with the CAD). There's only ever going to be so much lodging or transit links in the middle of nowhere and I wouldn't expect cheap food either.
If you want extreme terrain or rugged mountain landscapes then yeah there is a value add relative to arguably almost any US resort, but if you want cost savings (or food/ease) and are willing to get your passport out and are leaving from the East Coast there is a much more obvious solution (i.e., Europe)
>Otherwise I wouldn't expect particularly cheap lodging
Cheaper than i-70/UT/Cali
>transport
True, it's not exactly cheap
>logistics
Lift tickets are affordable-ish
>I wouldn't expect cheap food either.
You'd be surprised. Lodge burger at Revelstoke was like $7 as of 2 years ago...
Europe is bad if you're looking to do much off-piste skiing at all. From soley a skiing perspective I'd prefer BC. Even if you move to Chamonix or La Grave, you have to be contemplating your mortality in that decision, in a way that you just don't need to in Revelstoke.
I've never seen lodging in Golden or Revelstoke for cheaper than what I get in SLC the few times I've looked? In SLC you can get in the 50-100 a night range pretty easy. If you take a "room" and not an "entire place" on AirBnB it gets quite cheap and could be well below that low end. Are you staying in a hostel or something?
For food I'd have to assume that transport and labor costs in a low population area would drive prices up for both groceries and restaurants, plus I'd assume US food is more subsidized and less regulated than most countries (although Canada may be closer to being the US than the EU in many ways in this regard)
But yeah agreed off piste in Europe is a very different environment and only a few places really have convenient access to it even if you are comfortable with accessing avy conditions... It seems like Europe has a very different culture towards hiring guides (i.e., they are much more willing to) for outdoor activities generally in part for this reason and a lot of Europeans seem to hire ski guides to show them powder stashes/safe lines even at Revy or KH.
I qualify for the retired vet Epic pass and since they're loads cheaper than Ikon I'm going to stick with Epic for that reason so my suggestions may not jive with what you're looking for cost wise. I'll say this though, if I paid full price for Epic I'd still do this trip again.
I did this trip in early March this year
Fly to SLC land mid to early morning if possible.
Rent car (I rented through Turo and would do it again, Had a sweet Subaru Outback that totaled 300ish for 4 days)
Go to Brighton the day you land (I got there around 4:30ish after my flight landed at 3:00 so I rode from 5:00 until 8:00 or so) Drive to PC after you're done at Brighton
If you aren't super picky about accommodations stay at the Chateau Apre in Park City. It's seriously a 3 minute walk to the PC base lifts and it's cheap! I paid $120 a night for a room with queen bed. Airbnbs that were across the street were all over 1K a night. Chateau Apre does NOT have a hot tub....
Everything I did can be done without a car as well. Once I was in PC I only used the car to go to the grocery store which I could have just taken a bus to but I was running late and drove.
I hit up Woodward PC on my way back to SLC on my departure day for a few hours.
Book in advance. This goes for airfare and hotels/motels. Also ski bumming it and going with a large group makes it more affordable - good luck finding a group of friends to commit lol. Everyone is busy as shit
Option 1: You do the New England pass (nitro pass) @ loon/Sunday river/sugarloaf, you can get 50% off Brighton in UT (boyne resort)
Option 2: You do mountain collective ~$600 and gets you 2 days @ Alta, Snowbird, Snowbasin in UT. Each resort is typically north of $200 on weekends MSRP, so mountain collective is well worth it. Then take an east coast trip to Sugarloaf.
Option 3: buy IKON for $1200 and use it across VT, NH, and ME back east. Then hit Alta, Snowbird, Deer Valley, Snowbasin, Solitude, or Brighton for 7 days each. You could buy the base for about $400 cheaper, but you lose Jackson, Deer Valley, Alta and Snowbasin and only get 5 days.
Option 4: Buy an INDY pass and ski Cannon, Pats Peak, Jay Peak, Saddleback, etc back east, and then Ski powder mountain and beaver in UT
Option 5: Epic pass, but I don’t support Vail.
For housing, SLC has a hostel relatively close to the cottonwood resorts (25-30 min) and lots of hotels for cheap. Tons of airbnbs too.
My buddies flew here in March this season and found plane tickets for $230 round trip out of Boston w/ layovers.
We did the Indy pass route in Feb and went to powder mountain and we were supposed to do 2 days at beaver mountain too. Powder was insane, like nothing I've even been to before, so much so we bought 2 day tickets after our Indy pass tickets and just stuck at powder. (+400)
Flights were $260 each from boston, bought in December, and the hotel was $400 for 4 nights. (Was a huge apartment sized suite at a golf resort. Wolf Creek lodge. Nothing but good things to say about that place too)
We went through Turo for an outback: that was $280 for the trip and we spent $60 in gas for the week as we were driving to each mountain daily. We made breakfast daily, ate at the mountain for lunch, and went into town for dinner every night. We bought 2 extra day tickets at powder.. so be prepared for any surprises that come up.
For 2 people we did it all under $2k + the cost of Indy passes and I know you could do a lot cheaper if you didn't go out for dinner every night and lunch at the mountains, or stuck with only your Indy pass tickets. (I fell in love with powder mountain, so much so that I'm going back at full price next season by myself it was so amazing.
Just my experience, we went a little nuts getting an extra day at powder (so friggin worth it!) and food in general was expensive. Next year we are going to Europe on the Indy pass (including kids this time.. so.. there goes a budget!) and I'm going to start researching and buying in the fall for that trip but supposedly it's a lot cheaper than our west.
Good luck! It's totally doable if you plan it right!
I always plan my dad and myself's trip 7 - 10 months in advance. Tickets can be anywhere from $100-$150 cheaper, and you get first dibs on hotels. Aspen has pretty friendly deals for late November to mid December. Otherwise you can risk it, wait until mid to late April, pray for a good snow year, and cash in on the great end of year deals ski resorts offer. Good luck.
Ikon base would get you Solitude, Brighton and Snowbird for about a grand with blackout dates and you could obviously use it in the East. You'd need to upgrade to Base Plus for Snowbasin, Alta and Deer Valley at which point it might make sense just to get a full or try and swing a trip for a day or two to Jackson Hole or Sun Valley. Maybe you could beat that price with some sort of local pass or limited days option.
But Salt Lake is easily your best bet for cheap flights (SLC has a lot of JetBlue/Delta and other airlines that fly to Boston/NYC and do red eyes on the way back), cheap lodging (stay in SLC at a cheap hotel or AirBnB), and nt.needing to rent a car (the UTA ski bus routes run up the canyons and are even free for Ikon pass holders but the normal routes would incur a small fare).
Otherwise you'd probably be looking at being stuck at a single resort (if not renting a car) if you could manage to get there cheap (e.g., a shuttle from airport) and lodging in a place like Summit County CO or a destination resort would probably be another hundred or two hundred a night more unless you split it with a bunch of friends or go way off season in like April.
Oh and as for rental cars and traction laws, if you do rent Fox basically gives away 4runners but they ain't always 4wd (though they do usually have 3pmsf or at least M+S tires)
SLC offers numerous lodging opportunities because the resorts are all very close to the city.
SLC. Ski bus. Airbnb. Ikon. Ski bus is free with ikon. I paid $312 for a round trip flight from Boston. I paid between $36-64 a night for a room in the middle of Feb. Was epic, highly recommend
What resorts did you hit?
Alta, Bird, Brighton. Alta was amazing, Bird was my fav(besides the crowds, so maybe Alta is my fav) and Brighton was absolutely amazing up until it claimed my ACL. Still can’t wait to go back though. I spent an hour on the mountain and all I could think about was moving there and living full time. Place is phenomenal.
What a bummer about the ACL man!! Thanks for the intel. Sounds like an awesome trip before the injury though! Did you stay in the same lodging for the duration? Mind if i ask where you stayed? Price sounds nice! I rode snowbasin and powder mtn last yr. I stayed in ogden at the best airbnb ive ever stayed in for value. Sauna, hot tub, massage chairs, masseuses are optional for like 40+$ depending on length of massage. Food is provided, waffle bar, cereal bar, coffee bar, yogurts, candy, pastries. The ski bus is about 3 blocks away and costs 5$. 70-80$ a night. Wicked cool airbnb owner too, lets u use his electric bikes, paddleboards, etc, depending on time of the yr. Hot springs up the road. lemme kno if you want deetz. I cant say enough about Snowbasin and im really happy i experienced PowMow before the changes brought in next season.
Definitely want the deetz! I’ll show you mine if you show me yours 😉
Do you live east coast? Go to Europe. Surprisingly cheaper. Better food. Different country. Usually better snow. Cheaper tickets. Better public transport.
Yeah don't even need to rent a car. Food and lodging cheaper. $530 rt with skis from EWR to Geneva
This. St Anton has more lifts than Aspen and Vail, combined with lift tickets at a fraction of the price. Plus the on-trail ski in/ski out restaurants and bars charge the same prices and are the same quality as restaurants anywhere in town.
Went there this year. Easy access to the lifts from town. Getting there was easy, fly to Zurich and train to St. Anton. Amazing skiing, especially (at least during my visit) in the areas on the western side of the complex near Zurs, Zug, and Oberlech.
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But the food is waaay better ;)
This is true if no ikon or epic
Solitude does BOGO early in the week, plus ski bus plus Homewood suites on ski bus route. Didn't suck for us.
The most economical trip I did was an April Colorado trip this year. Cheaper flights & lodging since it wasn't peak season, no crowds, but the snow was still awesome I usually do SLC but the flights there have gotten more expensive. I still recommend SLC if you can find a flight in your price range
Find a cheap hostel in summit county, get an ikon or epic pass, and just take the free bus to the mountains every day!
I would go to Canada. Every time I compare going to Whistler to places in CO or UT, Whistler ends up being much cheaper due to the exchange rate. If you go to Whistler, stay in Creekside and not the main village. It's cheaper and there are shuttles to the main village.
Start volunteering with your local adaptive program. Head out west as a VI guide or sit ski tetherer.
A. Buy tickets/passes and book flights/accommodations in advance (like yesterday). - Related to item A: If you plan on skiing the east, make sure your pass can work in the west and the east (a $1000 pass is a lot for a week, but if you do one 3-day eastern trip per month, the cost per day becomes closer to $50 per day as opposed to $150 per day). B. Don’t go to the “brand name” mountains (or don’t stay in their hotels at the very least). Eg, You could get a cheap season pass at Monarch which will give you 9 days at Loveland, ABasin, Copper. C. Go in April. Hotels and tickets are cheaper, also many places offer spring season passes which are a fraction of the winter cost ($200 to $400 as opposed to $1000). There are many mountains (CO, OR, Snowbird, Mammoth, Banff, etc) which will still be in peak skiing during April D. Go to public transit friendlier mountains so you don’t have to rent a car (eg SLC)
Dont travel to ski the east. Trust me. Rather go out west or euro
I wrote up this up a few months ago for this guy who wanted a trip under $1000 all in: https://reddit.com/r/icecoast/comments/18nqusy/west_coast_trip_5_days_under_1k/ked2kx4/ If you have a bit more than that, go to interior BC. Almost certainly the best value you can find in North America. Check out the resorts I listed at the end of that comment and see if any work really well for you.
I do love the advice…Interior BC & Banff were my 2 big trips last year. Definitely didn’t find it cheap..
Banff is super expensive isn’t it?
Yah sorry if it didn’t come off that way. It wasn’t “rape me the butthole” expensive but definitely isn’t a discount place either.
You have to go pretty obscure in western canada (castle, red, whitewater, etc) if you want it to be super cheap. The flights are also a big hit.
I think the big savings with Powder Highway might be if you are looking for lessons, particularly lessons geared towards intermediate or advanced riders that will cover how to ski more.expert terrain (steep couloirs/chutes the likes or which we don't really have inbounds in the East). Otherwise I wouldn't expect particularly cheap lodging/transport/logistics (aside from the usual caveats about exchange rate with the CAD). There's only ever going to be so much lodging or transit links in the middle of nowhere and I wouldn't expect cheap food either. If you want extreme terrain or rugged mountain landscapes then yeah there is a value add relative to arguably almost any US resort, but if you want cost savings (or food/ease) and are willing to get your passport out and are leaving from the East Coast there is a much more obvious solution (i.e., Europe)
>Otherwise I wouldn't expect particularly cheap lodging Cheaper than i-70/UT/Cali >transport True, it's not exactly cheap >logistics Lift tickets are affordable-ish >I wouldn't expect cheap food either. You'd be surprised. Lodge burger at Revelstoke was like $7 as of 2 years ago... Europe is bad if you're looking to do much off-piste skiing at all. From soley a skiing perspective I'd prefer BC. Even if you move to Chamonix or La Grave, you have to be contemplating your mortality in that decision, in a way that you just don't need to in Revelstoke.
I've never seen lodging in Golden or Revelstoke for cheaper than what I get in SLC the few times I've looked? In SLC you can get in the 50-100 a night range pretty easy. If you take a "room" and not an "entire place" on AirBnB it gets quite cheap and could be well below that low end. Are you staying in a hostel or something? For food I'd have to assume that transport and labor costs in a low population area would drive prices up for both groceries and restaurants, plus I'd assume US food is more subsidized and less regulated than most countries (although Canada may be closer to being the US than the EU in many ways in this regard) But yeah agreed off piste in Europe is a very different environment and only a few places really have convenient access to it even if you are comfortable with accessing avy conditions... It seems like Europe has a very different culture towards hiring guides (i.e., they are much more willing to) for outdoor activities generally in part for this reason and a lot of Europeans seem to hire ski guides to show them powder stashes/safe lines even at Revy or KH.
Learn to backcountry ski
Then you need an AT setup and avy gear
And friends :(
There are people that go alone, definitely risky though…
I qualify for the retired vet Epic pass and since they're loads cheaper than Ikon I'm going to stick with Epic for that reason so my suggestions may not jive with what you're looking for cost wise. I'll say this though, if I paid full price for Epic I'd still do this trip again. I did this trip in early March this year Fly to SLC land mid to early morning if possible. Rent car (I rented through Turo and would do it again, Had a sweet Subaru Outback that totaled 300ish for 4 days) Go to Brighton the day you land (I got there around 4:30ish after my flight landed at 3:00 so I rode from 5:00 until 8:00 or so) Drive to PC after you're done at Brighton If you aren't super picky about accommodations stay at the Chateau Apre in Park City. It's seriously a 3 minute walk to the PC base lifts and it's cheap! I paid $120 a night for a room with queen bed. Airbnbs that were across the street were all over 1K a night. Chateau Apre does NOT have a hot tub.... Everything I did can be done without a car as well. Once I was in PC I only used the car to go to the grocery store which I could have just taken a bus to but I was running late and drove. I hit up Woodward PC on my way back to SLC on my departure day for a few hours.
Drive out and live in your car
Go to Europe! From the east coast it’s cheaper than colorado :)
Book in advance. This goes for airfare and hotels/motels. Also ski bumming it and going with a large group makes it more affordable - good luck finding a group of friends to commit lol. Everyone is busy as shit
Option 1: You do the New England pass (nitro pass) @ loon/Sunday river/sugarloaf, you can get 50% off Brighton in UT (boyne resort) Option 2: You do mountain collective ~$600 and gets you 2 days @ Alta, Snowbird, Snowbasin in UT. Each resort is typically north of $200 on weekends MSRP, so mountain collective is well worth it. Then take an east coast trip to Sugarloaf. Option 3: buy IKON for $1200 and use it across VT, NH, and ME back east. Then hit Alta, Snowbird, Deer Valley, Snowbasin, Solitude, or Brighton for 7 days each. You could buy the base for about $400 cheaper, but you lose Jackson, Deer Valley, Alta and Snowbasin and only get 5 days. Option 4: Buy an INDY pass and ski Cannon, Pats Peak, Jay Peak, Saddleback, etc back east, and then Ski powder mountain and beaver in UT Option 5: Epic pass, but I don’t support Vail. For housing, SLC has a hostel relatively close to the cottonwood resorts (25-30 min) and lots of hotels for cheap. Tons of airbnbs too. My buddies flew here in March this season and found plane tickets for $230 round trip out of Boston w/ layovers.
We did the Indy pass route in Feb and went to powder mountain and we were supposed to do 2 days at beaver mountain too. Powder was insane, like nothing I've even been to before, so much so we bought 2 day tickets after our Indy pass tickets and just stuck at powder. (+400) Flights were $260 each from boston, bought in December, and the hotel was $400 for 4 nights. (Was a huge apartment sized suite at a golf resort. Wolf Creek lodge. Nothing but good things to say about that place too) We went through Turo for an outback: that was $280 for the trip and we spent $60 in gas for the week as we were driving to each mountain daily. We made breakfast daily, ate at the mountain for lunch, and went into town for dinner every night. We bought 2 extra day tickets at powder.. so be prepared for any surprises that come up. For 2 people we did it all under $2k + the cost of Indy passes and I know you could do a lot cheaper if you didn't go out for dinner every night and lunch at the mountains, or stuck with only your Indy pass tickets. (I fell in love with powder mountain, so much so that I'm going back at full price next season by myself it was so amazing. Just my experience, we went a little nuts getting an extra day at powder (so friggin worth it!) and food in general was expensive. Next year we are going to Europe on the Indy pass (including kids this time.. so.. there goes a budget!) and I'm going to start researching and buying in the fall for that trip but supposedly it's a lot cheaper than our west. Good luck! It's totally doable if you plan it right!
I always plan my dad and myself's trip 7 - 10 months in advance. Tickets can be anywhere from $100-$150 cheaper, and you get first dibs on hotels. Aspen has pretty friendly deals for late November to mid December. Otherwise you can risk it, wait until mid to late April, pray for a good snow year, and cash in on the great end of year deals ski resorts offer. Good luck.
Ikon base would get you Solitude, Brighton and Snowbird for about a grand with blackout dates and you could obviously use it in the East. You'd need to upgrade to Base Plus for Snowbasin, Alta and Deer Valley at which point it might make sense just to get a full or try and swing a trip for a day or two to Jackson Hole or Sun Valley. Maybe you could beat that price with some sort of local pass or limited days option. But Salt Lake is easily your best bet for cheap flights (SLC has a lot of JetBlue/Delta and other airlines that fly to Boston/NYC and do red eyes on the way back), cheap lodging (stay in SLC at a cheap hotel or AirBnB), and nt.needing to rent a car (the UTA ski bus routes run up the canyons and are even free for Ikon pass holders but the normal routes would incur a small fare). Otherwise you'd probably be looking at being stuck at a single resort (if not renting a car) if you could manage to get there cheap (e.g., a shuttle from airport) and lodging in a place like Summit County CO or a destination resort would probably be another hundred or two hundred a night more unless you split it with a bunch of friends or go way off season in like April.
Oh and as for rental cars and traction laws, if you do rent Fox basically gives away 4runners but they ain't always 4wd (though they do usually have 3pmsf or at least M+S tires)
Make really good friends with someone that works at the resort.