Park City Owners - Help!

I am currently considering a purchase at either Mountainside or Summit Watch. Silver season appeals to me, but I was wondering how often do you get to ski at Thanksgiving or Easter. Silver season always includes Thanksgiving, but only on occasion Easter. The price is right, and really works better for school schedules than premium season, we have a beach condo so we spend two weeks in the summer there, so gold season is not an option. How hard would it be to trade silver season for other Marriott timeshare? Would like to hear from owners?
Thank you!

Skiing at Thanksgiving is not very realistic in Park City. The resorts are open but snow cover is pretty spotty much before Christmas. Even when they say the skiing is good it isn't. They may have a run or two open with man-made snow.

You could stay at PC and drive to the Cottonwood Canyons every day. The drive is about an hour.

Easter doesn't work either. The Platinum season runs through the end of ski season. The resorts close even if the snow is good in April, as the tourists stop coming and the only skiers are season pass holders.

There's a reason Silver weeks are so cheap.

The ski resorts close at the time every year (early to mid-April) regardless of the snow cover. I am confident that Marriott calibrated the silver season in Park City such that it never includes spring ski days (except possibly the last weekend some years).

OTOH, the resorts open as soon as there is snow. Alta tries to open about November 10 (+/-), so I would assume Park City would do the same. That means you have some chance of skiing Thanksgiving or before. But you would need to reserve and make your travel plans without knowing whether there will be skiing until the last minute. And if there is not, it would be too late to do an exchange.

If you want to ski in Park City dont buy silver season, you will likely be disappointed far more often than not (even taking trading into account, other than flextime trades on short notice).

I'm an avid skier and have skied all over the West from early season to late Spring. I would never count on Thanksgiving skiing at the Park City ski resorts. It is unusual to get more than New England snowmaking and limited terrain open in PC that early in the season. The Little Cottonwood ski areas, Alta & Snowbird, do have good track records for November skiing. PC is situated on the leeward side of the Wasach Mts. and need a different wind direction that starts in Dec. for the great snow I've skied there around Christmas. It is a long trip to go from PC to Alta every day.

My home resort, Timber Lodge is even more of a casino crap shoot for snow in early season due to the low elevation of Lake Tahoe compared to UT or CO. We go there for Feb. or March ski trips. I love the tree skiing there, lake views, and the casinos. A unique combination in ski country.

If you want the most dependable November ski conditions I would certainly advise that you own in Vail or Breckenridge. Take a look at the Silver season there for mid-Nov. and late April. The 8,000 ft base elevations and cold temps. there usually provide at least 40% of all trials open in the early season. Occasionally Vail has some of the infamous Back Bowls open for Thanksgiving. Vail is a great ski town too.

Ski tip: only ski for a half-day on the first day of the trip. You'll be more rested and ready for the rest of the trip.

Eric

Eric F said:

I'm an avid skier and have skied all over the West from early season to late Spring. I would never count on Thanksgiving skiing at the Park City ski resorts. It is unusual to get more than New England snowmaking and limited terrain open in PC that early in the season. The Little Cottonwood ski areas, Alta & Snowbird, do have good track records for November skiing. PC is situated on the leeward side of the Wasach Mts. and need a different wind direction that starts in Dec. for the great snow I've skied there around Christmas. It is a long trip to go from PC to Alta every day.

My home resort, Timber Lodge is even more of a casino crap shoot for snow in early season due to the low elevation of Lake Tahoe compared to UT or CO. We go there for Feb. or March ski trips. I love the tree skiing there, lake views, and the casinos. A unique combination in ski country.

If you want the most dependable November ski conditions I would certainly advise that you own in Vail or Breckenridge. Take a look at the Silver season there for mid-Nov. and late April. The 8,000 ft base elevations and cold temps. there usually provide at least 40% of all trials open in the early season. Occasionally Vail has some of the infamous Back Bowls open for Thanksgiving. Vail is a great ski town too.

Ski tip: only ski for a half-day on the first day of the trip. You'll be more rested and ready for the rest of the trip.

Eric

Click to expand...

After talking with DH, he confers with Eric on Vail/Breck being pretty dependable for Thanksgiving skiing(used to go with the guys back in the "good old days"). Maybe look at Beaver Creek/Avon CO.

Saw a news piece last Thanksgiving about how people travel instead of staying home cooking turkey. Showed a family in Vail and they were skiing and the snow looked pretty good on tv.

Thanks Twinkstarr for confirming my advice.

I wanted to add a few things to help our Travelmom64 friend and other skiing TUG members. If you go online to the major ski area websites (Vail, Breckenridge, Heavenly, Park City Mt. Resort) you can look at the "Winter" sections for archived photos by date and archived daily snow reports. If you call, the resorts will happy to tell you their past opening and closing dates.

You may also go online to a great skiers website called http://epicski.com . Epicski has free forums and links for just about any ski related question.

I went back to check on a few "Trip Reports" from the Breckenridge/Keystone/Arapahoe Basin (30 min. away) area from late November 2007.

Copper Mt. 11/13/07: http://forums.epicski.com/showthread.php?t=61717

Keystone/Breck 11/21/07: http://forums.epicski.com/showthread.php?t=62252

Heavenly Valley 11/24/07 Opening Day: http://forums.epicski.com/showthread.php?t=62280

Breck/Keystone 11/30/07: http://forums.epicski.com/showthread.php?t=62652

The early season of the 2006-2007 ski season was great in Colorado. I found this report from Vail 12/08/2006 that reminded me that most of Vail was open for Thanksgiving 2006 and the Back Bowls were open on 12/08/06! It was great that year! Remember that Vail is the largest ski area in the USA. http://forums.epicski.com/showthread.php?t=48647

I also wanted to tell you about my trip to Breckenridge at the end of April this year. I used a $500 Getaway to the Grand Timber Lodge in Breck for a 2BR. The lifts were closed at Breckenridge. We drove 30 minutes every day to ski on top of the Continental Divide at Arapahoe Basin and Loveland Basin for awesome high altitude Spring skiing. Check out this epic TR from Mother's Day 2008: http://forums.epicski.com/showthread.php?t=70030

Arapahoe Basin will be open for skiing until June 8, 2008! http://www.arapahoebasin.com/?page=site/text&nav_id=ca9ff294050f354a469e8e4c0d4cf440

As many TUGGERS know with their planning and flexibilty to think outside the T/S box, "where there's a will, there's a way".

Eric

Twinkstarr said:

Saw a news piece last Thanksgiving about how people travel instead of staying home cooking turkey. Showed a family in Vail and they were skiing and the snow looked pretty good on tv.

Click to expand...

The snow always looks good on TV.

They show you one of the three runs with a bit of coverage from man-made snow. They don't show you the rocks.

alchook said:

The snow always looks good on TV.

They show you one of the three runs with a bit of coverage from man-made snow. They don't show you the rocks.

Click to expand...

3 runs with man made snow are better than none!

Twinkstarr said:

3 runs with man made snow are better than none!

Click to expand...

But still not worth the air fare.

alchook said:

But still not worth the air fare.

Click to expand...

Yep that's the chance you take with week 47, the OP is looking for snow during non-plat time. I think Vail/Breck is a bet bet than Park City but she's looking for Marriott and let's face it their Vail/Breck resorts aren't as nice as some others in the area and definately not as nice as Summitwatch and Mountainside in Park City.

Eric,
Wow, thanks for all the great information. Thanks to everyone! Silver season for Utah does not look very promising. Those photos were nice, but lots of uncovered terrain, I can get that here on the East Coast at Snowshoe, WV! And like Alchook mentioned, certainly not worth the airfare for such a gamble. We do like to plan ahead. I guess it's back to a beach option!

Travelmom64 said:

Eric,
Wow, thanks for all the great information. Thanks to everyone! Silver season for Utah does not look very promising. Those photos were nice, but lots of uncovered terrain, I can get that here on the East Coast at Snowshoe, WV! And like Alchook mentioned, certainly not worth the airfare for such a gamble. We do like to plan ahead. I guess it's back to a beach option!

Click to expand...

For that time of year the beach might be a better option(but I know I froze my bum off in Orlando Thanksgiving 2006(which according to past weather history was a fluke), much better luck in 2007.

The first week of Silver Season at Summit Watch- will usually include the final weekend of skiing at the Park City resorts then would have to drive over to the Cottonwood resorts.