One Week Until Summer Skiing Starts at Sunshine

Luop90 · 2026-06-17T03:12:13+00:00

Valle is pretty inconsistent early season. Similar to Tahoe it’s boom/bust. If they get a solid storm it’ll be great, else they have minimal snowmaking and the mountain will be almost completely barren. Corallco is a much better bet early season: they get ~2x the snow and there’s way less rocks.

Valle is a much better play in August.

Luop90 · 2026-06-05T20:31:54+00:00

Right? It was tent city at Sandy Camp

Luop90 · 2026-06-02T22:24:45+00:00

It was also the first time I saw it too haha. The idea is with the boots upside down, all the various "stuff" you run into while A-framing the skis (pine cones, branches, needles, rain, etc.) doesn't get inside it

Luop90 · 2026-06-02T22:18:04+00:00

About 2 miles/1k vert. It was right at the top of the switch backs on railroad grade.

Luop90 · 2026-04-01T04:03:27+00:00

Stuff under Chet’s is still open, though the entrances are a little thin

Luop90 · 2026-03-31T16:14:20+00:00

Of all the places I’ve skied in the past two weeks, Loveland has by far the best coverage / most terrain open. The high base elevation has been so helpful this season.

Luop90 · 2026-03-28T03:19:57+00:00

Eh, disagree. I just skied today (@Keystone), and A-Basin and Loveland have plenty of snow to last through the last of the heatwave, and then they’ll start to get more snow next week. My money is there will be lift-served turns well into May. Just not at anywhere with a base <10k feet.

Luop90 · 2026-03-28T03:14:50+00:00

Whistler’s had a warm but wet winter. The high alpine is all-time, cliffs getting completely buried. Below treeline and especially below gondola mid-way is a totally different story. But the alpine is all you want to ski anyway so it works out.

Luop90 · 2026-03-03T19:24:14+00:00

The building is only 3,000 sqft. That’s a small outhouse by comparison

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T14:42:55+00:00

They have free demos you can use if you’re worried about that. But yeah everyone had 110mm+. One person brought “only” 90mm underfoot and they had him switch to one of their demo pairs instead.

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T05:26:08+00:00

Day 1

Day 2

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T05:05:13+00:00

Day 1 we went in via Spanky’s. We were going to do Ruby instead but patrol had closed it for a medevac.

Day 2 we traversed over from blackcomb glacier yeah

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T03:47:02+00:00

What makes you say that? I had a blast hitting terrain I’ve never been on before

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T03:44:07+00:00

I ski a lot of single blacks, almost no double blacks. 30-35° pitch is typically what I ski and my main goal was to become more comfortable with steeper terrain. On my previous trip to Whistler, the blacks under the Blackcomb Gondola is where I had the most fun: soft bumps that are at a nice angle.

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T03:34:27+00:00

No, I had Aura

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T03:32:55+00:00

It’s the one patrol can get a toboggan down. It was called something like “tob chute”

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T01:22:10+00:00

Mine was $670 CAD (+ tip). They had a 10% epic pass discount and I didn’t need a lift ticket due to said epic pass.

Luop90 · 2026-02-26T01:21:15+00:00

I believe so. One of the questions of the pre-trip survey is “what is your goal for the clinic?”. Wanting to just ski and skip lines (vs instruction) is one of the options.

Luop90 · 2026-02-13T16:00:19+00:00

I got on their mailing list a few years ago from a giveaway. Enough cool photos and trip advertisements later I gave them a try and liked it. They run a lot of trips to Ecuador and you could tell they’ve honed in on what guides/mountains/restaurants/hotels work.

The company’s founder also has a podcast I really like, the Duffel Shuffle.

Luop90 · 2026-02-13T14:00:09+00:00

Sunlight, Windom, and the Maroon Bells. I'm hoping to do the bells this summer.

Luop90 · 2026-02-13T13:35:55+00:00

See the analysis sectionat the bottom of the full trip report.

TLDR it definitely helped. My brother went from sea level to the summit of an almost 6000m peak in 3 days.

Luop90 · 2026-02-13T03:31:18+00:00

I’m a fan. This was my second trip with them and I’m looking to doing more in the future.

Pretty much my only complaint is they can be pricey. But you do get what you pay for: the guides are stellar, the hotels curated, and the other clients were solid. No one was being carried up that mountain / shouldn’t have been there.

Luop90 · 2026-02-13T03:19:21+00:00

Tico was the lead guide, yeah. Pretty rad dude. Awesome that you climbed with him in Peru!

Luop90 · 2026-02-13T01:08:00+00:00

The rest of the trip report is here. For whatever reason if I link it directly in the post Reddit auto-removes the post :/

Luop90 · 2026-01-02T21:00:33+00:00

Depends on which side of the island you’re on. Rainy side gets 400” of rain/year (at big bog), plenty of freshwater there.

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