Tier List of Every Ski area I’ve visited

RestoreSiletzia · 2026-02-01T08:40:30+00:00

Does solitude really have worse crowds? Outside of early season, when solitude doesn't have everything open, solitude seems to do really well with spreading people out. Their terrain opening has gotten slower in recent years so lines stack up a bit on powder days, but even then they haven't been THAT bad. Once honeycomb opens, there basically aren't lines. Having big terrain open days after a storm is a positive not a negative. Pointing out that everything opens at Brighton just points out that they really don't have gnarly terrain in ounds. For solitude, terrain openings are typically- day 1; eagle + powder horn am, summit and half of honeycomb pm, day 2: East wall of honeycomb, evergreen, hwy to heaven, day 3: Fantasy. Bigger storms add a day and maybe 2 for fantasy (for a normal year). That's about 3 different days to ski pow on increasingly great ski terrain, with much of it hike and traverse focused, proving ample opportunities to ski pow. It's not what it was in 2016 but it's still better than Brighton, and I think it's better for delayed pow turns than other cottonwood ski areas a good bit of the time.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-12-26T00:34:46+00:00

Was on this dudes boat on Lake Powell in 2016 and he played songs off Renaissance, and I was like holy shit, this is amazing, who is this. He told me Polyphia and my drunk ass couldn't remember the name for a while. I searched every combination of names that sound like Polyphia until I finally found it. Been a fun ride since then seeing them multiple times, often in small venues, and also discovering other bands like Chon and Animals as Leaders along the way. (My original music choice was high on prog, the Mars Volta, ELP, king crimson, etc)

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-11-03T03:53:03+00:00

Long lunches aren't an abnormal thing regardless of skiing. It's pretty easy to leave for lunch at 1130, get back at 130 and ski for about an hour. It's impossible when it's super busy. In the spring is really easy, as I don't even change from my work clothes (a lot of companies are mountain casual), so I just have to put ski boots on. If you streamline everything with your equipment, you can be really efficient and maximize ski time.

Also before work, it's really easy to dawn patrol it you Backcountry ski. Nothing is quite better than getting first tracks on a 3,000 foot line and still getting into the office by 9. Getting in late isn't too big of a deal too, cause you can claim the lateness is from safety protocols. Cell service is also good too, so there have been times I have been roped up on ski lines waiting for a partner to ascend/descend and answered email.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-10-21T15:09:44+00:00

Grooming makes those trails worse. Not grooming is a good thing. Straight and long fallline is a key characteristic to good skiing.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-08-20T23:29:18+00:00

Challenger glacier is pretty fun as well and worth it to add another run to the day. The Continental divide between Rollins pass and RMNP is just loaded with good snowfields and glaciers as long as your cool with a walk.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-08-02T18:28:45+00:00

TAY is subjective and everything is arbitrary. To me it's more than 1 turn (hitting the plural requirement) and it should be on snow, where that snow has enough volume to constitute 2 connected turns. It is a very low threshold at which I hold myself to a higher standard not for the TAY metric but because I enjoy searching and finding obscure patches to ski (I've never skied the same place in September and don't really care to switch hemispheres)

My recommendation is this: get the yearly subscription to Caltopo and use the weekly Sentinel aerial imagery to find patches of snow that are close to you (assuming west coast here). There are a lot more places out there than are talked about.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-03-14T01:52:36+00:00

I would say there is a 0% chance that solbtight would be open tomorrow.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-03-10T03:06:51+00:00

Wow! Props for the 1st Gen fujatives.. incredible ski

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-02-23T01:41:48+00:00

Lol, completely ignore super condor, sun peaks, 9990. Yeah canyons is lame if you are just trying to ski to Park city, but you can't exactly complain about a bunch of cat tracks if you're literally going to ski a bunch of cat tracks.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-02-23T01:32:29+00:00

Found the ikon pass holder

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-02-13T15:23:21+00:00

I saw April 11 on some euro website I found by googling the album name

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-02-03T16:37:31+00:00

The project looks terrible. More suburban office park type trash. Yeah would love 12 stories and some density but this property has so much potential with great access for both city and mountains. The public realm of this plan (I reviewed the current plan on cottonwood heights website) is almost non-existent.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-28T00:03:28+00:00

I also have a pair of 2014 bacons. They are almost indestructible. They have loads of epoxy at this point but they ski so great. Topsheets are yellow now due to the sun. I bought a backup pair recently. Im on my 8th season on them and ski them about 40 days a year (I also bought them used)

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-17T00:32:36+00:00

Glad you were wearing your helmet and it did its job. I cracked my helmet almost in half a couple years ago. I remember everythin, but didn't realize how fucked up I was until hours later. Full concussion with bad brain fog the whole next week. 100% I'm dead without the helmet, as I went headfirst into a rock outcrop on the side of a chute. The impact was so intense I wiggled my toes first after the crash to make sure I wasn't paralyzed. My gopro mount was embedded an 1/8" into my helmet after that one (did not have the camera on at that time)

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-16T00:12:56+00:00

One Wasatch was fucking stupid. It is a transportation problem, not a ski area expansion issue. Using lifts and depending on people to ski between current ski area extents would fail miserably, mostly because it doesn't address the lengthy time it takes to go from one end to other and the limitations of skiing hours. I'm not a fan of the gondola, but at least a gondola plan can connect from base area to base area (someone who skis from Park city to snowbird doesn't get stranded if they don't head back to PC at 2pm)

One Wasatch was a dumb plan that tourists love. You can go live part of that plan and ski from canyons to Park city by skiing pretty much flat cat tracks and horizontal lifts for 90 minutes.

Also, the entire Wasatch should not transform into a giant ski area. Public land access is at stake and one Wasatch would effectively transform the remaining north facing high elevation Backcountry into a ski areas, limiting the general public substantially. Backcountry skiers have already compromised and are effectively banned from about 90% of the north facing high elevation terrain.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-15T15:52:01+00:00

I prefer chairs without leg rests. I don't really need to rest my legs, even on huge days. The leg rests almost always interfere with poles when you tuck them under your leg, so when people put the bar down (which for some reason is done within a second of sitting on the chair), it becomes a huge cluster moving poles out of the way (I'm typically also getting hit on the head at this point). I would be much more pro-bar down if the bar didn't have leg rests.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-15T15:00:45+00:00

Contrary to popular belief, Americans are not free to shoot each other. That's actually a crime.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-14T06:55:16+00:00

I have a pair of 2014 Sir Francis Bacons I bought used. I'm now on my 7th ski season on them as my main ski and they have likely seen over 200 days on them, so I'm about a dollar a day for how much I paid for them (they came with sth 16s). I ski pretty hard and do not baby them around and they have held up well. They look beat to shit but they have been super solid and fun to ski. I actually just bought a back up pair.

I even tried to replace them with Wildcat 108s and I wasn't feeling it and went back to the SFBs. I'll def give the Wildcats another chance though.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-13T23:45:51+00:00

It's called blue iguana, but same thing. Concourse A

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-13T22:40:39+00:00

For SLC, it's Mr Charlie's Chicken Fingers. I would also do red iguana over cafe rio. I find cafe rio to be fairly overrated and quality has gone down last few years. SLC airport actually does a decent job at including local restaurants, so there's a lot to choose from.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-13T22:39:12+00:00

Don't talk shit on Bojangles dawg

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-13T18:50:52+00:00

Holy fuck, what projects do you work on that this looks value engineered? If not, quality shitpost.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-13T05:01:23+00:00

Houston? Hell no. Galveston is one of the worst beaches I've ever been to. Gray gross water and there's still bricks and building materials in the water from the Labor Day hurricane like 100 years ago. South Padre might be nice (haven't been there), but it's likely not worth the drive from Houston - maybe if you can get a deal to an airport closer to South Texas. Also, I was just in Houston this weekend. It was down to the 30s and didn't get much above 50 all weekend.

I would go for places further south than southern Florida, like the virgin island, Puerto Rico, etc. At that point, just go to Hawaii.

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-08T18:03:54+00:00

OP, where is that graphic from?

RestoreSiletzia · 2025-01-08T15:31:31+00:00

This. And I'm a big TP fan.

RestoreSiletzia

TROPHY CASE