Head West

Head West My Friends
Ski this weekend! Two ski areas in Colorado are officially open for the season—Arapahoe Basin http://www.arapahoebasin.com and Loveland Ski Area http://www.skiloveland.com, which is a little less than two hours west of Denver. Arapahoe was the first to open last Wednesday and Loveland opened on Tuesday. The Colorado Rockies have been getting snow all week. Many of the other Denver area mountains also have snow, but are prohibited from opening until November by National Park regulations.

It’s early season at most mountains out West until Dec. 14, so lift tickets at Loveland are $42/day and $45/day at Arapahoe. And here’s a great deal: two people can ski and stay at Loveland for just $50/person/day, at the Georgetown Mountain Inn. JetBlue charges $438 to get out there, which is pretty steep for a weekend, but maybe you’ve got some frequent flyer miles you want to get rid of.

Killington $79/day
This is shaping up to be a bizarre year for New England ski areas, especially with the American Ski Company selling all its New England properties except Sunday River and Sugarloaf/USA. You’d think that more competition would drive down the price of lift tickets. But hold onto your ski helmets folks--Killington lift tickets will be $79/day this year for Saturdays and Holidays. Ouch.

For those of you who like to ski mountains other than Killington or Sunday River, they actual conditions may improve this year. When American Ski Company owned a bunch of mountains they were plowing their snowmaking resources primarily into those two hills. If you liked to ski at Attitash, for instance, you’d find very little snowmaking there. Now that the mountains are independent again, mountains other than KillingRiver will have incentive to make their own snow again.

Winning Strategies
So what’s a poor ski bum to do? Either go short, or go long. You can do what Paul Sweeny, co-owner of Jackson’s Ski Outlet (http://www.jacksonsskioutlet.com/) in Easton, MA does and wait until the last minute and then go where the last-minute deals and the snow falls. (SkiMail is perfect for this strategy with weekly updates on Thursdays) Paul likes to fly out to Salt Lake City in early December when the deals are still good and the snow plentiful. Or you can plan way ahead. We expect the Boston Ski Expo (Nov. 15-18) may have some excellent packages this year, considering the mountains are starving for cash.

Tell Your Friends
Please tell your skiing/boarding friends to send me an email to sign up for this weekly newsletter. I promise to keep email addresses top secret and to only send one email per week during the ski season. The more readers I’ve got the better deals I can get you and the better the field intelligence I can collect. AND ITS FREE.

See you again next week.