Let us know how that goes.
Hit them all... they're likely to be in similar shape along with Blue Sky Basin which opened this past week. Trees in some of the bowls can hold decent snow when everything is tracked out (the trees will be too, but maybe not so tracked out).
As far as lift lines... use the app or the sign boards at the top of the lifts which will give real-time wait times at all the lifts. If you're willing to go where lift lines are smaller, you can avoid a lot of lines. But you might not get where you want to go.
4 (Mountain Top Express) and 11 (Northwoods) tend to be the worst lines in general, though 2 (Avanti) and 7 (Game Creek) can be bad. And if there's new snow, the back bowl lifts can get bad too depending on which are running.
Seeing as how the last significant snow at Vail was Dec 24-25 and is only forecast to get maybe 1" on Jan 3, there's not likely any powder to be found while you're there. There'll definitely be chopped up ungroomed snow in most of the back bowls, so an all mountain ski would be best choice.
As for which bowls? Since you'll be there multiple days, why not try all of them that are open? That way, you decide which you want to repeat. I think that all the bowls will be open with only some black and double black runs closed due to rock exposure.
As for Breckenridge, a good amount of their upper terrain is likely closed due to lack of base snow. Takes a lot of snow to cover the rocks up top and they haven't had as much snowfall as Vail has.
Happy to report, mission accomplished! On Friday the Vail back bowls got at least 8 inches in 24 hrs. My friends and I scoped out the backside most of the morning and settled on Sun Down Bowl and almost had white out conditions! Plenty of powder buildup in the trees - and best of all, no lines at all! We lapped Sun Down for the day and had an absolute blast.
@dbostedo You were right, Mountain Top Express had the longest lines, but it seems like most of the Vail crowd are scared to venture into "Variable Conditions". Once we scooted over to the back of the mountain we hardly saw anyone the rest of the day.
We mostly stuck to Game Creek the day before. Earlier in the week hadn't had much snowfall, and those were the best conditions we found, especially around the trees.
Breckenridge was absolutely horrible at the beginning of the week. Felt like a bad New England ice day, and the demo skis I got certainly didn't have a sharp edge. The whole afternoon was a sh*t show of people sliding out left and right. One trail had 6 people sliding down on their asses all at once haha. We skied Breck on Sunday with much more success. Once the T-Bar opened there was plenty of first tracks to be had up in the bowl.
Sun Down Bowl - we were smiling ear to ear!
A quick snap from the 'glades' at Vail - I wish I got some pics from places that weren't tracked yet.
Top of the T-Bar at Breckenridge on Sunday afternoon - this was after a few runs already, it was even more pristine in the morning.
I'm willing to bet even the least popular bowl has the current NE conditions beat.
