Featured Share your lift line wait time experiences

I remember 30+ minutes at Stevens on Saturday back in the 60's.
Nowdays at Sun Valley, we whine if it's five minutes or more. And that's for a HSQ that gets you up to 3140' vertical in 10 minutes.

 

Yesterday at GT. Upper and lower parking lots before 9am. Parking on upper road lot. Bunch of new over night and Teton pass was closed so GT got the folks heading there. Blackfoot lift- maybe a minute early. Mid morning ski on. Mid morning conversation with liftie after skiing right up to Dream catcher lift-"why all these people standing around? Don't know may be they just wanna watch." The only line was at the Shshone lift- Green area ski schools. This is pretty typical of Targhee most weekdays. Have noticed a somewhat larger crowds the last week or so. Vacation time?

 

I remember waiting 40 minutes at the base of Waterville Valley in NH as a kid when there was just a slow double. Now with a pair of detachable quads from the base even on a busy day the wait is never more than 10 minutes.

On Sunday morning at the Canyons the gondola and orange bubble chair were on wind hold and the lines were huge for the gondy waiting for it to open. We grabbed an Uber over to PC and there were no lines at the base (the line for the bus was a different story) and never waited more than a couple of minutes on the mountain.

 

I was at GT Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.....the only wait (few min.) we had was the first couple chair rides from about 9-10......rest of the day was ski up.....on DC, Blackfoot and Sac.

Had a really great trip.....fresh snow, hero terrain, lots of fun. Being shown around by friends who work and patrol there definitely is a perk.

 

How was the snow over on Sac? Haven't been on that side in a couple of weeks.

 

We only went over to Sac on Tuesday afternoon...for a little better visibility.....it was just as good as everywhere else we had been over the past 2 days... it was worth a trip over to ski ShadowMan/ShadowBaby trees, plus we finished with a couple runs in the Das Boot area which was fun.

 

GT is a great place- one of the primary reasons I moved to this area a few years back. Glad you had a good time- Don't tell anyone.

 

Spot on! I went skiing at Greek Peak last Thursday, when the temperature was around zero, and there were maybe only 10 people on the mountain. I had a blast! And, being from Russia, "single digits" is actually pretty warm. For us, "cold" starts at -10, anything above that is just normal winter weather.

 

This week at Taos: powder morning...chair 1...about 15 in line at 10-15 min before opening. Unbelievable.

I choose not to remember any long lines.

 

What is more important to me is how many runs you get with turns being made in untracked powder patches.

At Whistler on a typical powder morning you first have to line up and wait for a lift to open 30-60 minutes or longer while Patrol do avi work, then depending where you are in the line it could be another long wait while shuffling through the line. You then get 2 powder runs and then it is skiing cut up snow for the rest of the day. Locals might do better but it will likely involve hiking.

A couple weeks ago at Snowbird it was also 2 runs of untracked pow followed by cut up snow conditions, however both the piled up snow and scraped off patches were soft and skied beautifully all day.

Earlier this week I skied untracked powder turns all day long at Buttermilk on wide easy black diamond runs and no moguls because there are not enough skiers on black runs at Buttermilk to create them.

A few seasons ago I did the same at Snowmass only the untracked only lasted until noon, 3 days in a row after 3 nightly snowfalls in a row, Fri.-Sun. after a lengthy dry spell.

I have skied ankle deep to boot top pow at Big Sky and been the only one on some of the runs. And encountered 6-12 skier lineups at the 6pack lift.

Both Big Sky and Aspen are the least crowded of the major US resorts and this positively addresses both lift lines, on slope crowds, and the number of powder turns per day.

 

Sat Feb 9th at Canyons side of Park City. Wait of over 45 mins for Orange Bubble and Red Pine. An instructor I was on the chair with remarked that this is just as bad as holiday crowds.. PCMR and SLC are so convenient, things are getting super crowded here.

 

Well the longest 45 min+ wait, Vail Back Bowls, Chair 5 on a Bluebird day back in 75'76, also the most fun I've had in line. Anyone remember the jugs of Wine?

 

@Bobby Jeremy, so true at Beech! On MLK weekends (The w/e I was always there), the quad might get close to an hour wait at its worst in the 1990s & early 2000s, for the 2-5 minute plunge down White Lightning to go get back in line. Wintergreen, VA also had its share of longish lift lines, but closer to 20-30 minutes I think. It’s amazing what we can tolerate to slide on snow. Looking back on it, this is also why it was so easy to “ski” bell to bell at Beech, as most of it was spent standing around.

 

I'm kinda scared what a cluster this weekend is going to be on the front range. Big storm well advertised for days on the news, President's Day, and a Denver Schools teacher's strike have the makings for a cluster. At least we have I-70 as a limiter, as long as I can make it up before everybody else.

 

My old home mountain was Snowshoe WV. Fun place with good snow for the mid-Atlantic but the lift lines on weekends and holidays can exceed 60-90 minutes in prime areas. 15-30 in the lass prime lifts. This has been the case from the 80’s through today. Not only are the lift lines long but the slopes get quite dangerous with inexperienced skiers and snowboarders. It’s a fun mountain but gets very oversold. I think limiting ticket sales there would be a big boon for everyone.

 

I had to wait 5 minutes once this year at DV, it was the day or two prior to Christmas and all the tourists were in town. Drove me NUTS!!!

 

Vail (new years week): less than 5 minutes at every lift. I ski Vail a lot and know how to avoid the choke points
Beaver creek (new years week): most less than 5 minutes. A few 10 minute waits at key lifts mid morning.
Gore (on Monday with a chance of rain but it didn't rain): Ski on, with maybe 30% of chairs occupied per lift.
Heavenly (a Monday but 24 hours after 40" snowfall): 5 minute wait on most lifts, a few 10 minute waits.
Mt Rose (a Tuesday with strong winds): ski on, maybe 50% of chairs occupied.

I noted the conditions and day of week as that has a big impact on lift lines. Local knowledge is very helpful too. The longest line I recall was actually at Whitefish, a ski area I that I suspect rarely has lines but my timing was bad (president's weekend) and I failed to anticipate skier traffic flow to a certain lift. The result was a 30 minute wait for a lift that was the only way out. I rarely get in lines over 10 minutes and when I do it's usually against my better judgment for things like meeting someone at a busy spot at 10am.

If there was no line I noted how what percent of the chairs have people on them. There is a huge difference between ski on with 100% of chairs occupied and ski on with 10% of chairs occupied. The lowest skier density days in recent memory were Sun Peaks on an April Monday with all lifts running and maybe 50 cars in the parking lot. It was ski on with less than 10% of chairs occupied. I had a similar experience at Panorama on a weekday. Ski areas outside of the major CO, UT, CA and the east areas generally have small lines

 

I haven't skied Sunday of Presidents Weekend except once in the last ten years. That day wasn't actually bad. I got there early and snuck right over to the Flower Point lift which was new that season and had one easily-missed exit to get to (there's now two and it's one of the more popular sections of the mountain). I managed to rack up 22,000 feet before leaving when I ran into a line. I've looked at the web cam today a few times and the lines and crowds look acceptable.

But definitely, it's not the backwater that people think, we've got those Canadians (not as many I'm guessing the year you were here due to the sharp change in the exchange rate in the intervening years) that just hop in their cars and drive down.

 

@Nathanvg

Today. At 12:09 PM. The Ant Hill. Yes, it's President's Day. But add some -3°F weather, and they all go inside. Every lift except Chair One was ski right on. Chair One had about a 2-3 minute line. I hear yesterday there were 4700 skiers. According to my source, about 1/3 were inside the Summit house, 1/3 were in the base lodge, and the last third were mostly on the back at Chair 7 where it was protected from the wind. The front was empty. Wind chills were -30 or so. Today was almost balmy due to low winds.

 

I'm going to focus just on recent trips:

Best--almost any lift at Big Sky after opening. (Often there is a base-area jam as people are trying to get on the mountain.)

Worst: Big Sky tram with any new snow. This can be 30-40 minutes.