Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply! That must have taken you a lot of time and I really appreciate that. I noticed the errors on the slide with the Mountain Collective + Snowbasin when I was presenting to Briana the other night haha! -Sorry about that.
Current Leaning: After going over it all with Briana we both ended up leaning towards the full Ikon Pass. I was surprised. No blackout restrictions, 21 days at all the great UT resorts beyond Solitude, Jackson Hole access, and not outrageous $$ led us to that persuasion. Runner-up is a full Brighton pass, third is a Powder Mountain pass, and Alta is still somehow on our minds at 4th. I get what you mean with expert terrain in view of the chairlifts. It's definitely been a struggle for me to meet other skier buddies to ski with so that I can be safer when skiing certain terrain. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough
I fully agree with you that we're tough skiers to make recommendations for! The thing that we most agreed on was that we don't want to go back to Snowbasin for exactly the reasons that you mentioned. I'm doing fine there and like it but Bri recognized that she's having a really hard time comfortably pushing herself with the intermediate terrain issues and she actually thought that the super cushy lodges might make it too easy for her to hide out in when she gets discouraged haha! Additionally, we really meshed with the idea of exploring what Utah has to offer, even if we're not at the perfect resort for our situation every day that we ski. I just don't know if we could spend the 1400 for a powder mountain + ikon base pass. That's a lot of money for us. Additionally, mountain collective is kind of a no go for us anymore because we want to see the Utah resorts and we'd only get 5 additional days in LCC and maybe one extra out of state trip.
Regarding the
travel: We think that we would be a lot more likely to ski a "full day" on Saturdays if we travelled to the UT ikon resorts and then rest/ allocate time to do other things on Sundays instead of usually skiing half days Sat and Sun at Snowbasin. The bus ride up and down the canyon doesn't sound like a lot of fun, I wish it wasn't that way (especially with all paid parking at Solitude now).
The only thing that I'm hesitating on with the full Ikon is that the only unlimited UT access is Solitude. Two issues: When I go skiing without Bri, it could only be at Solitude if we want to stay on the same "days left" schedule. Additionally, I think that we're really going to love skiing at Brighton and we'll be sad when those 7 days are up.
Ultimately, we'll have to make a decision, make the best of it, and adjust when '21-'22 rolls around. It is kind of fun to optimize this and dream a little bit though. I sure appreciate the feedback.