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Add Sun Valley to the list of lift-served parks to hit up next summer!

kidwoo

Artisanal Tweet Curator
true, but if you add up all the vert from those parks, it's probably less than Sun Valley.
I wouldn't be so sure actually. A lot of mountains don't use the entire top to bottom elevation they have. Whiteface dwarfs most of the parks west of there in terms of used vert for trails. Whistler's a little different but whistler's a little different in most ways. But a good 500-1k used well is plenty of room for vroomin'

Either way, stoked to see another ski area on board. I just hope they get over that groomed sidewalk shlt with switchbacks right quick.
 

gemini2k

Turbo Monkey
Jul 31, 2005
3,526
117
San Francisco
But a good 500-1k used well is plenty of room for vroomin'
Yeah people always get hung up on vert numbers. I enjoy occasionally doing a ~3k non-stop top to bottom run at Mammoth, but certainly not all the time. Most people (and I mean 98%) can't do that, and are never doing more than 500-700 at once without taking some kind of short break. I've always thought that 400-500 is the minimum for quality lift access trails. As long as they are done well and they don't try to "preserve the elevation", code for make it flat, longer, and boring.
 
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kickstand

Turbo Monkey
Sep 18, 2009
3,441
392
Fenton, MI
Yeah people always get hung up on vert numbers. I enjoy occasionally doing a ~3k non-stop top to bottom run at Mammoth, but certainly not all the time. Most people (and I mean 98%) can't do that, and are never doing more than 500-700 at once without taking some kind of short break. I've always thought that 400-500 is the minimum for quality lift access trails. As long as they are done well and they don't try to "preserve the elevation", code for make it flat, longer, and boring.
I would agree with this.

In Michigan We ride at a resort that is around 500-550 feet of elevation, in the end you probably get a good 350-450 feet of trail elevation. It is still enjoyable.

Snowshoe is 600-750 or so on the basin side, but by the time you ride the two track down to where the trails start I bet you have lost 100ft of elevation at least. Putting you in that 500ft range.

The Western Territory Side is 1500 feet and can be linked trail top to bottom, that's a pretty solid run.

When I rode at Whistler this summer I would have been content to ride either the top or bottom lift most of the day and doing some full runs here and there. We also did top of the world to the bottom but due to the nature of our group we had to do a lot of stopping so I didn't get the full effect.

Overall however i am in agreement with you. 500-1500 feet is a good time espesically if the trail is well designed. It is not ALL about elevation but more so about a good mix of fun jump lines and good DH trails and not being stuck on brown switchback sidewalks all day.