Monsieur Aubergine's Thoughts

All these places are reputed to be awesome and worth a trip, at one point or another, by our group in my mind. It's just a question of what tradeoffs we want to make today.

Here are some facets of each prospective trip in this order

1. Housing
2. Town / Entertainment
3. Skiing
4. Travel

Aspen / Snowmass

• We would probably have/want to stay in Snowmass, which is about 15-20 minutes from the town of Aspen, and has a free shuttle route. The majority of the large rental homes are over there, and are typically ski in and ski out. Homes rentals at Snowmass are comparable in cost to Vail.
• Aspen's housing stock is more hotels & condos, which I don't think will be large enough for our group. The town has a shockingly large number of bars, restaurants, and shops of national reputation. Entertainment would be easy to find, with mischief not far behind. For nightlife, Aspen / Snowmass is going to offer more than the other venues.
• Presumably folks would ski half the time at Snowmass and the rest of the time sample Aspen, Aspen Highlands, or Buttermilk. Those areas are in the town of Aspen proper, and the first two are considered good for experts. Snowmass is compared to the front side of Vail in skiing style. As a practical matter, most of the group will be able to at least navigate themselves around Aspen Mtn adequately (there are no green trails on the main mountain) although no one will accuse us, collectively, as being ballerinas on Volkls.
• For traveling, the main ways to get there would be either fly to Denver and drive/fly to Pitkin Field or fly to Eagle and then drive over. Sandy is not an all weather field but for those who are in the West or have United Airlines as a preference, that could possibly work. For those who would like to fly to Eagle (where we went for Vail) we'd have about a 1.5 hour drive or so, although its not a hard drive according to reports. Driving from Denver is a pretty healthy 4-6 hours that requires going over the Continental Divide. For those who favor American Airlines, Eagle is well served. There are also lots of shuttle companies who are serving these airports (unlike at Sun Valley). It may be possible to live without a rental car/truck if we did Aspen / Snowmass.

Telluride / Purgatory

• This would be a bi-phase trip like what we did last year; these two destinations are often combined by ski safari groups. For Telluride, we'd probably have to stay in town and take the gondola up the mountain each day. There is housing on the mountain, but I don't think we'd be able to get as big of a place as we'll want unless we go down into town. Costs are similar to Vail for homes. Purgatory is a 2 hr morning drive from Telluride and would leave lots of time for a little midweek sight seeing. There is some on mountain lodging on Purgatory, which would be the preference, rather than staying in Durango, since its 20-30 min from the mountain. Purgatory rental prices are reasonable, somewhat akin to Targhee's in my estimate. If we could swing it, being on mountain would be awesome.
• I don't know much about the towns of Telluride or Durango. Telluride probably has some nightlife and quality bars/restaurants. Durango is probably less so, probably like wherever we stayed in Idaho. Telluride is known for a being a glitzy place so there is probably a base of business that can accomodate the weekend Gulfstream IV coterie. Supposedly there are no stoplights or fast food in Telluride.
• Anecdotally, I've heard Telluride is pretty steep and exciting for experts. And although the trail map may not have as much as cruising as Sun Valley had, it looks like there is plenty of terrain for all abilities. It's a big place but probably just about right for 3 days. Purgatory is reputed to be more set up for cruising, but it's so hard to get to that I've only met one person ever who's been there. It's also a big place but just about right for 3 days of skiing. I'd guess both places are about the size of Grand Targhee if we had to mentally visualize them. Again, I'd bet everyone in our group would find terrain they would enjoy.
• From a transportation perspective, T/P would be a ski safari style trip. We'd need a rental truck and we'd probably require everyone fly in to Montrose, Colorado via American. I guess other airports are possible (Eagle / Denver) but the driving in the San Juan range of Colorado is supposedly hairy. Montrose, probably via American/DFW, though seems pretty straight forward. This would require a trip starting on Sat, Jan 21 and returning Sun, Jan 29 though since we'd have a travel day on mid week on Wednesday. It's possible, and we'd have to really check the details, but we might be able squeeze in a day at Crested Butte.

Big Sky / The Big Mountain

• Again this would be a ski safari style trip requiring the extra day for travel. It looks like there are a healthy number of reasonably priced homes at Big Sky. The Big Mountain seems to have somewhat smaller housing stock, possibly pushing us into Whitefish. Our preference would be to stay ski on/off at both of these places but it may not be possible or vital. Cost wise, these lodging options would be less than the Colorado places in all likelihood. Our main issue, as it is each year, is finding rental houses which have 6-8 beds, which is not as easy as you would think.
• The nightlife situation in both of these Montana resorts would be limited. I would guess that we could probably find some kind of locals bar/restaurant, but that we would be entertaining ourselves more with Bing! Wang! sessions. While it's kind of nice to have a Whistler or Vail village nightlife around, my view is that having the group together is plenty of amusement to start with...
• The skiing at both Big Sky and The Big Mountain is pretty massive. Both are vast places that will easily keep the group amused for 3 days each. Big Sky is more like Jackson or Snowbird in that it has extreme steeps (You Fall - You Die zones) but lots of other stuff all over the mountain. TBM is more normal cruising oriented, perhaps something like Sugarloaf. The snow here is regarded as being particularly dry and fluffy. Both Montana areas have some rep for fog and other inclement issues, but are famously uncrowded.
• Getting to this part of the world is hard for most of us -- there is no candy coating that. The resorts themselves are 369 miles apart, which means a long 7 hour drive on the travel day, and the region is basically served only by Northwest or its affiliates. That ensures some monopoly pricing as well as bad scheduling. The main airports would be Kalispell or Bozeman. Relatively, this would require more travel time, at higher prices. I don't know Northwest is going to handle their ongoing bankruptcy situation, but so far they have been doing ok, with some flight cut backs, but mostly out of their hubs. I assume these route ares the ones where they can make money. It would be tricky to actually acquire these airfares either cheap or with frequent flyer miles, unfortunately.

All these places are pretty cool in my mind for a trip, and I would not mind going to any of them with the group we've put together. We'll take a straw poll sometime in the next week or so, but my vote would be

1. Aspen / Snowmass
2. Telluride / Purgatory
3. Big Sky / Big Mountain

I hope some other folks will chime in with discussion points, queries, rankings or even haiku.

Plant