How are crowds at these hills on holidays? RT has been good on weekends last couple times I've been up. I'd like to try Liberty again (it's been icy when I've gone up before0 on Monday with temps warming up a bit, but I don't want to be waiting in line. My son hasn't been to Liberty yet.
Thoughts?
We were there (liberty) Saturday of MLK...front side quad had a 5-10 minute line, most of the day strata was nearly walk on and eastwind was maybe a 5 minute wait at the most. I suspect strata will run given the holiday, so I suspect lines will not be a problem
Now I know why I far prefer skiing on weekdays around here. Went to Liberty today with my nephew who is fairly new to skiing so had to stay on the front side of the mountain all day (other than one run on the back I snuck off for while he rested and skied right up to the lift and right on by myself at 1 PM). The front side was packed, long, long waits for the lifts especially since they kept stopping over and over again and then going down the hill on Dipsy Doodle (which is as much as he could handle) was like driving around the beltway during rush hour. The snow was pretty good early, but got chopped up quickly as one would expect. Really made me appreciate what we have locally if one is able to get out during the week to ski.
mdr227 wrote:
Now I know why I far prefer skiing on weekdays around here. Went to Liberty today with my nephew who is fairly new to skiing so had to stay on the front side of the mountain all day (other than one run on the back I snuck off for while he rested and skied right up to the lift and right on by myself at 1 PM). The front side was packed, long, long waits for the lifts especially since they kept stopping over and over again and then going down the hill on Dipsy Doodle (which is as much as he could handle) was like driving around the beltway during rush hour. The snow was pretty good early, but got chopped up quickly as one would expect. Really made me appreciate what we have locally if one is able to get out during the week to ski.
Best time to take beginners on weekends is after Pres. Day weekend. Bonus weekends in March can be a great time to have fun with kids just getting started. They don't need much terrain to have fun.
Midweek skiing is relatively empty pretty much in any region. I've been able to see that first hand in recent years in the SE, mid-Atlantic, northeast, Utah, north Tahoe, Aspen/Snowmass, and Taos. Even makes a difference at Grand Targhee. One of the local seniors told me today that often there only seem to be "ten" skiers around midweek. Even though today was a holiday Monday, no lift line was longer than 3 min. Big contrast to yesterday, which also happened to be a powder day. Not much of a wait after lunch but the main lift was pretty busy all morning.
We ended up at Liberty. Got there early afternoon. Lines weren't too bad on the front (think we waited 10 minutes for Dipsy, 5 minutes for Alpine). No wait on the back side, but the snow was really slushy and carved up. There were a lot of thin spots - I don't think they have as much snow as they claimed. White Lightning was particularly thin. Wind blew a lot of debris onto the slopes too - lot of stick pieces and leaves all over the place.
People cleared out around 4-4:30 - likely due to school tomorrow. We stayed till about 8pm or so. Snow turned to loose granular and was really sticky. My son had his best day at least - had a good board instructor that really helped him. Dipsy Doodle was his toughest challenge to date and he did well - except for him getting a little disoriented and almost heading down Blue Streak instead. He really would have been hating life lol.
I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like Liberty much. Maybe because it's busier and the mountain is setup weird, IMO, but I haven't had any good days out there. Maybe if I can try it midweek on a good snow day, it might grow on me.
