Mammoth late winter, early spring would be an especially fun week for this person since I know the Eastern sierra so well especially summer wilderness areas. When spring wind blown powder off the Cornice and Chair 5 is good at Mammoth, it as good as one might experience anywhere as one of skiing's most glorious sensations. Main issue would be to negotiate to get some kind of group discount for lift tickets and block lodging for any of those herein that agreed to go into a group block discount package for. Decades ago the Mammoth Motel 6 actually had the old chain nightly pricing.
Any serious discussion of gathering locations would need to have some crude understanding of the general range of lodging and lift ticket costs as there are enormous differences. Nothing new as Vail was always like that.
Heavenly at South Lake Tahoe, SLT, is maybe the least expensive mountain resort with service walk to lifts from large amounts of low expense midweek lodging areas. Heck one can stay midweek in some of the casino fine rooms for less than $100 a night. The decades of casino gambling and big name entertainment, is why SLT is a world class destination with many foreigners on ski slopes and sharing lift rides. Thus although one might argue on better snow years, Big Sky or Jackson is awesome, larger numbers of potential gathering new persons would go if lodging was way cheaper as like less than $100 a night.
On midweek nights for years, I've been paying less than $70 a night to stay at modest South Lake Tahoe 2-star lodging with all usual that level amenities, eating out of walk to from lodging Raleys or Safeway supermarkets. And in morning walking in ski boots the minor distance over to the Gondola then taking the incredibly scenic and steep, morning ride on the Gondola that rises over 2.7k over 2.4 horizontal miles. However, given the increase in skiers with passes, the Gondola now often has a longish early morning backup as people from all the lodging get in line. Well this person instead, given that Tahoe skiing has always been via driving, I just drive up NV 217 to Kingsbury then to least used Heavenly Boulder Lot to park. With the new North Bowl Express Quad lift, I can now get up to the East Peak Lodge upper mountain lifts fastest so.
Main issue with Heavenly would be the Epic/Icon pass split. One way to resolve that would be given enough agreed to participants, would have a second regional Tahoe Epic gathering that would draw less nationally than the national gathering, but enough core members that could choose either one in a given year. For Heavenly, the other main issue is that on drier winters it can be bony, disappointing. That is why having very reliable for advanced skiing, Kirkwood as an alternate destination for a SLT based gathering. But Kirkwood is more awkward bus ride or shared group drive.
Another regional idea I like except in difficult windy stormy weather would be for a regional gathering skiing Mount Rose all midweek while staying at less expensive group lodging in downtown Reno where there are also always other leisure activity diversions. There are other Western Epic resorts that could work but I doubt others would be as low cost as SLT or Reno. Main point is Mount Rose is now a well run world class resort with more consistently excellent higher elevation packed powder snow on par with Kirkwood and Upper Heavenly with much advanced DD terrain. Though due to its alpine exposure on windy days is rather limited. Please add them as ideas if so.
The one thing Mount Rose lacks is a dedicated recreational bump chair with bump lines viewable all the way down the chair. Given its huge advanced skier base in populous Reno, Mount Rose is ideal for a local zone resort that could develop a serious mogul slope following. The location for such a lift is obviously north-northwest facing modestly steep down Jetta into Kit Carson Bowl, a direct 700 foot vertical lift would supply. Would not even need to be any express lift and could be especially useful on windy days. They could add some fun there too, say with some lively inspiring Classic rock music (or whatever fun lively music) over speakers during some specific hours, some days, and even an adjustable direction webcam video feed from cameras on lift towers on bump skiers playing live down in the main lodge.
