The Biggest Expert Ski Areas in N America

[Nathanvg]

Many recent threads have discussed the "best" ski areas. While "best" can vary based on each person's preferences, it is possible to measure the amount of skiing of a particular type. This thread quantifies the size in acres of expert skiing in North America. Of course size is just one factor but I figured others may find this data interesting. Full list below.

Definition: For this list, expert skiing is defined as slopes that never dip below 35 degrees for at least 200 vertical feet. Note that most slopes will be well over 35 degrees over the 200+ length since slopes are rarely uniform in pitch. Hike to skiing is included but side country is not (outside ski area. Measurement is based on the best available USGS data for each region. Due to a variety of factors, error may be significant but should not exceed 10% in the US. Canadian data is not as precise.

Surprises:

• Altabird is huge, nearly 3x bigger than next closest ski area
• Crystal & Solitude are big but don't get mentioned that much on these forums. Weather/Snow at Crystal is a factor. Solitude likely just gets overshadowed by nearby Altabird. (it also has an odd lift layout)
• Jackson & Whistler are smaller than I expected. Jackson has a lot of just under 35 degree areas.
• Park city is bigger than I expected. It's such a big ski area that a lot of small areas add up even if percent wise, expert skiing is more limited
• Revelstoke is smaller than I expected. Canadian data issues may be partly at fault.

**Full list**

Category A: Big expert ski areas

• Altabird 870: cirque 175 acres, high T 180, 65 gad valley, mineral 75, baldy-peruvian 175, baldy-alta 40, wildcat 10, supreme 30, castle 20
• Crystal 295: northway 65, niagra area 100, exterminator 45, sunnyside 15, crystal peak to 3-way 70
• Squaw 285: KT 150, red dog 20, headwall & palisades 30, funnel/break it out 25, silverado 45, broken arrow 15
• Bridger 255 (significant parts unskiable)
• Crested Butte 230: NF 100, peak 30, headwall 30, teo II 30. 5+ other full vert patches ~40 acres
• Solitude 210: evergreen 50, parachute 45, navarone 55, crystal point 15, boundary chutes 35, fantasy ridge 10
• Big Sky 205 (only 75 excluding tram accessed acres, significant parts unskiable): snake pit 5, challenger 70, N summit 35, dictator 30, dirt bag 10, gullies to moon 55
• Aspen Highlands 190: highlands bowl 85, teremity 60, olympic 25, lower mountain chutes 20
• Alyeska 180: N Face 130, headwall/teacup 35, max & below 15
• Taos 165: walkyries to longhorn 35, west basin 55, highline lower 55, kachina 20
• Park city 160: jupiter peak/mcConkey 20, jupiter lift 25, moon areas 25, abyss 5, 9990 35, deshutes 20, a chute 10, murdock 20
• Mammoth 150: paranoids 30, peak 40, chair 9 40, chair 22 30
• Abasin 120: pali 35, upper east wall 30, zuma 25, steep g 30
• Kicking horse 115: CPR 20, Fuez 50, terminator 45
• Fernie 110: 35 timber, 40 currie/polar, cedar 35
• Castle 100: chutes 85, 15 misc
• Telluride 100: apex/north chute 15, gold hill lift 25, gold 6-10 20, palmyra/black iron 40

Category B: Medium ski areas

• Alpine meadow 85: estelle 30, scott 40, alpine area 15
• Jackson: 85 acres: alta chutes 15, tower "3" 15 acres, A chutes 10, casper 30, après 10, cascade 5. could be more short technical, lots of near steep
• Whistler 80: peak 25, symphony 10, blackcomb 15, spanky's 30
• Mt Rose 80: chutes 80
• red: 80 chute show 20, granite N face 40, granite E face 20
• Mt Hood meadows 60
• Stevens 60: 7th heaven 15, double dimond area 30, backside 15
• Breck 55: lake 12, peak 7 12, peak 6 18, horseshoe 12
• Marmot 55: tres hombres 45, misc 10
• Heavenly 50: mott 50
• Whitefish 50: hellroaring 30, east rim 20
• Loveland 45: chet's 15, misc 30
• Snowbasin 45: no name 40, demoisy 5
• Lake Louise 40
• Discovery 40
• Apex 35
• Kirkwood 35 (lots of small sections, most steep too short to qualify)
• Snowmass 30: 20 handing valley, 10 cirque
• Alpental 30: 25 the fan to snake dance, schultz 5 (does not include back bowl side country)
  

Category C: very limited (<30 acres):
wolf creek, keystone, steamboat, vail, powder mountain, sun valley, winter park, copper, grand targee, silver mt, bachelor, timberline, Schweitzer, tamarack, bogus basin, banff sunshine, panorama, revelstoke, big white, sun peaks, whitewater, deer valley

 

[4ster]

Better see if you can change “expect” to “expert” in thread title.

No big surprises on the lists to me although I would have expected Kicking Horse to be up the list a few notches.

 

[Bad Bob]

Crystal is not a shock at all. Snowbasin is though, thought it would be farther up the list.

 

[Jwrags]

Interesting list. Someone has too much time on their hands

 

[David Chaus]

If the data is that incomplete that it doesn't have Red Mt ranked higher, it's completely off.

Red has 2900 lift-served acres, not including hike-to and cat-served inbounds terrain. It's where the Canada open freeride championship is held. 23% of the terrain is black diamond, 26% double black, much of it long, continuous fall-line skiing, so that's 49% of the inbounds lift-served terrain. Fatmap isn't giving me the trail degrees the way it used to (probably need to pay for the premium version to get that now), but I know a lot of the advanced expert terrain exceeds 35 degrees.

 

[fatbob]

A test which just shows that an arbitrary data hurdle tells you the square root of feck all.

No way are WB and Jackson not in the top tier for advanced terrain and while I love Fernie it's a farce to not have Revy, Red and Kweed in the same set.

I 'll give you that 35 deg is seriously steep for a rec skier but it seems an empty brag without the context of chute width, rocks, trees, traffic i.e. is it usually bumped etc.

NB Highlands scores a lot of acreage but a lot of Highlands Bowl or Temerity is pretty much the same challenge.

 

[Posaune]

Mt. Baker didn't make the list anywhere and that's fine with me. It's flat.

 

[Nathanvg]

If the data is that incomplete that it doesn't have Red Mt ranked higher, it's completely off.

Red has 2900 lift-served acres, not including hike-to and cat-served inbounds terrain. It's where the Canada open freeride championship is held. 23% of the terrain is black diamond, 26% double black, much of it long, continuous fall-line skiing, so that's 49% of the inbounds lift-served terrain. Fatmap isn't giving me the trail degrees the way it used to (probably need to pay for the premium version to get that now), but I know a lot of the advanced expert terrain exceeds 35 degrees.

I checked Red and discovered an error that prevented it from being quantified. Data corrected above (80 acres). I think the error was isolated to Red after spot checking a few but I can check others if need be.

 

[Seldomski]

Is Beaver Creek nowhere on the list? Seems weird to me that Vail, Keystone and Deer Valley get a mention but BC does not.

 

[Wasatchman]

There is something wrong with the methodology.

Solitude has some great expert terrain but I would not put it top 10 in North America in terms of acreage of expert terrain. Solitude is only 1200 acres total. And a lot of the real expert terrain requires a good bootpack and local knowledge to get to. Especially the Evergreen Chutes. There are essentially 3 very gnarly ways down the Solitude side of Evergreen Chutes with the rest cliffs and you'd pretty much need a local to guide you down. It's very rare to see anyone skiing those Chutes local or not as it's a lot of no fall zone and hard to navigate into without the knowledge and skills. Are you adding up that whole Evergreen area in your analysis? If you are that's very flawed in my view as it's mostly unskiable cliffs.

I love PCMR but for true gnarly expert skiing there are much better throughout North America.

And Jackson and Whistler Blackcomb not making that list makes no sense to me in relation to others.Inn fact I would be surprised if Whistler Blackcomb didn't have more expert terrain than AltaBird in terms of acreage by quite a lot.

How many have you personally skied? Maps can be a tool, but there is no substitute for actually skiing the places when you put together a ranking.

 

[Unpiste]

I'll give you that 35 deg is seriously steep for a rec skier but it seems an empty brag without the context of chute width, rocks, trees, traffic i.e. is it usually bumped etc.

Do bumps and trees take the difficulty rating up or down?

(I’m voting down for bumps, and also trees so long as they’re decidedly more than a ski length apart. Don’t want to find myself sliding down a steep slope with.nothing to slow down on.)

 

[mdf]

I wonder how much the ranking would change if you changed the 200 vertical feet cutoff. A lot of the steep stuff in the world is pretty short.

 

[dovski]

While this would not be in the top 2 lists due to its size, I would have included Alpental in the third list as it has 300 inbound acres plus 500 side country acres and is pretty much 80+ % black and double black terrain. Of its 24 runs and gates there is one green, four blue and then everything else is black, double black or unrated sidecountry/backcountry bowls
It also has just shy of 2300' vert so you can get in some decent runs, and its expert terrain is the real deal.

 

[Nathanvg]

Is Beaver Creek nowhere on the list? Seems weird to me that Vail, Keystone and Deer Valley get a mention but BC does not.

Beaver creek falls in category C. The stone creek chutes, black bear glades and elk glades have a few sections that qualify but most of those areas are too short to qualify.

There is something wrong with the methodology.

Solitude has some great expert terrain but I would not put it top 10 in North America in terms of acreage of expert terrain. Solitude is only 1200 acres total. And a lot of the real expert terrain requires a good bootpack and local knowledge to get to. Especially the Evergreen Chutes. There are essentially 3 very gnarly ways down the Solitude side of Evergreen Chutes with the rest cliffs and you'd pretty much need a local to guide you down. It's very rare to see anyone skiing those Chutes local or not as it's a lot of no fall zone and hard to navigate into without the knowledge and skills. Are you adding up that whole Evergreen area in your analysis? If you are that's very flawed in my view as it's mostly unskiable cliffs.

I love PCMR but for true gnarly expert skiing there are much better throughout North America.

And Jackson and Whistler Blackcomb not making that list makes no sense to me in relation to others.Inn fact I would be surprised if Whistler Blackcomb didn't have more expert terrain than AltaBird in terms of acreage by quite a lot.

How many have you personally skied? Maps can be a tool, but there is no substitute for actually skiing the places when you put together a ranking.

I've skied about 90% of the areas in the list, about 115 areas total. Determining what is skiable was hard. I enjoyed Solitude but didn't get to fully explore on my visits. For areas I know well I was able to exclude unskiable parts (e.g. parts of the east wall a Abasin). Evergreen is steep and in bounds for nearly 360 degrees and runs the ridge almost all the way to the sunrise lift. For areas I wasn't sure, I included all acreage and noted when I suspected that much of the acreage was unskiable (e.g. Big Sky, Bridger) To be fair, most of these areas include unskiable sections of various degrees.

I was surprised about PCMR as well. I think a lot of it just barely passed the threshold. My recollection is that a lot of the areas were fun but nothing too special. Jupiter was pretty cool and gets a lot of snow. 9990 wasn't bad. Getting between the two takes a long time and was mellow.

I wonder how much the ranking would change if you changed the 200 vertical feet cutoff. A lot of the steep stuff in the world is pretty short.

I'm sure that would change it significantly. When you get under 200 vert, the skiing is often cliff drops, straights lines, or short technical skiing. Personally, I much prefer the longer pitches.

 

[Wasatchman]

Evergreen is steep and in bounds for nearly 360 degrees and runs the ridge almost all the way to the sunrise lift. For areas I wasn't sure, I included all acreage and noted when I suspected that much of the acreage was unskiable (e.g. Big Sky, Bridger) To be fair, most of these areas include unskiable sections of various degrees.

The top of Evergreen does indeed run the ridge to above the Sunrise lift. But as I said, the Solitude side has only 3 narrow colloirs that are skiable with unskiable cliffs comprising the remainder if it. And very few have both the skill and knowledge to ski them. The majority that drops down into the Brighton side off of the Evergreen ridge does not really qualify as expert to me. Fantasy Ridge requires a very gnarly boot pack that represents a sizeable barrier for many people to get up even if they have the skills to ski some of those chutes. And given that bootback, I can't imagine doing that more than twice in a day even for the very best in shape highly skilled. And you do not include Cathedral Cirque as an expert area of Solitude which is missing, and well above Boundary Chutes in terms of difficulty. But no way can I believe Solitude is top 10 in skiable acres of expert terrain.

And I would recheck Whistler Blackcomb. I bet it surpasses AltaBird as far as expert skiable acres of expert terrain. Not sure if you've skied there but that might be worth another look.

You clearly put some time into it which is cool, but I think you really need to refine it for a more accurate guage. Maybe with the help of pugskiers who are local to the various resorts if you were real serious of taking your map analysis up another level.

 

[Sibhusky]

So for Whitefish you excluded Haskill Slide and Langley and Powder Trap and Heep Steep and Elephants Graveyard and Schmidts Chute and Evans and Black Bear and Hidden Meadows, etc, etc. Or did you just lump them all into East Rim? I'm not going to bother to check your work, it's just seems like some arbitrary rules are not reflecting actual conditions.

But if it keeps people from coming here, great.

 

[fatbob]

Do bumps and trees take the difficulty rating up or down?

(I’m voting down for bumps, and also trees so long as they’re decidedly more than a ski length apart. Don’t want to find myself sliding down a steep slope with.nothing to slow down on.)

Well, as ever, the answer must be "it depends". Trees and rocks can make things distinctly more difficult if they are the things you might slide n die into or are where you need to make a turn. Bumps yeh - conceivably they can slow you down and give you something to brake against but conversely they can localise that pitch to near 90 deg......

 

[Bad Bob]

Reading through the lists again, very surprised that Alyeska missed. Pick a direction off the ridge and you will hit someplace with 300'+ of something 30° or more.

 

[James]

I thought Park City was flat? Like Vail. That’s what everyone here says.

Big winners for size- Crystal, Aspen Highlands, Taos, ABasin. Not a surprise. Though if you subtract always moguls, and hike to terrain, none except maybe Crystal make it but I’ve never been.

I expect the Altoids to have a bumper sticker any day now touting the data.

 

[Unpiste]

Well, as ever, the answer must be "it depends". Trees and rocks can make things distinctly more difficult if they are the things you might slide n die into or are where you need to make a turn. Bumps yeh - conceivably they can slow you down and give you something to brake against but conversely they can localise that pitch to near 90 deg......

Trees at the bottom of a steep pitch are definitely a concern. (As are trees or rocks scattered sparsely.)

Bumps and tighter trees probably depend more on ability. If you can pick a good line through them, bumps (and, indirectly, trees, since they’ll inevitably come with a few bumps) are a great tool for soeed control, even if the bumos have some really steep sides.

I definitely prefer a run with bumps once the pitch gets much above 30°. Otherwise, I just wind up feeling like I’m wasting vertical unless the run is empty and conditions are right to open up and really get some speed.