Want To Know What Ski Town You Should Move To This Season?

What would TJ & Dexter do? (They'd move to Aspen, but it was the '90s).

An unprecedented superstorm/polar vortex is currently bearing down on the continental United States, which means that if you’ve
just realized it’s high time you were able to ski every day starting next week, this is the time
of year to figure out where which ski town you belong in.

We’ve provided the following guideline, because skipping out
on a non-ski bum life–often boring–for a reality full of happy-go-lucky
friends, powder days, spectacular backcountry days of the kind money can’t buy,
and the best beers you’ve ever had, can’t be beat. So ditch college, postpone grad school, drop the career
you’ve been building for a decade. You are not going to be one those saps that
just rides on weekends, or spring break from college anymore! This is your season!

If you’ve already done this and currently live in a ski
town, you can get back to doing squats, studying radar weather maps, The
Farmer’s Almanac, and El Nino predictions for your region. Here's our definitive guide to deciding which ski town to move to this winter...

Just out for a rest day at the resort, eh? Ian Houghton/Revelstoke Mountain Resort photo.

Move here if you…
are super nice. You are super modest. You either already do or plan to: shred huge
lines for breakfast, take down pillow lines like dominos, and skin from the
roadside to 3,000 meter summits all day long. But you still like to have the
lifts nearby for rest days. You will ski tour in the rain, you will sled-ski in
the rain, and your super sick sled makes slednecks jealous. You are a way better
than most pros–whoever sees you shred knows it–but you still totally respect
those pros, because you are too nice. You are thoughtful, even philosophical,
but content with a nice quiet rural life (except for toys with engines). Oh,
and you need a whole town of people equally as humble, as nice, if not nicer,
than you are, and possessing similar ski and sled skills. If you met some
crass, pompous asshole from the East Coast, which is unlikely, you wouldn’t
understand what language they were speaking, even though it’s English.

Another Aspen party, except you had to ski to this one. Aspen/Snowmass photo.

Move
here if you… are the kind of ski bum that wants to be up to your nose in
snow–the amazing kind of snow that you can have year-round, inside. You like
dressing to the nines, you need shopping in stores of the sort that sell $90
socks, and you expect to see Paris Hilton at half the champagne parties you
sneak into. You like to stay up until six in the morning, and a ski day that
starts at three in the afternoon is fine with you. But you still like skiing
powder (the outdoor kind), so you prefer a place where most other skiers don’t
venture off the groomers, if there are even other skiers in the lift line to
begin with. It’s a fine balance. If you wanted some dull town in the sticks
where there was nothing to do besides ski, you would be in Jackson.

Music... riding... park... lines... legal weed, all right! Breckenridge Ski Resort photo.

Move here if you…
might have come here on a ski weekend from campus, or spring break, and forgot
to go back to school. Or maybe it was a break between college and grad school?
Who cares; weed’s been legal for almost a year and your long-term memory is
spanked! All that matters is that you’re here now, and you like to get out on
the slopes, even if the terrain isn’t mind-blowing and the snow isn’t that deep. And party! 

Even if it’s months between serious storms, the partying is always
on point, so it’s a win-win. You’re cool with getting wasted in a dark,
carpeted bar that hasn’t been cleaned since 1973, or a trendy little dance club
with lots of people who still claim they’re “in school.” You want a big city nearby, where you might go
one day to finish school/get a real job, and don’t mind if all its residents
overwhelm the roads and slopes every weekend like a biblical flood. It’s mostly really important because
that city gets amazing music, and no Phish/Phantogram/O.A.R. show is as good as
one at Red Rocks. You’d rather ski
groomers and park from October to June than pow and steeps from December to
April.

If you have never heard of Facebook and can't stand "the scene," come hither. Mount Baker Ski Area photo.

Move
here if you… like people, but not that much. Cities are out, and small
towns are even too much. As a matter of fact, your personality is classified
far beyond introvert status, headed towards hermit. The wannabe-pro, skittle-y,
self-promoting, hyped-up scene give you hives, and you are so low key, you
don’t even want to be seen on the lift. You only wear black, and only ride
fixed-grip chairs. Your sole priority, nay, consideration, is shredding the
deepest, sickest powder days ever beholden. You will be happy just tunneling
around in the white room, your shit-eating grin out of sight, as you bounce
around pillows and slash huge windlips. And then, you’ll go back to your tiny ‘village’
on the ski hill road that doesn’t even have internet, and not post anything on
social media, and spend the rest of the night shoveling the 38 feet of snow
that just fell on your roof, and then pet your cat before an early bedtime. In
fact, this will be the last thing you ever read on the internet.

The most love a groomer will get this far West of Stratton. Sun Valley photo.

Move
here if… your version of skiing is a genteel one; a social and
altogether pleasant pastime. You don’t want to be tempted by lots of
accessibility to powder in the backcountry, which can be dangerous, so you
don’t care if much of that is found nearby. Fast, well-maintained groomers and
delicious lunches by the fire are a fine way to kill time until the snow melts
on the bike trails. Deep down, you like cross-country mountain biking waaaaay better
then skiing or snowboarding. Oh, and you have a family plane. But so does
everyone else you know, so it’s no big deal. If you’re really itching for some
good skiing, you just fire up the single-prop and fly out to wherever it's currently going off.

"I'm the (196th) best skier on the mountain!!!" Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Jackson Hole Mountain Resort photo.

Move here if you…
have a trust fund. You are the best skier at your home mountain in
Pennsylvania, Vermont, or wherever you went to prep school. Your parents will
purchase a house for you, because ski towns are great real estate investments
and Jackson’s market is going off. Until then, renting a crappy room in a
crapbox condo for $1000 a month is fine. You won’t mind having a restaurant job
for 5-30 years, since all your fellow servers will have a Masters or PhD from
even better schools than you went to, and validate your “career” path. A
reasonable morning would consist of being up at 4:45 am and in line for the
tram by six for one run of powder, because after that, there will not be one
square inch of untouched snow, since every other raddest skier or rider in the
world is here, too. But you don’t give a shit about the lift lines, because the
chair is only there to get you into the backcountry, and you’re going to get
into ski mountaineering one of these days and never see another soul on your
14-hour missions into Grand Teton National Park. And no one can party you under
the table, even though there’s no good parties.

Real jobs + real mountains... mind blown! Wikimedia Commons photo.

Move
here if you… can’t totally give it all up to live in a ski town
monoculture. You need a city (or a semblance of a city, at any rate), and you
like working a real job for a real paycheck. But also powder! You want it all.
And you plan on taking it all, thank you very much. Proselytizing religious
culty-types don’t scare you. You are pretty sure you will not lose your mind if
you have to go into the office on a powder day, since you can dawn patrol it
and be at your suit-and-tie office 20 minutes later. You can focus on the
bright side of weak beer and lame nightlife, which is that it’ll be easier to get
up for pow laps before work. You collect a posse of like-minded type-A
career-focused hyper athletes whose resting heart rate is a 23 and who do day
trips to Jackson on the weekends to hike and ski the Grand Teton before driving
home for dinner.

Somewhere down there is everyone you need to know to go pro. Whistler/Blackcomb photo.

Move
here if you… want to be a pro skier or rider, and are either Canadian or from one
of the dozens of countries (not America) that Canada gives away awesome visas
to. You are so stoked that even walking to the lift in the pouring rain will
never get you down. Deeper pow up high, eh? You have the kit, the gear, the
attitude, the ambition, and you need a town with the connections: the photogs, filmers,
writers, and just about all your ski heroes. You’re adept with the helmet cam,
you love social media, and you are going to plaster your radness all over the
place. You love sushi, and parties, and everything that crosses your path. Life
is so amazing. But you’re humble at the same time. You don’t know how you do
it. It’s just what you and your friends do, eh?

Is this getting you excited? Do you dream of snow guns? Killington Resort photo.

Move
here if you… are going to get a real job. Soon. On Wall Street, when your parents call in a favor
to one of their college buddies. In the meantime, you truly appreciate, and can
dish up, a fine race tune, and like to arrange your waxes and p-texes by color.
Snow guns give you a hard-on. You love the elements, and are stoked to ski in
frigid winds, freezing rain, and graybird days. You crush technical, blue-ice
tree skiing and icy steep chutes that are actually waterfalls. Not like other
places, where anyone can ski anything because it’s covered in pow. You shred
bumps, but you tour, you hike, you find pow anyway you can, even if it's just one turn of it–and you just completely slay
it, because you also love skiing ice, and weirdly to many other skiers, refuse
to give it up. The West Coast is way overrated, or maybe you’re just too timid
to move away from home.

Tahoe! It's got babes (that rip, like Julia Mancuso), skiing is fun here, and it's warm enough when it's not dumping to wear a tanktop. Hey, we got a pool, too! Squaw Valley photo.

Move
here if you.. are from California. You’re fun. Skiing and riding is fun. You want to
be there with other fun, smiling people. You’ll definitely take pow and shred the
crap out of it, even escalate things to fisticuffs in the liftline for it, but
if it doesn’t show up, you can have fun anyways. Because you, and every one you
know, owns a huge costume box, and it’s always sunny and warm when it isn’t
dumping. The riding is awesome, but you can’t take it too seriously, after all,
since Shane McConkey is your hero, and you hike to his monument for training in
the off-season. You are versatile: slush bumps one day, paddle the SUP the
next, and climb a scary mountaineering line the next. You’d be okay with a
place that isn’t populated mostly by people from the East Coast (relatively), and you want
your beach with your mountains. And you’re brave: David and Goliath–type fights don't scare
you (you’re David, by the way). You, and
all your fun friends, will fight to keep skiing awesome, mostly through
costumes.

Just left the house to head down the street for more bacon and whiskey... Silverton Mountain photo.

Move here if you… haven’t
ridden a groomed run in four seasons, and never intend to again. You’ve taken
every single backcountry-related course possible, from your WFR to your Avi III
and AMGA guide certification, but you decided against becoming a ski guide as
it’d cut into your time bootpacking and skiing 5,000 foot couloirs. You don’t
mind living in a dead-end town of barely 500 people, making $12,000 a year, and
driving a truck held together with bailing wire, as long as every line you ski
or ride is absolutely terrifying, due to the fact that the snowpack is the most
dangerous in the country or you’re looking over a thousand feet of blind
exposure. You ski with a rope, can reset your own femur if you break it
tomahawking over cliffs, and your family hasn’t heard from you in six years.