Where is a good place to ski that's fairly convenient to the SF Bay Area?
I never skiied until recently, so I have no idea where is good to go. I was looking at Mammoth but the $39 airfare deal apparently doesn’t apply on the dates we want. It’s also 6.5 hours by car, which might be too much with my 10-year-old sister.
Just wondering what other places are good and might be less of a car journey? Thanks!
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There isn’t actually a whole lot right around the Bay Area. One of my favorite mountains is Mt. Shasta, which is a shot up highway 5 north and is an excellent and cheap place to learn how to ski. The drive up 5 isn’t that bad either.
If you don’t mind paying a bit more, though, check out the Tahoe area. A comparable drive to Shasta, but definitely nicer mountains. It is quite a bit pricier, though.
Tahoe and Shasta are both 4 hour drives from SF.
Shasta doesn’t have the quality of skiing you can find at Tahoe, but is much cheaper.
I enjoy Shasta, but it definitely isn’t as good as Tahoe. If you are worried about the drive, I’d go with Shasta. It’s just a straight shot up Highway 5, as opposed to the highway to Tahoe, which can be pretty snowy.
I also can’t argue with 29$ lift tickets.
Nice.. my mom is saying there hasn’t been enough snow at Shasta this year? I dunno.
I was there last weekend, and they got more than 2 feet of snow in the last 2 weeks. There’s more than enough.
Lots of snow at Shasta this year.
Mt Rose is on the back side (east) of the Sierras, cheaper with great skiing, easy access from San Francisco through Bakersfield on 58, straight North on 395, no closed passes over the Sierra.
If you leave early enough, you can make it to SugarBowl from San Francisco in 2.5 hours (3 tops). I’ve done it, but you need to massage the speed limit a bit (or maybe a lot). I love skiing SugarBowl, they have some nice steeps and cornices along the backside ridge.
Awesome! Thanks for all the suggestions, they’re very helpful! I will look into all of these places, including Shasta, because I suspect my mom has no idea what she’s talking about. I kind of wondered when she said that, with all the precipitation we’ve had and I kept hearing about heaps of snow in the mountains, but what do I know..
Mt Shasta is closed for the season, according to this.
@shilolo You are correct The site I linked is 2009
@YARNLADY I was there last weekend. It’s open. But it looks like that was already cleared up.
Shasta Ski is open, I was looking at last year’s site. Sorry.
@YARNLADY Yeah, it’s fine. Just wanted to remove any confusion.
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