Everyone has heard of the big resorts like Vail, Aspen, Jackson Hole, Whistler and Park City, but do the smaller mountains like Marmot, Purgatory, Brians Head or Whitewater offer a better option for seasonal workers?
There’s pros and cons with both so make a wise choice.
Year round employment and fun.
Towns like Aspen have a couple of off seasons, May and late October-November. This means there’s plenty of work for tourism professionals and a huge number of events throughout the year to keep people entertained. Races, music festivals, food and wine events etc etc etc. If you are planning on staying for a year or more, one of the mega resorts may be a better choice than a ski mountain that shuts in April and doesn’t re-open until mid December.
Affordable Housing.
Let’s be honest, getting affordable housing in towns where the well-off ski and spend their summer holidays is a nightmare. If they do rent out their second homes it’s just much easier putting them on airbnb than renting them out to seasonal workers. Smaller resorts with down valley towns or cities provide much more opportunities to secure reasonable housing.
Crowds and weeklong skiing.
The mega resorts offer 7 day a week plus night skiing but they do attract big crowds, especially if they are the closest resorts to big cities like Vancouver, Seattle, Denver and Salt Lake City. What you want is the best of both worlds; big mountain terrain with small mountain crowds. If you are chasing deep powder that lasts for days, those out of the way resorts like Red Lodge Mountain, Taos, or Marmot are great options. But be careful and check that resorts run their lifts 7 days a week throughout the season. You don’t want to spend you days off looking at lifts that aren’t running.
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