Heavenly Ski Resort
Resort Review
We skied for two days at Heavenly with a few friends. Our friends were intermediate skiers, so while they hung out with us for a bit, we ended up skiing by ourselves for the most part.
We found the resort to have amazing views once you got to the upper parts of the mountain, but I was disappointed that there were only a few runs that were green. Heavenly seems like a great resort for intermediate skiers, as there are a ton of blue runs all over the mountain.
On Saturday, the resort was full with the lines getting long by 10 a.m. and getting less busy after lunch. On Sunday, there were way fewer people at the resort, which meant we could just keep lapping the beginner slope.
The food at the resort was so-so. It tasted okay and cost a lot of money. I think next time we’ll think about packing lunch.
Heavenly instituted a new rule this year requiring reservations for parking. The website was easy to use, and because we had four people in our car, parking was free. The lot was large, and we were able to easily find a spot.
Poma Trail (Green)—This was the sole green run on the California side of Heavenly before going up to the upper part of the resort. The run itself was nice with slope variance and an optional jump in the middle of the run that made this a favorite with our family. We loved it so much that I rode this run 19 times on Sunday.
Patsy’s (Green)—Once you go up to the upper part of the mountain, this is the first run to get to Maggie’s. It’s pretty short, but what made this harrowing was just the amount of people using this run to get to the other parts of the mountain. I bet without the crowds, it’d been fun.
Maggie’s (Green)—This long green run was nice and fun, but it was a bit too advanced for the girls who had trouble dealing with the extra crowds (especially when Maggie’s intersected with other runs) and the narrower sections. I rode this twice, and while I didn’t love the crowds, I did think the run itself was fun!
What I Learned
While I skied the least number of runs at a resort ever, I had the most amount of fun ever. I had a great time getting really good on Poma Trail, and I did not find it boring to do the same run over and over again. I felt like every time I rode on it, I got just a bit better every time.
On a similar note, I saw how quickly Kaylee lost her confidence when she rode Maggie’s for the second time. Just one bad run took her out of her mojo. Though, it was great to see her shake off her fear and to slowly build her confidence up again while lapping Poma Trail on Sunday.
Everyone on our family seemed to have an okay first day and a great second day as we got more confident on our skiing abilities. Next year, I think we should try skiing for more than 2 days at a resort with a few more green and easy-blue options.
We rented a house with the Dions, and it was much nicer than staying at a hotel. We utilized the kitchen, hot tub, washer/dryer, and all the room a large house afforded us. The girls especially had a fun time playing together.
Friends
We skied with the Dion’s and the Saito’s. The Dion’s wanted to hang out with us, so we ended up skiing a few runs with them; Keva and Meara were especially kind to Kaylee and Annabelle—encouraging and coaching them while going slow to be with them. The Saito’s were busy exploring all the fun parts of Heavenly, but they did stop by to have lunch with us on Sunday. It’s definitely more fun to ski with friends than not.
What Happened?
I had heard such great things about Heavenly that I bought 2-day passes for everyone in the family and found two other families to join us for the weekend.
On Saturday, we got to the resort right at 8:15 a.m., but by the time we hit our first run, it was almost an hour later. I helped Cassie, Kaylee, and Annabelle get reacquainted with skis (it was Cassie’s first time, actually), and we slowly lapped Poma Trail. We then had lunch with the Dions, who came down from the top of Heavenly to encourage us to try Maggie’s.
After lunch, we went up to Maggie’s and had a decent time enjoying that run, but after one run, Annabelle was done and Kyle was dealing with foot pain. Cassie kindly chose to hang out with Annabelle while I took Keva, Meara, and Kaylee back to the top of Maggie’s. Everyone started off doing great, but Kaylee had a fall and lost most of her confidence—especially with how crowded Maggie’s seemed to be. So after we came down from that, we called it a day and rode the tram back down to our cars.
We had a great time relaxing back at the rental house and cooked a yummy dinner (tteokbokki and fishcake soup). I ended up reading for a couple of hours, while everyone relaxed in their own way.
The next day, we were on the slopes around the same time, but we were determined to just stay on Poma Trail and get confident. For me, I spotted a jump, so I naturally wanted to try it out. Starting with the second run, I hit it every single time. Funny enough, my enjoyment of the jump made everyone else (Cassie, Kaylee, and Annabelle) try it too—and they had such a great time that they also hit the jump every time!
The Dions joined us before lunch as the conditions on the top of Heavenly were not ideal (windy and snowy). The Dions were hungry first, so we ended up having a staggered lunch, but we all ended up having lunch together and we said our goodbyes to the Saito’s who decided to beat the traffic home. Kyle then went off to run some blues while Keva and Meara decided to ski with us a few more times (though Kaylee was done for the day, so she just watched us from the patio). We got a few more precious runs in and we had to call it a day too, as it was getting close to 2 p.m. We then all left as we had hours of driving left for the day with work and school restarting the next day.
The trip was a great one as I think I was pretty close to calling skiing quits. But I found the joy of skiing with Cassie and the girls. I think they found the joy too, as we are currently all aligned in planning out a ski trip for next year that will be at least a day longer.
