Joshua N.
Yelp
Ok... I really want to give 5 stars to Sierra, I love the place, I've been coming here for years, I have a season pass, I'm not sure I'll be renewing my season pass because the place is in poor shape and they don't seem to be putting in much effort to fix things. Half the resort still looks devastated by the Caldoor fire. I'll try and break this down in a couple bullet points below.
Lifts: the four man chairs are fine for the most part, they are starting to show their age but they work. The smaller older chairs are uncomfortable and sllllooooww!!!!! They all need a fresh coat of paint, the padding on a lot of the chairs are starting to get uncomfortable. The operators tend to be cool guys, never had an issue with them.
The mountain: this is going to take a couple paragraphs. One major grip I have with all of slopes at Sierra this year is the lack of any attempt to groom runs. Only having a 4-5ft base is no excuse, in the Midwest they start grooming runs when there's only 3ft of snow.
The Grand view side is now the best best place to go up, it gives you a large amount of options, you can go to the back side, castle (which used to be one of the best runs), easy runs for beginners like Sugar and Pice l, the runs are really long, you can hit up a wide variety of terrain and difficulty as well. I do have one major gripe, the best area Castle and dynamite are burnt out, there seems to be no attempt to fix things or create the illusion of fixing things, very disappointing, I didn't really go to Sierra at all last year bc I was hoping they would spend the last two years fixing the fire damage, no real attempt seems to have been made to fix things.
The West Bowl side was ok but now with the fire damage it is just a boring field of devastation.... It's been two freaking years, next to no effort seems to be being put into fixing it, no trees means there is no real defined runs and it should be renamed the soup bowl, it's the place that always got the most sun and now with no trees it's a soupy mess. It's boring and sad, not even worth your time to go look at. I grew up in the Midwest... most the resorts like Alpine Valley and Devils Head in WI are 10x better then the west bowl side and they have half the elevation!
Backside, the back side is now my favorite place to go, it still has trees and some really fun off trail spots to bomb down, especially after a fresh snow! The only downside with the back side is that it's small. It also has good range of different difficulty so I can go back there with friends who aren't as good.
Lodge amenities and food: it's not great but not awful, the lodges feel really old and dated, the food is not bad for lodge food. 360 BBQ at the top of grand view has the best food and view. They do have average WiFi at the lodge at the base.
Pro shop: it's really bad, it feels newer on the inside but it's about the quality of the gear, jackets and pants feel cheap and over priced. They have a decent googles but they are extremely overpriced and their selection is weird. Snowboard selection is also meh but worst of all is the staff in there, they really have no idea what they are talking about, they need training, they seem to push the most expensive thing, the ones that really don't know much at all are actually the good ones bc they won't push the most expensive new thing. I've had to go in a couple times over the years to buy a pair of googles or gloves... never again for gear BUT the T-shirt selection is fun and they have some good stickers other apparel like hoodies and hats feel cheap to me and my friends (I asked to make sure it wasn't just me, all my friends agree on this 100% and we range from 20 years of experience to just 2 years).
Parking: it's fine, it's never really crowded especially these days, I've always been able to get packing in the B lot close to the slops.
In the end Sierra is a good place on bad times, this will probably be my last year as a season pass holder, I'll probably be going to Palisades from now on unless they really try and put some effort into fixing things. If it's a money issue they should hit up or sue the state of California for their awful wildlife prevention/wildfire fighting that caused the damage in the first place.
Ultimately I'm disappointed.