Description: Sierra at Tahoe has a few problems. One, it's the first ski area people from Sacremento and San Francisco reach driving east. This means it gets a bit more crowded on weekends. Two, it has a gimmick called "Club Vertical" that you can join for a little more than the cost of a lift ticket. You get reduced price tickets but you also get a little electronic gismo that fits on your wrist and tracks how many times you go on each lift. This translates to how many vertical feet you've skied. There are prizes for accumulating vertical, ranging from free food in the cafeteria all the way up to a new snowboard. Now what this does is to provide an incentive for people to scream top to bottom at top speed all day long on the groomed intermediate trails. Does this idea seem flawed to you? On the positive side, there are reduced ticket price opportunities for this mountain. Some ski shops have signs out front for Sierra discount tickets - buy at the shop and save $5. Eat at Chevy's Mexican restaurant and get a $10 off coupon. Look around and save a few dollars. Our experts found interesting runs off the Grandview Express lift. Steeps, bumps, and where the snow was right some tree skiing. The intermediates were not happy though. They didn't find the mountain that interesting and were bothered by the speed merchants careening by. It might be a good place to take intermediates after a storm to get them some powder skiing/tree skiing on terrain that isn't too steep. The West Bowl area seemed to have a couple of places that would work.
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