Monkey

Helen and I took a nice, long road trip and went from Seattle, to Jackson Hole, WY, to Squaw Valley, CA, and back from 2/18/2006 thru 3/6/2006. We spent 7 nights in JH, and 8 nights in Squaw. We also spent some time sightseeing in northern Nevada along route 50. We drove 3130 miles! Here are the pictures from the Elko Snobowl part of the trip.

When we were planning out trip to Jackson Hole and Squaw we realized that we might want to break the drive up from Jackson to Squaw. Looking at the map, we quickly realized there was only one place to do that: Elko, NV. About a year and a half ago I had a crazy idea to try to ski at every ski area within a 14 hour drive of Seattle, WA. That’s an insane idea, especially once you realize just how many ski hills are in that area! I gave up collating data at around 115 ski areas. But looking at Elko on the map I remembered there was an area very near there from working on the crazy 14 hour idea.

Sure enough, the Elko Snobowl is just an easy 6 mile drive outside of Elko. The Snobowl is a very small ski area that was started in 1992 and got their first (and only) lift in 1998. It’s staffed entirely by volunteers, and the chairs and lift towers carry sponsorship tags from people and businesses in Elko. The base area is at around 6000ft and my altimeter watch gave a vertical drop of 640ft, top-to-bottom. A lift ticket cost me $20 for the whole day. A hot dog and Snickers bar from the concessions/ticket trailer ran me $3.25. We were there on a Saturday afternoon and there were no lift lines, and probably 50 other people total on the hill. It looks like we’re nearing the end of their season: it was spring skiing all the way, with warm temps and some nice slush. Coverage is getting thin in spots, as you can see from the photos below.

All-in-all, I had a fun few hours at the Elko Snobowl.