Sugar Bowl is my favorite in the Tahoe area, and I've skied at most of them now. I've never had a bad time there. I've only been once in the 07/08 season, and that was before there was much snow, but still it was a lovely day.

I usually hit Sugar Bowl for day trips and hit other resorts for overnights. I live in the Bay Area, and Sugar Bowl is the easiest drive for me. In good weather and minimal traffic, I can be from San Mateo to Sugar Bowl's parking lot in right about 3 hours. You have to get up early in the morning to beat the traffic, though. Load up your gear the night before and put your coffee pot on timer. Then grab your coffee and get out the door at 5:30. You'll be there when the lifts open.

The staff at Sugar Bowl are friendly and efficient. On weekends they have traffic managers at the busier lifts to keep things moving smoothly. Most of the lifts are of the modern, high-speed variety and are easy to get on and easy to exit.

The main reason I love Sugar Bowl is the terrain. They have lots of great stuff for intermediates like me. They have plenty of advanced and beginner, too. It's great for families/groups of mixed abilities.

Sugar Bowl combines both terrain and accessibility for the Bay area jet set crowd. Why schlep all the way to Tahoe City when world class skiing is available just over 2 hrs. from the city? With the additional hour of skiing on the front and back-end of your day, it is possible to get more vertical in one-day than over two days at a larger resort with longer lift lines. With the extra vertical, the gorilla out-and-back trip; departing early Sat. AM and returning same-day PM is easy... a welcomed reprieve from those hectic days in the office. And if that is not enough...go backcountry...plenty o' terrain beyond the reach of the lifts.

And avoid the traffic coming out of Tahoe City on the way home...

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Sugar Bowl is the most underated ski resort in the Tahoe area. Great if you like off-piste slopes, but some all right pistes as well. Plenty of powder (if you know where to find it)!

Went Sunday 1/14/2007. A very cold day to begin with temps well below zero factoring in wind chill. If you ski green or blue you will find most of those runs open, if you ski the blacks eh uh out of luck. The few brave people to ski the black runs were rewarded with hard pack/ice from top to bottom. Unless it warms up enough to melt the cement stay off the blacks. I'm a bump skier and this season has been lacking enough snow to make a mogul field that was not consistant with skiing though large ice cubes. Sugar is in the same boat as many other resorts, lacking snow and they have the most of snow of all resorts I've skied the last two weeks (8) in the tahoe basin. Pray for snow folks! If they had more snow I would mark the over all in the 4-5 area.

Sugar Bowl's slopes remain a tasty selection of cruisers, rolling shoulders, steeps, and chutes. Its 1,500 acres of terrain and four mountain peaks are serviced by 13 lifts. If you got the legs for unabashed fun, stick around Mount Lincoln. Even if you don't, be sure to ride the Silver Belt chairlift to watch others zigzag down the Silver Belt, a natural gully-like halfpipe, once the hair-raising giant slalom course that tested the skills of Leo Lacroix, Billy Kidd, and Phil Mahre. From the top of Lincoln, it still makes even the best rippers act like a hot potato in a child's palm. Intermediates enjoy riding the high-speed Disney Quad that accesses the blue runs on Pony Express, Upper Mac, and Montgomery. Some of the best powder stashes are discovered below Crow's Nest Peak in Strawberry Fields.