Most DANGEROUS Ski Resorts in North America 

Taos.

It is time to rank the 10 most dangerous resorts in the Alps

You should take a look at some local tiny ski resorts, and make a video ranking some of the smallest ski resorts in America. :)

Good list. Glad you mentioned MRG and Silverton. The enormous Powder Mountain in Utah perhaps should also have a special mention, most reliable powder availability, days after Alta and the others are skied out.

Taos should be on this list. You gave Taos a 9 for challenge, but is 100% a 10. And IMO it should probably be about #4 or 5 on this list.

Sounds about right 🤣

I was just going to say that. I switch from skiing to boarding some 36 years ago at Kirkwood and never looked back. Still my favorite resort and go there more than any other.

Kirkwood is a big boy mountain by all standards.

LOL, that was me. I was staying at Heavenly with my wife and someone told me to try Kirkwood. I ended up fine but it was above my skill ...and I loved it.

I instantly recognized that chute as Kirkwood's at the beginning of the video. If it wasn't on this list I wouldn't have watched it at all. It's a tough mountain and hard to get to from the valley side due to the constant avalanche control on the highway in. Will always be on the top of my favorite places to ski.

Kids at whistler are a different breed lol I can handle some of the double blacks there but you’ll see kids go flying down the glacier or double black couloirs up by glacier

@@tylerharaf5901I mean, that’s the evolution of any sport. I was a professional motorcycle racer, my manager used to ride and had retired long before I started racing. He would come out with me from time to time, almost crashing just trying to keep up. There was a big swamp off to the left after a quick hill to immediate right hander , you hit the hill (61mph) when your wheel touched back down you had to brake hard (23mph) within seconds and lean the bike all the way over, he knew he wasn’t going to make the right hander and just went straight into the swamp, $60,000 bike covered up to the handlebars in muck. He was pulling dirt and grass out of it for the following month. I can only imagine what kids will be doing, in any sport, 20 years from now with the next major advance in equipment and sports medicine.

I was at Revy on an icy day with frozen death cookies. I've skied at a lot of places but I thought "Kill the banker" was going to kill me.

Ditto for me kill the banker while it was icy was my worst run ever. What made it even worse was that we weren't expecting it. The top of the mountain had great conditions and the run looked nice but aperantly it was just low enough to thaw the day before and was a sheet of ice.

had a similar experience at Squaw Valley on a routine black nothing special but with it totally icy it was one of the diciest most difficult runs I can recall over the last few years...

Thank you

Taos? Total disrespect.

Agreed altho big sky and moonlight merged along time ago also the little coular and some of the headwaters are definitely more challenging then runs on this list

Kicking Horse is awesome

My Whistler friends hated it. I love it. You are so lucky. Swoosh that pow for me, please.

I live near-ish to kicking horse and I’m not gonna be going on those double blacks I’m not good enough for that but the beauty is the best part of kicking horse and for some reason you always make a friend while your there (Probably cause you are sometimes forced to be with people in the gondola) the people who go there are so nice!

The chutes under the tram at Jay are a different level.

Yeah. This should be titled as worst condition slopes in us 😅

If it has bumps on it the run can't be that hard... unlike bloody couloir in low snow or the U-Notch and V-Notch couloirs

@@jimmoore8951 Never skied the U-Notch or V-Notch, but my last run last season was the N face and couloir of Thunderbolt. climbed V-Notch to Polemonium Peak In October of '19 with my son. Climbed Mt. Sill two weeks after skiing Thunderbolt and wished I had my skis for the descent. Bloody can be tricky at times, but even in good conditions, Parachute and Red Slate are pretty intimidating. I spent four days at Red Slate last spring and skied it twice.

@@midi510 Thunderbolt is a classic 14er but gotta watch the bergschund at the bottom. Sad that the Palisades is now synonymous with a Gucci ski resort instead of the ski mountaineers proving ground that it is

@@jimmoore8951 What makes you think it's synonymous with a Gucci ski resort? I've lived in Mammoth for over 60 years and have been skiing the Eastern Sierra backcountry for over 50. The Palisades is one of my favorite places to get away from the tourists. Sounds like you think I'm a tourist, which is so ridiculous, it's not even funny.

I'd add A-Basin, Red Mtn, Sunshine Village to your list. Big Sky is the "obvious" miss, especially with its big shiny new tram accessing a lot of the most insane terrain. The steepest parts of Moonlight are even harder, and the backside around Shedhorn has some real challenges. But Bridger Bowl is the biggest miss for me. It almost skis like 2 separate mountains, with a few lower and mid mountain lifts mostly serving greens and blues. But from the mid mountain up, it gets truly nutty. The single black runs are still fun for experts, the normal double blacks are as hard as any mountain you'd fly to for an experts trip. But then... there are 2 giant terrain zones of what I think is the best expert terrain in NA. There are multiple 200'+ straightline chutes, giant cliffs, cliff bands on top of other cliffs, and it's all just at the right angles to be skiable. There are a few chutes that rival Corbet's, and a few larger highlight reel runs that only get skied a few times a decade. The snow is usually pretty reliable and fills in the upper mountain well. But it just has never gained the reputation it should given the terrain. Maybe it's the very necessary requirement of having beacons to access the toughest stuff, including the best lift on the mountain.

I feel like hardest and most dangerous (used in the title) are two different things. There are resorts that allow very casual access into innocent looking but very avalanche prone terrain and then there are Northwest ski areas that have treewells everywhere. As an example, nobody would call 9990 at park city a hard chair by this list's standards, but it did rack up a very high bodycount before the gates were closed.

@@RD1R I've heard that from a couple people who ski Montana frequently. I have yet to make it out there or up to Revelstoke and Kicking Horse, been to just about everywhere else other than Kirkwood & SIlverton that is mentioned. Snowbird has some great terrain, between learning to ski there and Crystal Mt I've never been anywhere I found particularly challenging unless you are just going for big drops which depend hugely on snow conditions for how tough they are other than the fear factor.

Agree

BERTHOUD PASS,this must be ALOT of new school extremist because I'm 48 and did second US Xtreme at crested butte and many other comps before I blew my knee on back of Loveland. I have to say in my day BERTHOUD PASS was king of traditional lift Xtreme ski resorts before it closed in mid 1990's and still has hike Xtreme comps there, it's insane. I've done Corbet in style, but cliffs don't scare me vs nasty rugged rocks, icy moguls, weeds, etc. Honorable mention should be also Arapahoe Basin hike pavecini, even snomass has some serious narly shit, but it's a pretty tame resort if you avoid snow mass doubles. Hahaha even Ski Cooper, the world easiest and shortest resort has a sick extra that is snowplow guided only. Backside of Loveland pass has a road that circles up for car rides up and has some serious sick shit but avalanche danger is insane high. I did first South American extreme skiing championship in Argentina and that was pure suicide, day 1 was a must 40ft cliff huck to start first run to land on ice, well that knocked out half the competitors. Either they chickened out, or got injured, or blew their binding like I did landing on ice. I was able to continue to day 2 but had to use rentals cause my soloman 957 bindings were fucked and from day , I got eliminated day 2. I try to find any video from that insane competition, but can't.

Big Sky is awesome, I'd put it ahead even of Jackson. Bridger Bowl in MT isn't as big, but man does it have terrain.

Yup… Big Sky was my home mountain for about a decade (but this was also about 2 decades ago)…. All the access off the tram, big couloir, the entire back of the mountain (especially after Moonlight allowed access to their side of the mountain), A-Z’s, challenger, and the hit list can keep going. My best day of snowboarding in my life was a Feb Tuesday after a 3’ overnight storm, big couloir had about twice that amount of snow in it from it blowing over the top. It was just myself and 2-3 buddies that got to lap big and whatever else we wanted all day pretty much just to our selves

Can't even take this list serious without Big Sky on it.

@@Ikuni17 OK, its a good list. The channel said that 9 of 10 of these mountains were rated 10 of 10 by some measure, so yeah, everything after that is subjective. To be fair, and not taking anything away from Big Sky (which is definitely one of the best, most difficult places to ski on earth), without the Can, (the Presidents and Alphabets and whatnot) Big Sky isn't as much as you can ski from lifts a number of places (Jackson, Taos after the K peak chair, Alyeska, a few places in BC come to mind.) And if you are willing to walk a some steps, there are so many places where you can get into some real back country shit. (think Bridger)

thats exactly what i said.. to put mad river glenn on and no big sky is criminal.

You should try Castle Mountain Resort

Yep A Basin and Taos should get an honorable mention

A basin and BERTHOUD PASS

@@dwg1235 Berthoud Pass is closed bro

Don't forget it is always even steeper than what the camera captures.

I'm a beginner skier and snowboarder. I like the easy slopes with no trees or cliffs.

100

Agree 100%. You can kill yourself easily at big sky on dozens of different runs. I have skied many of these resorts and find big sky as the only one that has what feels like 1,000 acres i wont ski because of difficultly😂

agreed big sky on top

About 12 years ago off the little 10 person tram my friend disappeared off a 50 foot cliff in the fog. After bouncing and tumbling on andocite rocks that was the end of skiing for him. 😢😢😢.

Skiing is a weird way to describe free falling lol

Ha yeah, but you need good body position while dropping, turn 90 degrees in the air, then you better know how to turn after you land.

skiing is terrible out here. i grew up skiing in tahoe and nothing compares and the snow is ass

Ok the little coular, tits up, Never, And some uper A-z chutes along w jack creek and castros. North summit is not nessisarly to hard but is very high risk as you are over cliffs the entire time. I’m just wondering if you have ever skied at big sky and actually whent on some of these runs

Skied there last year, never saw as much super challenging terrain in my life. Truly in a league of its own.

Peakrankings isn’t good enough to ski the hardest runs at Big Sky so they couldn’t rank it.

@@skiingkms2010 😂

I’m 1 hour away, and I’m still hesitant about going on the big couloir

The Big is the Coolest run I've ever done

Great suggestion! That list pretty much changes every year though 😂

Might be the thing that killington can clinch the #1 spot

Why? @nathankovach killington? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I mean they arguably have the best Woodward leave park, have massive jumps on its bear mountain side, has a half pipe, has 12 parks, and usually has them open from week 1 or 2 to may. Plus many of their features were extremely creative, and the whole setup just felt different.

@@nathankovach7414 try 3 sometimes 4 halfpipes at mammoth lol

That’s what I was wondering

Nah, two reasons: 1. Big Sky’s extreme terrain is really only found in a small area of the resort - the rest is pretty tame 2. That extreme terrain either requires paying extra to access or hiking to reach

The best description of Big Sky can be summed up in this slogan: "Park City below treeline, Jackson Hole above treeline". And while paying extra for the tram to access some of the extreme doesn't bode well for the public, I did see this coming. But, how does accessibility limitations degrade the challenge factor of extreme terrain? ◇◇◇ terrain is rated by its degree of difficulty and that doesn't change whether directly off the lift or extensive hiking. Quite frankly, I like the hiking requirement...maintains crowd control. BTW, one will find some extreme runs below treeline on the Moonlight side of the resort.

Sorry but you guys really missed the mark leaving Big Sky out. Sure, there’s a lot of terrain that requires a little hiking but there’s a ton of gnarly terrain accessible right off the tram. I don’t get the disqualification due to the tram costing more. Makes zero sense.

Saying that Big Sky’s extreme terrain is only found in a small area of the resort just isn’t true.

I have never been to Alta it's on my bucket list... please enlighten me to what weirdness are you talking about

Absolutely it does

Well, what about all the kangaroos you guys have to dodge on the slopes down there?

@@PeakRankings Don’t have to deal with those too often, but I still have a Wombat for a coach, giant sheets of bullet proof ice and mouguls and even the occasional magpie

I theres a solid list of honorable mentions that didnt make the cut. Mammoth is on there for sure.

Red can get gnarly but whitewater more fun and gets more snow. Nelson also a cool friendly town

@@2richants I love Fernie too.

Alta was a strong contender for the #10 spot, but we wanted to give the East Coast some love!

It's not the big features but the tight spaces and often icy conditions that'll get ya at MRG! I did it once on a nice 2 ft dump (easy mode). I wouldn't even think of skiing there in marginal conditions.

I hiked fantasy ridge last year for the first time. I've done a lot of back country and other resort hiking and never experienced a pucker like that before!

I think the big difference between Alta and MRG is that it's a lot easier to bail out onto something easier if you bite off more than you can chew at Alta. That and there's usally some actual snow to slow yourself down, which often isn't the case at MRG.