We’ve Adjusted our Terrain Diversity Category to Better Measure Resorts with Fewer Traditional Terrain Areas.

A closeup of some of Arapahoe Basin’s only below-treeline terrain. We’ve decided to adjust the resort’s score today as part of a tweak to our terrain diversity category.

We’ve made a slight change to our terrain diversity criteria to better reflect how typical guests spend time on the mountain. When assessing resorts for this category, we heavily value unique terrain that can’t be found at a local hill—such as bowls, glades, and chutes. However, as we’ve ventured into reviewing smaller West Coast resorts, we now feel that we haven’t properly judged some resorts for a lack of more normal terrain, such as groomers and beginner/intermediate offerings. The following resorts offer quite unique footprints but are lacking in some of these basic terrain types, and we’ve adjusted their scores to account for our previous oversight. That’s not to say that these resorts lack groomed, below-treeline terrain entirely—they just don’t offer nearly the same quantity as other resorts that currently share the same terrain diversity score.

With these adjustments, the following resorts see score changes in the terrain diversity category (with brief reasoning in parentheses):

• Stevens Pass - 7 to 6 (lack of lengthy trails)

• Alpental - 6 to 5 (near absence of beginner/intermediate terrain)

• Mount Baker - 7 to 6 (very limited groomed terrain; lack of lengthy trails)

• Arapahoe Basin - 8 to 7 (limited below-treeline beginner/intermediate terrain)

• Sierra-at-Tahoe - 7 to 6 (lackluster intermediate terrain)

• Homewood - 7 to 6 (lack of lengthy trails)

• Timberline Lodge - 7 to 6 (near absence of advanced/expert below-treeline terrain)

See our detailed criteria for each terrain diversity score threshold here.