Day 68
Location: Tucson, AZ
Resorts: 32 out of 50
It’s a sad day. Coco is leaving 100 Days of Winter, but don’t feel bad for her. She’s off to her summer job covering music festivals for our sister website. We headed down to the Tucson desert to drop her off and guess what we found down here? Yep, another ski area.
Mt. Lemmon is the southernmost ski area in the United States and the only mountain for miles that you can drive up. Mexicans come over the border to fill up their pick up trucks with snow. On the drive up, I commented that it might have snowed last night as all the cars had snow on their windshields and roofs. Coco informed me that people drive up just to throw snow on their cars. I’m not kidding about any of this.
The Mt. Lemmon Ski Valley is super tiny. One double chair, and on a Sunday really crowded, with lift tickets at a whopping $35 each. I’m sad to report that we didn’t ride this mountain. We couldn’t justify spending $70 for a few sunbaked runs.
We thought about poaching the ski area, but would never do that. But if we did, we might wait until the ski area closed, park our car about a half mile down the road where the security guard couldn’t see us, drop down into the gully, posthole up Rick’s Run, then hike up Aspen Ridge until said security guard started shouting “You’re trespassing. This is private property. I’m calling the police.” At which point, we would strap in and ride an awesome powder run through the trees back to the car.
That’s only if we wanted to poach the ski area. But we would never do that. It’s wrong.
Apres-Ski Report:
There’s not much up on Mt. Lemmon and certainly no good bars. You’re mostly stuck with roadies on the hour or so drive back into Tucson. Coco took us out for Sonoran dogs at El Guero Canelo for dinner. What are Sonoran dogs you ask? If you ever thought the one thing missing from hot dogs is bacon, then get your ass down to Tucson.
The Cheat Sheet:
Mt Lemmon Ski Valley
10300 Ski Run Rd.
Mt. Lemmon, AZ 85619
El Guero Canelo
2480 North Oracle Road
Tucson, AZ
