Review: Boreal Mountain Resort in Truckee, California

When I hear people talk about snowboarding they always seem to mention how great the big name resorts are. Yeah, sure, Heavenly is awesome but its also like $80 for a lift ticket unless you find a discount. The same goes for NorthStar and most of the other World Class Resorts. Of course, the big names do have the acreage and lifts to make it worth while. Face it, Heavenly is like Disney Land because it takes two days to see everything and the smaller resorts might as well be the local petting zoo. To be perfectly honest, no one ever name drops a small resort and talks about how awesome it is....unless its Boreal.

I think that the only reason that Boreal has become so popular is because of the College Student Friday discount lift tickets. So, in essence, its really only popular with people crazy enough to make the day-trip; The same people that are broke enough to think of the money savings in terms of food.

As a snowboarding junkie, I am always looking for extra cash during the winter so I can do day-trips or weekend trips with my friends. A couple of years ago we paid a visit to Boreal on a Friday and since then we have made many return visits. The return visits are mostly because of the cheap $20 lift tickets that Boreal offers to the college crowd (It used to be $10). Don't get me wrong, the mountain is actually pretty good inspite of how small it is (though I have not seen the back lift open in 5 visits and there was good snow for many of them). Boreal boasts snow making capabilities along with tons of terrain parks which really makes it a snowboarding playground. I would not recommend taking intermediate to advanced skiers to Boreal. If you are not a park rider you can still have fun at Boreal by going off the standard trails but don't plan on finding any good double diamonds because the single diamonds are hardly a challenge for good riders.

Visit the links listed below for more information.

Trail Map

Terrain Parks

Boreal's Webpage