I just got back from an Indy Pass trip.
First stop in Bluewood. Bluewood is about 20 miles south of Dayton ,Washington which is about 250 miles away from my home in Seattle. It has two triple chairs one of which is mostly beginner, the other having about 1000 feet of vertical and some nice skiing. The area is shaped like an inverted triangle with two gullies joining at the bottom and then fanning out at the top along a ridge. The main runs are all cut runs through the trees with various amounts of tree skiing in between. Bluewood has a good mix of runs. Some nice blue cruisers, some loop around green stuff, and some steep faces with bumps. The trees have a lot of potential but unfortunately there was the dreaded rain crust which made them mostly unskiable. The black bump runs were fun. A couple of which you needed to ski a groomer down to get to them and then a groomer to get back. There one really nice one that was pretty darn long and had good snow. I skied here on Sunday and the worst line was about five minutes mid morning. I enjoyed my time here and would go back as long is it's on the way. Bluewood is not on the Indy Pass but it is free if you are over 70.
Tamarack
I left Bluewood about 2 o'clock and pulled into McCall Idaho around 6 o'clock. Tamarack is on the Indy Pass.
Tamarack is about 10 miles south of McCall. There is a small town called Donnelly where are you turn west at a Sinclair station, then it is about 8 miles to the area. The base area is a collection of those portable rigid tents with a bunch of upper end high rise condo buildings behind them. I had to ask around to find the ticket tent. There are three high speed quads. The first one is a beginner intermediate one that accesses the other two. There is a summit quad and then a another off to the side that has an intermediate elevation. The summit quad is fairly short with about 1000 feet of vertical. It services some moderate wide-open bowls with tree glades and then more trees. There are runs off the summit that take you all the way to the bottom which means you are stuck riding the long lower chair to get back to the top. There are a lot of benches with flats and connecting cat tracks. There was also the dreaded crust layer. The place was just empty so there was nobody to quiz about how to find good places to ski. I did find some good lines by poking around and getting lucky. The other high speed quad it's called Wildwood. It is down in the trees, had better visibility, and some better snow. It also has some nice pump runs one of which was right under the chair and had moderately sized fairly soft moguls. This run was worth repeats.
On my second day at Tamarack I pulled into the parking lot in the rain. After sitting around for about 20 minutes it seem to be slacking up a bit so I went for it. The rain change to snow after writing up about about 500 feet. Then came the bad news, the upper lift was running slow because of high winds. One ride up this and I headed off to the Wildwood chair. My bump runs had firmed up so I hit a few groomers until I got tired of the snow melting on me and took an early lunch. Lunch lasted for about 45 minutes sitting in my car with the heater running. Luckily the rain turned to snow so I went out again. By this time the summit lift was running full speed and there was new snow and blow in in spots next to tree lines so my afternoon was saved. I poked around looking for tree lines with blow in and found enough for a good time. Tamarack is a decent area with totally no crowds but I wouldn't recommend it if you're a hard charger.
Brundage
Brundage has one high speed quad with about 1500 vertical and three triple chairs.
Most of the good stuff is reachable from the high speeder. The terrain here has a much more consistent fall line in Tamarack. It is generally the same as Tamarack with open on top, glades in the center and trees at the bottom. I had a bit of new snow here which made off piste skiing fun until you got down to the lower third of a mountain which had the crust. The groomers were good, long, with few flats. Some of the glades to trees runs had some pretty big ruts between the trees. The closer to the chair I skied there were fewer, smaller ruts however there were some good wind rills up high. There were gullies that you needed to avoid on the lower mountain. There is a back side chair called Lakeview although there was no view because of fog. The trees back here were crunchy and I only took a couple of runs.
On my second day there was about 3 inches of new plus some blow around and the upper trees skied even better. I also was able to find a few good areas in the lower trees. There were bump runs to be had and they had good snow. Both days there was a lift line of about five minutes max from about 10 o'clock to 1130.
Brundage is a really good area, not great but really fun. It would be interesting for a shortish stay or a trip like I did going to other areas.
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Zap