Ski Season Summary

I thought it would be interesting to try to visualize all of the ski data I have logged from time to time throughout the last three ski seasons here in WA.  I created a database using Bento on my iPhone in order to quickly capture several attributes about the conditions, weather, etc.  This data sample does not include every ski trip I've taken in the last three years.

This basic pie chart shows that I mainly split my time between Summit Central during both the day and night, as well as Alpental and Crystal Mt. I usually don't have a chance to hit Blackcomb or Baker as much as I'd like to.

Here is a visualization showing the most common weather I've encountered over the last three ski seasons at the various ski areas.  This suggests that I mostly skied under clear skies, followed by skiing while it was snowing, with the lower number of days skied under cloudy or foggy conditions.  It appears as though I have the best weather while night skiing at Summit Central, and usually seem to hit more fog over at Crystal for some reason compared to the other ski areas.

This next chart shows that the most common snow condition over the last three years for me has been packed powder, followed by icy conditions, believe it or not.  I did have more powder days than "average" days, where the snow condition wasn't bad, but wasn't that great either.  This is followed by dust on crust and of course spring snow, where I usually call it a season.

Notice that this sort of coincides with the above chart in terms of my enjoyment of Summit Central at night because while I had the most clear conditions, it appears as though I also had the most number of icy conditions at night under the stars, which makes sense...Sun goes down and it gets cold...snow firms up.

This next chart shows a summary of the number of skip trips I took over the last three years (of those I remembered to capture data on) and illustrates a few things.  First this shows that I started the 2011/12 season earlier than the 2012/13 season.

This chart also shows that compared to last year, I spent more time at Alpental later in the season as compared to Summit Central at night last season.  This is because I just recently started spending a lot more time at Alpental and therefore my time over at Summit Central is going down.

Also notice that as I'm up at Summit West generally only at the very start of the ski season because Summit West is typically the first area to open, and I'm always eager to hit the slopes as early as possible, but as the season gets under way, I usually don't revisit Summit West throughout the season.