ttelrabyou paid for a college education and are fine with being a liftee? move out west but get a job using the degree you're getting, seems like a waste not to
He does not have to do that yet. I would try to be a waiter for a year, and ski all day. Try to get to the ski town as soon as possible to work on housing/work. I would avoid being an instructor, as you teach 5 days and ski 2. Don't get me wrong, you might love teaching people to ski, but if you are only doing this for one year you need to ski as much as possible.
Have you considered what to do after that? You could use your degree to try to go into the management at a resort, just be aware that you will not ski as much as you do in a low end job, at least to my knowledge. You will, however, get yourself a real career, which is valuable.
I would to one ski bum year, then move to somewhere like Seattle or Denver or Salt Lake where you can ski great mountains every weekend and have a real job.
I don't think being a lifty is a waste of a degree if you do it for one year. In fact, if you love to ski I almost think it is a waste to just use your degree immediately. Trust me, if you do one year and ski 100+ days you will be glad you did. I spend several years between college and grad school skiing Squaw everyday and had I not done that I would have really regretted it. Don't get me wrong, I love being a weekend warrior now and skiing Mammoth 35 days a year while getting to surf in the summer, but my ski bum years were really fun. You don't want to be 35 looking back wishing you had done that one winter.
I went to Tahoe, which was unbelievable. You get lots of snow, unless we are in a drought, and the steeps are great. We could go back into a drought, you can't predict that, but if you look at the last 100 years of snowfall patterns, what is available suggests 400 inch seasons are much more common than 200 inch seasons. There are other great places but I only live in Tahoe so I can't comment on Utah/Wyoming/Montana/Colorado. I would try to give you Tahoe info but my information will be a decade out of date since that is when I left. Someone else who lives up there will probably have modern beta to share.
Good luck. And go for it. Like I said you don't want to regret never having done this. If you get settled in a white collar career it will be much harder to leave for a ski bum year. Do it now while you can, and ski as many days as possible.
