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Originally Posted by Blake94
I'm a 22-year-old college student from Texas looking to move somewhere up North like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, or South Dakota. I love the cold and want to be somewhat close to a ski resort. I graduate in May with a BS in Occupational Safety and Health so I'll be looking for a safety related job. Where are the most affordable places to live in Idaho that are closest to a ski resort? What is the job outlook like? And really what are the positives and negatives about living in Idaho?
Thanks!
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Cold is easy to find. Affordable living in a ski resort town is a lot harder. Destination resorts and affordability are as incompatible as oil and water.
Idaho's ski resort towns are all much more expensive to live in than our other cities. They are no different to live in than Vale, Park City, Jackson Hole, Squaw Valley, Breckenridge, or any of the others in the West.
They all lie in remote, hard to reach areas, are dependent on the whims of nature and the competition, and none ever lack for employees who will work for very little more than a full-season pass and enough to scrape by when they're not skiing.
Ski towns are always full of ski bums whose life revolves around snow and nothing else. Ski bums are always competition for every job in a ski town, along with everyone else who wants to live in them.
I suggest you might consider thinking about your priorities. What is most important to you right now? Your favorite recreation or your infant career? While there's nothing 'wrong' with either, you will have a hard time making both satisfactory.
Your choice of training is a pretty good one, but with no experience in your field is probably going to make your job opportunity in places where so many others want to live isn't going to be easy to land a job.
Any ski season only lasts about 1/3 of every year here. It's important to have an idea of how you want to spend the other 2/3rds of every year, and how much of your priority in life will be dedicated to recreation over the other necessities of life.
There are lots and lots of smaller, local ski hills in Idaho. They're all over the intermountain west. Many won't ever require a lot of employees, and many lie closer to our population centers than the resort towns.
I think selecting a state first, and then planning on checking it out in person when it is possible for you to spend some time in it would be a good first step. Idaho is a beautiful state, but it's not perfect, and no one can determine perfection for you. That's all up to you alone.
But if you can, come out and look us over. There are lots of little local ski hills all over the state. Most don't need help, but they're all pretty close to towns that are affordable and may have a job for you.
For sure, life here is much different here than it is in Texas.