(sorry, this got a little long, but I promise I'm not a lunatic. 😄)
It’s probably worth clarifying that when I say “in many cases,” skiing in the west is cheaper, I’m referring simply to my experience with lift ticket prices. Obviously, once you factor in the cost of airfare, it’s hard to say it’s “cheaper” than skiing in the southeast (although it’s still a better value). While season passes and multi-day passes can make skiing cheaper, the best values in skiing are found in the less-known “local” ski areas around the west that are not tourist destinations. These local ski areas offer some big terrain that is on par with many of the popular destination resorts and, at a minimum, will dwarf anything in the southern Appalachians. What they won’t have are big resort towns at the base area with some of the most expensive real estate in the country, art galleries, lots of lodging options, heated chair lifts, underground parking garages, or active nightlife options. But they also won’t have ANY crowds or an expensive lift ticket.
I did some quick comparison shopping online, looking at a few resorts in the southeast and in the west that I am familiar with. Since I live in Montana now, this list is Montana-heavy, but I have found some great “undiscovered” ski mountains most everywhere I’ve been in the Rockies. For apples-to-apples purposes, the list below is for a one-day adult lift ticket on Saturday, January 8th, purchased online today. Obviously, purchasing multi-day passes or mid-week tickets will usually get you a better deal at each place, but this is a pretty good starting point for comparison purposes. I included the total acreage and total vertical drop of each are for context.
Sugar Mountain: 115 acres with 1200’ of vertical.
$80
Beech Mountain: 95 acres with 830’ of vertical.
$75
Snowshoe: 244 acres with 1500’ of vertical.
$128
Whitetail Ski Area (just Northwest of DC in PA): 109 acres with 935’ of vertical.
$84
Whitefish Mountain, MT: 3000 acres with 2353’ of vertical.
$89 (Unlike the others on this list, Whitefish really is a “destination” resort with a nice ski town full of lodging, restaurants, retail, galleries, etc. This also happens to be
@HI Cock's home ski area)
Red Lodge, MT: 1600 acres with 2400’ of vertical.
$53
Discovery Ski Area, MT: 2200 acres with 2388’ of vertical.
$68 Discovery has a midnight-madness sale each year in March when season passes can be bought for about $399.
Bridger Bowl, MT: 2000 acres with 2700’ of vertical.
$69 Bridger is just north of Bozeman and is the locals’ cheaper alternative to Big Sky.
Grand Targhee, WY/ID: 2600 acres with 2270’ of vertical.
$103
Every one of those resorts is bigger than all the NC and WV resorts combined and none of them can be fully skied by the average skier in one day. Best of all, there isn't a metro area the size of Greenville/Spartanburg, Greensboro/Winston-Salem, or Charlotte within 200 miles of any of them, so lift lines are practically non-existent.
You mentioned night skiing as an added value. I don't think any of the western resorts I mentioned offer night skiing. Night skiing is not very popular out here. Part of that may be because people don't like skiing in sub-zero temps once the sun goes down. haha. But, honestly, after skiing all day at a western ski resort, most people don't have anything left for a night skiing session anyway. You probably recall from your Colorado skiing that you will traverse more miles on your skis in 2 or 3 hours at any Rocky Mountain resort than you would in 12 hours at Winterplace because you will spend all of that time actually skiing rather than sitting on lifts and standing in lift lines. Like I said earlier, it's a paradigm shift.
