Plan your winter mountain getaway. Now!

With fall just around the corner, we’ve started thinking about what we might do to get up to the snow for some skiing and down time away from home. If you don’t have a second home in the mountains to call your own, then it’s not too early to start planning for your getaway now. Here are a few tips as you think about that trip to the mountains.

The first question is, short stay in a hotel, or a house or cabin rental? And what about special deals on lift tickets and ski equipment?

A hotel is easy and predictable and there are loads of places on the Internet to find great deals on hotel rooms in the Sierra. Hotels.com, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline and Hotwire are some of the biggies that get lots of attention. They all crawl lots of sites and find great deals; most of them have reviews and user ratings so you can get first hand insights from other travelers. My favorite site to find hotels these days is Kayak. Kayak is a travel search engine. As a travel search engine, Kayak searches hundreds of travel sites, in the U.S. and abroad. You get the names and rates in a very easy-to-use display. Then you choose the exact result you want and Kayak sends you to the source to make your purchase.

They handle the entire spectrum of travel so Kayak is a comprehensive travel resource.

If a cabin or a mountain house is more to your liking, there are some great options for you to check out. One of the coolest sites I’ve come across recently is San Francisco-based, Vamoose. I initially liked Vamoose for the name – that has to count for something, right? But Vamoose is more than a clever name. It is an easy site to use. Like Kayak, Vamoose crawls the web for vacation rental properties and compiles them into a huge index. The site is easy to use and the listings have lots of photos and a very clear list of amenities on each property.

My favorite place to find cabins or vacation homes is a site that I discovered earlier this year: Vacation Rentals By Owner. Vacation homes almost always offer more space than you will find at a hotel and the value is often superior. If you’re traveling with a group – family or friends – this is the way to go. With most of the listings on vrbo.com you are dealing directly with the owner so there’s usually a savings associated with that direct relationship.

The listings have lots of photos, a very complete list of amenities and most have comments from previous guests as well. We’ve found properties on vrbo.com that don’t show up anywhere else. A couple of our friends have used this site as well and they were very pleased, too.

The very last consideration is the actual skiing (if that is what you’re going up to the mountains for in the winter!). There are loads of deals on lift tickets but there’s a great resource that we found several years ago that really has great deals for the skier: SnowBomb. SnowBomb.com is the ultimate one-stop resource. They clearly focus on discount lift tickets but they also highlight events and they offer bus trips up the hill so that you can leave the driving to someone else.

The best deal on SonwBomb is the Tahoe Card. The card is $50 and includes two free lift tickets, discounts between $5 and $20 off of lift tickets at all the big ski resorts, free and discounted rentals from ski shops from San Francisco to Reno, plus discounts on lodging and restaurants. If you will make at least two trips up to the Tahoe area this season, the Tahoe Card will pay for itself and a whole lot more. The card is usually $80 but the preseason price of $50 is another savings for those who plan ahead.

SnowBomb has a great email bulletin over the winter and up-to-the minute weather and condition reports at all the Sierra resorts.

Do you have a favorite tip for winter trips to the mountains? Post your tips and comments below.

Kevin Elliott, Hiddenbrooke Community Association