Xiling Snow Mountain is more of a tourist trap for people who have never seen snow or tried sledding than a ski destination. Access to the snow is not that straightforward. First off, it is a 3-hour drive from Chengdu to the base area. A cable car transfers to a bus that drives people up to the ski area. There are a few magic carpets and small lifts with basic services. It is possible to head up to 3000 meters to catch a view but there is no skiing up there. Although the whole area sits just to the east of the world’s largest mountain range it doesn’t seem to be a good ski destination. The Himalaya to the west are so large and tall that they wring all of the moisture out of the air leaving the area with meager snowfall for all but the highest off piste peaks. We would only suggest the mountain to beginner skiers residing in Chengdu.
Some info can be found here but it seems the many images are either not from Xiling or possibly photo shopped.
http://www.xiling.cn/syssource/mainpage/Enweb/main.html
Nice views off the top but no snow
George Jones - I skied Xiling in January 2014, travelling in from Chongqing to do so. It’s the best known/most accessible “snow mountain” in the area, and as such gets to be very crowded on the weekend. Had one lift that accessed about 4-5 runs, one was “relatively steep”.
If you want to take the lift you have to pay an extra 15RMB on top of the previous entry, gear, etc. fees. Most of the locals didn’t want to pay for this so they would hike up about 30 meters and take pictures, then ski down to the bottom and return to do it again. Made for short lift lines, but the bottom half of the slopes was packed with people out of control or walking around which made it very difficult to not hit the oblivious chinese men/women/children just wandering around.
One run has a small series of about 3 little kicker jumps, had a good time playing around on those, especially after the snow started to get sketchy in the afternoon. Had a small “tree area” that was mostly fenced off, but you could get into it and ski about 100 yards of “off piste” snow, which was also a good time.
I’ve also skied Taiziling XueShan at JiuDingShan in MaoXian, north of Chengdu and believe that Xiling is a much better option, although it’s really easy to get to Jiudingshan.