The Greatest Snow on Earth Info for those living outside our Pretty, Great State. You're halfway down an intermediate bump run off the "Eagle Express" high-speed quad at Solitude Resort, 15 minutes up the canyon from Salt Lake City.  Weekdays you can bang down deserted slopes and ski right onto the lift again.  Pictures 1998 by Bruce

Big Cottonwood Canyon
Brighton: A bargain. Excellent night skiing (best in Utah, in our humble opinion). Lots of wide, easy to easy-intermediate slopes for the kids (under age 10 ski free).   Black diamond runs are nice, although many are short.  Consistently decent skiing from year to year. The best terrain in Utah for knuckle-draggers, with special stuff such as half-pipe, sequenced jumps, and jumping ridge.
Solitude: Got an hour and want to work out your legs? This is where you go to practice bump skiing, via the Eagle Express quad. Excellent deal for local skiiers.  Fair amount of easy snow also.  Solitude is probably the greatest resort you've never heard of -- on weekdays, you practically have the place to yourself.

Little Cottonwood Canyon
Snowbird: The tram runs until June; this high-altitude resort is excellent even in late-season. Lots of area for good intermediate to advanced skiiers.   Unfortunately, there's not much variety for the beginners in your crowd -- they'll spend most of the day skiing down cat-tracks.  Good place for your "hard core" young bucks. Bring a lunch for the LONG hike from the parking lots to the ticket window.
Alta: Albion basin has lots of easy snow for family skiiers. Great variety.  Alta is the "grand dame" of Utah's ski resorts, and is still among the best overall.  Alta and Snowbird tend to be more crowded on weekdays than the Big Cottonwood resorts.

Park City Area
Deer Valley: Pricier. Get knocked over by skiing movie stars. The restaurants here are fantastic.  The snow is decent but not quite as good as Park City, and some steeper areas tend to get icy in the spring. Our unbiased reviewers think they groom too much. Lodging for every budget: rich, rich as hell, stinking rich, and Bill Gates. In the summer, probably Utah's top lift-served mountain biking destination.
The Canyons AKA Wolf Mountain AKA Park West:  New facilities and new terrain have finally made this "also-ran" resort a contender. Also newly expensive lift tickets. The new slopes are very nice. On the lower mountain during warm years, many runs tend to be 100 yards of bumps then a mile of semi-flat canyon bottom back to the lift. Watch the ice patches once the weather warms.
Park City: Long runs, lots of easier snow, with bump runs rejoining the easier runs so groups of varying ability can ski together.  Lots of cute little stores close to the ski slopes, which is heaven for wives who tire quickly.  Park City is a good place for a longer ski vacation. Bring money.

Provo Canyon
Sundance: Can be great in mid-season. Suffers from low altitude: late start; turns to slush in March.  Crowded on weekends because it's so close to Provo and BYU. This is Robert Redford's hangout. Good weekday change-of-pace if you're here in January or February. Great place for lift-served mountain biking in the summer.

Ogden Area
Snow Basin: Too many resorts, so little time. Haven't gotten around to trying Ogden's resorts yet. (Too busy riding my bike in the winter's snow in Lambert Park.)
Powder Mountain: I've been mountain biking there...

Brian Head
Never been skiing there. Nice mountain bike trails, though.

Return to Bruce's information page.

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