President’s day week trip 2022 — part 2: Utah resort skiing
On this ski trip, we spent 4 out 6 skiing days in the resorts. Below are some notes from those days:
2/18 Friday — Canyons at Park City
The Park City resort is massive — at 7,300 acres and 330+ trails, it’s the largest ski resort in the US. While impressive, its big size comes with several compromises that make us prefer the other resorts near Salt Lake city more :
- lots of lengthy and flat traverses to get around different part of the mountain :(
- This year Vail’s staffing shortage was more acutely felt in a resort this massive. When we arrived, with the lack of recent snow (see previous post) a lot of the south facing aspects of the slopes had dismal coverage, some were completely bare. Only less than 75 % of all the terrain was open in mid-late Feb. Even more frustrating was the food situation. We originally arranged to meet our friends for lunch at Cloud Dine at the top of the Dreamcatcher lifts. After many long traverses (see above point) and a gazillion lift rides to finally arrive there, we were told there was no lunch food sold there due to staffing shortage (despite the website saying otherwise).
These drawbacks non-withstanding, it’s still Utah skiing, and it’s covered by our pass, so we still had a good time. We especially enjoyed the runs off the 9990 lift and northern aspect slopes off the Super Condor lift.
Favorite runs:
- Tree runs: Condor Woods off Super Condor (Condor Woods #1 has a good start but ends with a really long and narrow traverse at the end; Condor Woods #3 is more fun because of less traverse at the end, but the trees did get quite tight at the bottom)
- Mogul run: 94 turns of 9990 lift
- Easier black run: Thrasher off Super condor — a bit woody at times, but steep and soft
One interesting fact we learned on this trip is the backcountry gate at the top of 9990 lift is notorious for avalanche fatalities: “Nearly half of the 37 skiers and snowboarders in Utah who have died in avalanches in the past 20 years have perished in backcountry terrain accessed via a ski resort lift. And more than half of those — including two men who died in separate avalanches in January — left through the exit point above the Ninety-Nine 90 lift.”
The article’s analysis is worth a read (td;dr the ease of access meant a lot of people who crossed the gates weren’t prepared with avy equipment and knowledge). I also find Snowbasin’s approach that reduced the fatalities quite fascinating.
2/20 Sunday — Solitude
We originally planned another backcountry day on Sunday given it was a blackout day on our ski pass. However, the giant foot blisters I got from the White Pine ski touring day spoiled our plans. We went to the new Evo location in SLC in the morning for some boot adjustment — the pro boot fitter addressed my blister problems so masterfully (main takeaway is avoiding any relative movement between foot and boot liner while in walk mode, using tightened laces), that I felt good enough for some downhill skiing.
Due to it being a blackout day on our Epic pass, we decided to try somewhere new — having been to Alta several years ago, we picked Solitude due to its Ikon pass coverage and an interesting looking trail map (and a beeeaaautiful logo)
And wow we loved this place. It quickly made the list into our top 3 favorite resorts: Big Sky in Montana, A basin in Colorado, and Solitude in Utah.
For the start, the bowl where the Roundhouse lodge sits at the base at was a massively open alpine terrain with fun and challenging runs in all directions:
Even the blue runs here were surprisingly challenging, filled with massive moguls that would surely be considered black diamond runs elsewhere. At one point we arrived at top of a run called Paradise — looking down the slope, not surprisingly, paradise is consisted entirely of moguls, according to Solitude.
To access the top half of the mountain from Powderhorn lift to summit express, we had to ski through the Powderhorn Cirque a few times — although it was marked as single black on the map, it was not for the faint-hearted — with the snow coverage that day, one had no choice but brave through a super narrow and steep drop followed by some unavoidable airtime. My heart was pounding fast every time we did that.
Besides fabulous and steep terrain, one of the best things about Solitude is its origin story: “Robert M. Barrett was a uranium mining tycoon who made his fortune in Moab, Utah during the early 1950s. Barrett moved to Salt Lake City and took up skiing, pursuing his passion at Alta Ski Area. After being denied restroom access at Alta, reserved for lodging guests only, Barrett vowed to open his own ski area.”
2/22 Tuesday — Snowbasin
As epic local pass holders this season, we get 2 days access to Snowbasin. The mountain had fun and open terrain, but what made the biggest impression was the level of fanciness of its amenities.
The lodges at the base and at mountain top were extravagant massive log mansions. No surprise there were also advertising as a wedding venue. For the first time a ski resort base lodge/cafeteria felt like a high end 5 star hotel to me.
We spent most of the day working on skiing techniques, I specifically practiced a lot on:
- keeping center of gravity forward — if I bend knees to get lower, I need to lean my upper body more forward to compensate, in order to keep the center of gravity forward and not get into back seat
- keep upper body always face downhill
- correct bad pole holding habits, keep arm quiet at 90 degrees
One regret of our Snowbasin trip was not making it over to the No Name area, highly recommended by our local backcountry skier friend. Gives us a reason to go back some day :)
2/23 Wednesday — Park City
Last day of the trip — when we woke up, snow report showed overnight 6 inches of new snow at Park City and 0 at Snowbasin.🤩 The geography near Salt Lake tends to create very localized weather patterns, so different resorts often have very different snowfall. We immediately ditched the initial plan of going back to Snowbasin and headed back to the PCMR, this time on the Park City side.
Although the Park City side of PCMR also suffers from some of the same problems with long and flat traverses, it was after all, a powder day. Snow continued to fall throughout the whole day, replenishing the powder. ❄️ It has somehow become a tradition that the last day of all of our past ski trips had been heavy snow days 🤔
Looking through my photos, I realized we were too busy lapping the mountain to take any pictures 😂
Another pleasant surprise was the food options at Park City — for lunch, we had some of the best tasting, fresh and healthy meals we ever had at a ski resort 😋
