Peterson, UT – An 11-mile stretch containing 24 Wasatch Mountain peaks and 15 bowls, spanning an unfathomable 12,740 acres (some 20 square miles) near Salt Lake City, is on the market. It’s perhaps the last great single plot of private land in the U.S. upon which to build a top-tier ski resort, and for a paltry $46 million it could all be yours.
Dick Bass, the late co-founder of Utah’s Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort and son of a wealthy Texas oil man, and his contemporary Earl Holding, the late magnate of Sinclair Oil, Snowbasin Resort in Utah and Sun Valley, Idaho, assembled the property in the late 1990s. Now that both of these men have passed on — Holding in 2013 and Bass this past summer — Wasatch Peaks Ranch is up for sale.
No one is quite sure why the men purchased such a massive land holding in the Utah Mountains. It’s located in Morgan County just south of Snowbasin, but it’s separated from that existing ski resort by Interstate 84. They may have been considering building a whole new resort, but that would’ve taken Bass’ attention away from Snowbird and Holding’s from Snowbasin. Perhaps Bass intended to use the property as leverage to swap for U.S. Forest Service land near Snowbird. No one really knows for sure.
Mirr Ranch Group of Denver has been handed the task of listing Wasatch Peaks Ranch for sale, at a heady price of $46 million. The property is currently zoned for home sites of at least 160 acres, but broker Ken Mirr has indicated that some 5,500 acres of the property — more area than Colorado’s Vail Mountain Resort — has been deemed ideally suited for development as a ski area and receives up to 400 inches of snowfall annually. Land within Wasatch Peaks Ranch reaches from 4,820 feet near the Weber River to 9,570 feet above the Peterson Cirque.
Other peaks above the Ranch are on Forest Service land presently permitted to Wasatch Powderbirds for helicopter skiing. Powderbirds seldom, if ever uses the terrain, however, for these shortened lines abbreviate at the private Wasatch Peaks Ranch boundary that’s 25 miles long. It’s a long flight from their home base at Snowbird, and their guides can find longer heliski lines for guests elsewhere in the range closer to their helipad.
Any proposal to build a ski resort on Wasatch Peaks Ranch is almost certain to foster opposition from local environmental groups and planners. However, unlike much of the other ski terrain in the region, the land is privately owned and does not reside in a protected watershed.
We can all dream, can’t we?