EMSC
Well-known member
I'm channeling James Deluxe lately I guess, as I'm hitting some of the smaller weirdo ski areas in the region. Its due to a few factors. I've skied many bumps on the map of skiing in my life, especially in the early years as a racer in the eastern US. So I have little issue spending a few days at the funkier resorts. This particular year I have 'special access' to several as my ailing father bought my entire family Greek Peak annual passes hoping to lure us back east (unfortunately he passed instead). That ski pass comes with the 'Freedom Pass", good at ~15 generally small or even tiny places. A handful out west including Eagle Point.
Eagle point is quite remote, cementing it's status as very uncrowded. Not anywhere near Salt Lake and one ski area too far for Vegas, with Brian Head further south. And it has many funky aspects going on due to the budget available from that lack of crowds. They only operate partial weeks; this time of season, Fri-Sun. there are 4 old chairs and one poma that exists primarily due to prior circumstances. A double lift had the bottom statin destroyed in some sort of mud/rock slide or something and they couldn't afford to replace it. Instead they installed a very short diesel generator operated poma lift from a saddle on a ridge and removed the double, sort of. As in they removed the top and bottom stations and some of the towers, but left multiple lift towers just sitting in the middle of the run.
Green generator:
We are staying in a small condo literally ~50 feet from the top of their short double chair and steps to one of the lodges. With prices that are shockingly low compared to a big name resort. Of course being funky means that several of the lift shacks or lift motor rooms have damage which get repaired with plywood or plastic.
Their beginner lift is broken and down for the season, which I was told was not a big deal as they run shuttle busses which is apparently much faster then the lift ever was run to start with. In fact being funky means that you can only catch a shuttle bus to get to the upper lodge and the 'upper' two lifts, which also happen to face south or SE-ish. (green highlighting I put on the map to be referenced a bit later below)
Which leaves a ~450' vertical triple chair running super slowly in the Skyline lodge area. Interestingly this is where the most skiers are to be found. The terrain is quite low angle and would mostly be greens at a lot of resorts.
It is however easy to get from the 'upper lifts' to the lower. One trail requires a walk across the road, a second goes through a tunnel and has one of the few true blue pitched trails... leading to the main attraction.
The main attraction is a roughly 1000 vert quad chair (and poma) serving a ridgeline with nicely pitched nearly all diamond trails. Nothing super steep, but very nicely pitched black trails.
One of the surprises operationally was the closing of this terrain. The poma shuts at 3:30p which you would think eliminates half of the ridge line, but no they also rope off all the runs under the chair as well leaving only from Hoodoos trail onward to lookers left remaining open. Very bizarre. Why would you not rope off the poma trail and leave the trails open over to Vertigo? It makes literally no sense, especially as they operate 9:30a-4:30p. So plenty of time in the day to ski some good terrain yet.
As to our trip we didn't have the best of luck surface wise; probably not too big a surprise this late in the year (they say 225" YTD with a claim of 350" as normal annual snowfall). While they had some snow last week and 2" just before arriving, the underlying surface had refrozen in most areas. It wasn't warm enough on day one to get very much (other than the S facing tunnel trail) to soften. Though the areas on the map that I shaded in green highlighting were somewhere between still soft or at least firm, but chalky snow. The ridgeline in reality shifts just enough to NW facing for the runs from center (Delano Drop) to lookers right and had gotten skunked just barely (you could tell as you could poke through the thin refrozen surface to soft underneath). But those handful of trails in green tint were decent snow (And I cannot explain why Vertigo was not very soft despite similar exposure; my guess was too much skier traffic as it is much wider than some of the others). As you can see, it did snow an inch on day #2 which helped slightly, but of course not all that much. It helped to be staying slopeside as my wife and son could come and go on a whim and not be stuck sitting at a car or something.
This run was a mistake as it was refrozen under a skiff of snow....
You can see the Tunnel Vision trail really well in tis one...
Eagle point is quite remote, cementing it's status as very uncrowded. Not anywhere near Salt Lake and one ski area too far for Vegas, with Brian Head further south. And it has many funky aspects going on due to the budget available from that lack of crowds. They only operate partial weeks; this time of season, Fri-Sun. there are 4 old chairs and one poma that exists primarily due to prior circumstances. A double lift had the bottom statin destroyed in some sort of mud/rock slide or something and they couldn't afford to replace it. Instead they installed a very short diesel generator operated poma lift from a saddle on a ridge and removed the double, sort of. As in they removed the top and bottom stations and some of the towers, but left multiple lift towers just sitting in the middle of the run.
Green generator:
We are staying in a small condo literally ~50 feet from the top of their short double chair and steps to one of the lodges. With prices that are shockingly low compared to a big name resort. Of course being funky means that several of the lift shacks or lift motor rooms have damage which get repaired with plywood or plastic.
Their beginner lift is broken and down for the season, which I was told was not a big deal as they run shuttle busses which is apparently much faster then the lift ever was run to start with. In fact being funky means that you can only catch a shuttle bus to get to the upper lodge and the 'upper' two lifts, which also happen to face south or SE-ish. (green highlighting I put on the map to be referenced a bit later below)
Which leaves a ~450' vertical triple chair running super slowly in the Skyline lodge area. Interestingly this is where the most skiers are to be found. The terrain is quite low angle and would mostly be greens at a lot of resorts.
It is however easy to get from the 'upper lifts' to the lower. One trail requires a walk across the road, a second goes through a tunnel and has one of the few true blue pitched trails... leading to the main attraction.
The main attraction is a roughly 1000 vert quad chair (and poma) serving a ridgeline with nicely pitched nearly all diamond trails. Nothing super steep, but very nicely pitched black trails.
One of the surprises operationally was the closing of this terrain. The poma shuts at 3:30p which you would think eliminates half of the ridge line, but no they also rope off all the runs under the chair as well leaving only from Hoodoos trail onward to lookers left remaining open. Very bizarre. Why would you not rope off the poma trail and leave the trails open over to Vertigo? It makes literally no sense, especially as they operate 9:30a-4:30p. So plenty of time in the day to ski some good terrain yet.
As to our trip we didn't have the best of luck surface wise; probably not too big a surprise this late in the year (they say 225" YTD with a claim of 350" as normal annual snowfall). While they had some snow last week and 2" just before arriving, the underlying surface had refrozen in most areas. It wasn't warm enough on day one to get very much (other than the S facing tunnel trail) to soften. Though the areas on the map that I shaded in green highlighting were somewhere between still soft or at least firm, but chalky snow. The ridgeline in reality shifts just enough to NW facing for the runs from center (Delano Drop) to lookers right and had gotten skunked just barely (you could tell as you could poke through the thin refrozen surface to soft underneath). But those handful of trails in green tint were decent snow (And I cannot explain why Vertigo was not very soft despite similar exposure; my guess was too much skier traffic as it is much wider than some of the others). As you can see, it did snow an inch on day #2 which helped slightly, but of course not all that much. It helped to be staying slopeside as my wife and son could come and go on a whim and not be stuck sitting at a car or something.
This run was a mistake as it was refrozen under a skiff of snow....
You can see the Tunnel Vision trail really well in tis one...
