Hi, I'm sure you'll get more comprehensive info from Admin and others who live in SLC, but for what it's worth, I'm attaching below my report from my family's first trip a couple of years ago. We've been to SLC 2 times since then and I would just add a few things: (1) Unlike our first trip, Snowbasin was in great condition this year and was a great resort. Even over the Christmas break, the Strawberry side was uncrowded and had a nice assortment of terrain. (2) Brighton is even better now than it was in 2006, since they put in a high-speed on the Mt. Millicent side. This might be a nice option for your group, since this lift accesses a lot of pretty challenging terrain (including some hike-to ridges that look downright terrifying to me), as well as some nice long blues. Brighton is probably our favorite overall. (3) On a subsequent trip, we hit Snowbird, and I recommend Mineral Basin for those in your group who are sort of between blues and blacks. It's mostly an ungroomed bowl, steep, but wide, so you can make nice wide traverses. But my advice for your intermediates is to avoid the "least challenging" run (called something like Lupine Loop), which is groomed and not very steep, but is narrow and heavily travelled and icy, so frankly was much scarier than the bowls. (4) If you hit Canyons on a crowded day, make your way to the Dreamcatcher area. It's mostly blues, but a good variety of groomed, ungroomed, glades, bowls.
And I suppose you know that you should buy your lift tix at ski shops, not the ticket window at the resorts. You'll get significant discounts.
Have fun!
Posted on First Tracks Online 1/4/06 in response to another question like yours.
I’m certainly no expert on Utah, but we just returned a few days ago from our first trip there, and had a terrific time, thanks in large part to some excellent advice from Tony, Marc, and others in this forum. (The Best Snow on Earth also had something to do with it!) We stayed at the Homewood Suites in Sandy, on Fort Union, which I think must be in the same area as you’re staying. We skied Brighton (twice), Solitude (twice), Alta, Park City, and Snowbasin. Here’s some feedback you may find useful, and I’ll end with a question for the others more knowledgeable than I.
First, conditions were great everywhere, except Snowbasin, where there was the same kind of underlying layer of ice that we find all the time when we ski around Washington, DC. I will say that we didn’t get very far up the mountain, so maybe conditions were better there. Some local kids on the lift told us they had rain in December on the mountain for the first time in their lives, so I suppose this is what generated the ice.
Second, if you’re worried about crowds, go to Solitude. Even on a powder day between Christmas and New Year, we never had to wait in a lift line longer than 2 minutes, even at the base. Snowbasin also was very uncrowded, and Brighton wasn’t bad the 2 days we were there, but these were before Christmas, so probably not peak days. Lines were very long at Park, but this was the day after Christmas. (We were given good advice to go there before Christmas to avoid the crowds, but unfortunately couldn’t do that.)
On the nature of the resorts -- Solitude has a pretty small terrain park, so wasn’t popular with our advanced snowboarding son, but was the favorite of our beginning boarder daughter, who found more nice long green runs there. Brighton is definitely the boarders’ resort of choice among the 4 Cottonwood Canyon resorts, and Park is a boarder’s dream. I have to admit that even though I regularly ski blacks and some double-blacks around Washington DC, I found the ungroomed runs (even the blues) at all the SLC resorts challenging. I could find enough groomed runs at any of these to keep me occupied, but I got the impression that Park and Snowbasin probably paid more attention to grooming than the others. Park each day has some “signature” blacks that are not normally groomed, but are groomed that day.
Regarding brown-bagging, we brought our own lunches everywhere but Park and Alta, and had no problems. Solitude and Brighton (I think) ask you to eat on the outside tables, which was no problem on the days we were there. At Snowbasin, there is a pretty fancy lunch-room, with a sign on one door saying no outside food allowed, but it was lousy weather outside, so we went inside and bought lunch for the kids, while my wife and I fixed our own sandwiches, and no one objected.
We generally got to the resorts by 9:00- 9:30, and never had a problem with parking at any of the resorts. In fact we parked close enough to the lodges that we just left our food in the car until lunch – no need for a locker.
The lines for lift tix at Canyon (and another nearby shop, called Ski and Sky, or Sea and Ski, or something like that) were pretty long in the morning – 15- 20 minutes some days – and once a shop was sold out of Solitude -- so by the end of the trip, we started buying the night before. Of course, then you’re taking the risk that foul weather or a sick kid may be a problem….
Where would I go back? Really any of the places we went—provided that I could go to Park on a less busy day, and that Snowbasin had some serious snow to cover those icy spots. I have a special place in my heart for Park, because when our son developed an upset stomach after a couple of runs, they actually refunded 2/3 of all our lift tickets. I was pleasantly surprised. (And that’s how my wife and I got to go to Alta for the afternoon that same day.)
We found skiutah.com to be very helpful -- with information on conditions at each resort every day and links to each resort's own webpage.
