Just got back from Utah after four days of skiing both at Park City and Deer Valley. We originally booked this trip to use two days from our Edge Cards at Park City, which is now part of the same group of resorts as Whistler.
Park City is a big resort, having combined the original resort and the nearby Canyons resort into a huge mega-resort with 41 lifts and over 330 runs. They don't quite have the amount of terrain that Whistler has, but that is a lot of runs and lifts! What is even more spectacular is that almost all lifts are fast express ones and there are five or six 6-person lifts, offering amazing capacity. For this reason there are no significant line-ups even on weekends, unlike in Whistler.
Unfortunately Utah resorts (as well as the ones next door in Colorado) have been having a really bad season and snow base in Park City is only 75 cm. That feels like nothing compared to 250+ cm in Whistler and the fact that we get snow dumps bigger than that few times a winter!
The town of Park City (and Deer Valley right next to it) are really high up with the base altitude being 2000 meters and the summits reaching 3100 meters. Being this high up, I was surprised to find no snow in the village and the lower parts of runs are in middle of completely bare ground. It feels like late spring, but resorts are doing an incredible job in snow-making and most of the runs are open, despite the conditions.
First two days were beautiful days, but the runs were quite icy due to overall conditions, which I didn't like. Fortunately on the third day we had a snow day, getting 10 cm of fresh snow, which made the runs much softer.
We skied 2 days in both resorts, only tasting the very best of over 430 runs. There is quite a lot to do and there is some great profile to be found. Park City even has express lifts taking you on top of summit ridges, offering dozens upon dozens chute runs, if those are your cup of tea.
The one thing I found curious was that Deer Valley is a skiing-only resort, with snowboarders having no business there. It was actually quite relaxing and perhaps it helps to maintain runs in better conditions throughout the day? I have never encountered that elsewhere and wonder if any Canadian resort is the same way?
All in all it was a great four days in Utah, despite the lack of snow. I wish we would have been there last year, when the season was apparently fantastic. Oh well. Next time we need to try the resorts on the west side of the mountain range, such as Snowbird, Alta and Brighton.
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