USA TODAY International Edition
AMERICA’S LARGEST SKI RESORT
With a mega- merger of Park City and neighboring Canyon resorts, visitors to Utah will find trails that stretch clear to powder heaven
Every year around this time, ski resorts across North America start to roll out annual upgrades, hoping to woo travelers and outdo their competition. This season is a rich one, with Jackson Hole, Wyo., adding a new lift, restaurant and trails, Sun Valley, Idaho revamping its flagship lodge, and Vermont’s Burke opening an entirely new hotel. But all of it pales beside what is going on in Park City, Utah: the opening of the largest ski resort in the nation’s history.
Skiing in Utah has been on the increase ever since the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. While the Olympics have proven to be a double- edged sword for many cities that have hosted them, often leaving deficits and obsolete facilities, Utah was a rare exception. The number of skiers and snowboarders visiting the state has increased about 40% since the Games, and hotels and base lodges built for the events are still going strong. No place benefited more than Park City, a historic former mining town just 40 minutes from downtown Salt Lake and home to many alpine events ( as well as the famous Sundance Film Festival).
Now Park City is enjoying another renaissance. When the new Quicksilver gondola is fired up this December, it will carry skiers and snowboarders from one end of giant Park City resort to the other — except that the other end is what used to be the neighboring Canyons, which was already the largest ski mountain in Utah.
Operating under the more recognizable Park City name, this new behemoth is a combination of the existing Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons, plus several new trails on the ridge that once separated them. The gondola and new trails are just the most visible highlights of the $ 50 million that operator Vail Resorts has spent fashioning the nation’s largest ski resort.
Before the merger, these were the state’s two biggest in terms of skiable in- bounds acreage, and the combined numbers are staggering: 7,300 acres of skiable terrain with 14 bowls, more than 300 trails and 17 on- mountain restaurants, linked by a 22- mile network of 38 lifts. The acreage is three to four times that of several major destination resorts in the West, including Breckenridge, Colo., and more than seven times the size of the largest resort in the East, Sugarloaf, Maine.
The new giant will offer an un- rivaled wealth of skiing for all abilities, with more than enough trails, glades and bowls to easily occupy any visitor for a long visit, or even a season. But beyond its sheer size, the resort also will greatly change the visitor experience to Park City. In the past, travelers have had to choose between staying in the charming town, filled with shops, restaurants, galleries and bars, or out at the base of Canyons, the largest of the area’s three resorts, for better access to the slopes.
Now they can do either and still ski all the interconnected terrain. Because the lifts and trails of the former Park City Mountain Resort come right down to Main Street, the sea change effectively transforms the entire town into a ski- in/ ski- out base. Similar to the interconnected village model of Europe’s mega- resorts, visitors can start their day at one of three base areas, ski to another for lunch or finish up at the opposite end for dinner and après and then ride back, using the town’s extensive free bus system or the complimentary shuttles many area hotels operate.
“The new area is just so vast. I think the new gondola will really open up town for people who want to ski a lot of terrain, who used to only ski Canyons,” says David Perkins, proprietor of High West Distillery & Saloon. Adjacent to the Town Lift, it lays claim to being the world’s only ski- in/ ski- out distillery.
The new eight- passenger highspeed gondola is unusual in that it runs in both directions, with a midstation atop the ridge between the resorts, linking three stops both ways. Riders can ski down from all three stations, none more than 41⁄2 minutes apart, and the end- to- end ride is less than nine minutes.
The resort now sprawls uninterrupted between the separate Canyons base area and town, with three entry points for visitors, and a wealth of lodging and dining options at all price points. The old base of Park City Mountain Resort sits just a few blocks above Main Street, with limited parking but lots of shuttle bus access, anchored by a pedestrian mall with shops and eateries. The Canyons gateway is a modern, purpose- built ski resort base area, with a gondola- style people mover connecting a large parking lot to the lifts. The third option is the Town Lift, which serves the hotels and rental properties in historic downtown Park City.
Local skier Eric Kent, a software executive and full- time resident who moved here from San Francisco for better quality of life, says he is “slightly concerned ( the town) will lose some of its character, but for tourists it is all positive.”
One of the biggest appeals of skiing in the greater Salt Lake City area is ease of access. Six resorts in the Wasatch mountain range are less than an hour from the airport, which is reliable even in winter. Though on a map these seem split into three separate clusters in Park City ( Deer Valley, Park City), Big Cottonwood ( Solitude, Brighton) and Little Cottonwood Canyon ( Alta, Snowbird), in reality they almost all neighbor each other, mostly separated by ridgelines just as Canyons and Park City Mountain Resort were until this winter. There has been a long- term plan to interconnect all seven — now six — resorts into an enormous European- style ski network, a project dubbed ONE Wasatch.
“The merger of Park City Mountain and Canyons, making the biggest resort in the United States, is not only an unprecedented project in the history of skiing, it is a one step closer to the completion of ONE Wasatch,” says Nathan Rafferty, president and CEO of Ski Utah.
The plan requires just three new connections — one of which is the Quicksilver gondola.