2008/2009 Resort Rankings:
Sking Magazine:
# 1 A Week After A Storm
# 3 Powder
# 6 Trees
# 8 Backcountry Access
SKI Magazine:
#6 Snow Quality
Resorts build for the future
Ski areas busy with offseason upgrades
By Mike Gorrell
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/05/2008 12:17:34 AM MDT »
SOLITUDE - Even more than Monday's premature snow flurries, a succession of helicopter flights here on a clear blue Wednesday morning signaled that winter is not far off.
Solitude Mountain Resort took advantage of a clement fallish day to use a helicopter to put into place support towers for two new high-speed quad chairlifts.
Park City Mountain Resort has similar plans for today - as long as it doesn't get too windy - scheduling an aerial lift-building session for a new high-speed quad, called Crescent, that will supplement the existing Ski Team lift.
The two construction projects are part of roughly $30 million in improvements that Utah ski resorts are putting into place this summer, hoping to capitalize on residual fervor from a season in which skiers and boarders played on frequently replenished slopes. By season's end, more than 700 inches of snow were recorded at Alta Ski Area, which traditionally receives more snow than other Utah resorts.
It took until midsummer to melt all of that snow, delaying the start of some offseason projects. But from Brian Head down south to Beaver Mountain up north, Utah's 13 active ski areas are racing to complete their work before it starts falling again in earnest.
"They definitely had the weather on their side today," Solitude Mountain Resort spokesman Nick Como said Wednesday as a helicopter ferried 23 lift towers to their new mountain spots. In the next few weeks, those towers will be linked with steel cables and other accessories to become a pair of high-speed quads, dubbed Apex Express and Moonbeam Express.
"It took forever for the snow to melt, but they're ahead of schedule now. Both lifts should be ready for opening day," said Como, noting that extensive grading work around the summit of the Apex Express will create a smoother transition slope for beginners and intermediates upon exiting the chair.
Solitude's $7 million investment is significant but still less expensive than the upgrades at two Park City-area resorts.
Park City Mountain Resort is spending $10.5 million to make the area it has called Ski Team Ridge more accessible to recreational skiers and boarders. The high-speed Crescent quad will climb higher up the ridge that will now be known as Crescent Ridge chairlift.
"The new chairlift will be a great new access point out of the base area," said resort spokeswoman Paula Altschuler, adding that the chair will make it easier to reach some of the resort's best expert terrain, slopes enhanced with the shaping of a new run and some glading work.
Renovations also are under way at Park City's Mid-Mountain Lodge. Similar work is under way at Deer Valley, where $8 million in upgrades are being made to Empire Canyon Lodge and Cushing's Cabin, which is near the convergence of four lifts at the top of Flagstaff Mountain.
The new cabin will seat 40-45 guests and will house a ski patrol office and restrooms.
The third Park City-area resort, The Canyons, is installing a gondola and a fixed-grip quad chair to improve internal traffic flow and has done some glading work to enhance tree skiing off the Peak 5 lift.
Elsewhere, Brighton Resort has invested $1.5 million in a 3,500-square-foot day lodge, called Milly Chalet, at the bottom of the Milly high-speed quad chairlift. Beaver Mountain also is making $300,000 in improvements to its traditional A-frame day lodge near the top of Logan Canyon, and Snowbasin replaced its beginner lift with a detachable quad.
GQ Magazine: June 2005
GQ: Where to Take Her....Solitude, Utah Ski: Because Aspen’s for sissies
There’s more to skiing than hot tubs, après-ski lounges, and fur-lined Christian Dior moon boots. There’s skiing. And once you’ve convinced your girl of this, she’ll appreciate the allure of Solitude. Nonexistent lift lines, fresh powder (measured in feet—not inches), and a mere forty-minute drive from Salt Lake City make it the gem of the Rockies. Its peaks climb to 10,000 feet, and its lift tickets remain grounded at $50 a day. Once you’ve conquered the mountain, and if your quads can handle it, indulge in a five-course dinner at the Yurt—a tepee-like venue reachable only by following a guide on cross-country skis or snowshoes. How’s that for something you can’t do in Aspen?
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Top Secret Escapes : May 2005
Where to Go Next (And Get There Soon Before the Secret's Out). The 10 getaways everyone will be talking about in five years.
Why you've never heard of it: Those who think of Solitude at all tend to remember it as a locals-only ski spot. No one seems to realize that the new village is now open all summer long. Why it's a secret you'll keep: It's like being handed the keys to a mountain retreat all your own. If Solitude Mountain Resort were in Tahoe, we'd all be fighting traffic every Friday to get there. A new Euro-style village in a pristine mountain range where you can land a swish new $400 two-bedroom condo for around $200 in summer? It'd be a madhouse. But traffic is a nonissue up Big Cottonwood Canyon, a protected watershed a half hour's drive from the Salt Lake City airport, especially in the off-season, when the receding snow reveals carpets of wildflowers and a network of trails. Check in and within a day or so, you'll know everyone by name: there's Mike at the store, who'll get you a cup of coffee in the morning and set you up with a mountain bike after lunch; Jeff, who will look up from a novel as you approach the lift and heft your bike onto the back; and Beth, who helps the kids in the game room with their Nintendo-related problems and makes sure there's a fresh stack of towels by the pool. Summers here have a quiet and an ease that you know can't last forever but will quickly become addictive. A few days spent in the mountain air, hiking around Silver Lake and snacking on smoked trout on the restaurant's patio as the sun pulls back off the brilliant green slopes, will cure you of old fears of overcrowded, stressful summer vacations to the mountains.
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The Inside Line: Solitude, Utah
By
Evelyn Spence
Skiing
Magazine
Thursday,
January 6, 2005
You'd
think that Solitude skiers would get a case of canyon envy,
what with the masses NASCAR-ing up Little Cottonwood Canyon
to Alta and Snowbird. But Big Cottonwood skiers, who bring
their two-for-one coupons and 7-year-old jackets to No Big
'Tude, could care less. Their powder is just as light,
their sky just as clear, their runs just as
sheer.
Even on
the biggest dump days the place is peaceful: Lift lines
barely push four minutes, and locals take leisurely dips
into untracked shots all day. The summit gates have the
best backcountry access -- to stadium-sized cirques and
closet-tight chutes -- in the Wasatch. Even if you stick to
the inbounds Honeycomb Canyon, you might as well be
out-of-bounds for all the elbows you have to throw.
Elevation: 10,035 feet
Vertical drop: 2,047 feet
Acres: 1,200
Getting there: From Salt Lake, take I-80 east to I-215
south, and follow to Exit 6. Continue east onto Wasatch
Boulevard and into Big Cottonwood Canyon.
Powder day: While patrol is doing heavy work in Honeycomb
Canyon, take the Powderhorn lift before dropping into the
treed and technical Milk Run or the gully ride Parachute.
When the rope drops at the top of the Summit lift, sidestep
uphill for the steep, shady glades of 3700 Bowl (between
Buckeye and Black Forest). Next run, pick a line 30 feet
farther over and repeat.
3 days later: Poke around in the trees of Black Forest, or
traverse skier's left into Honeycomb until you find the
sweeping lines past Prince of Wales, where ample storm
remnants await.
The riding: The bad news: You have to hike to get to some
of Solitude's best stuff, like Fantasy Ridge (see Marquee
Route). The good news: The hikes take 15 minutes or less,
and the reward is countless pillowy drops.
Proving grounds: Marquee route: At the top of the Summit
lift, boot-pack up the knife-edged Fantasy Ridge to Chutes
1-26 (there really are 26 distinct spillways, but some
close when the snow is thin). Try 5 or 6 for rock-rimmed
doglegs that fan out into Honeycomb Canyon.
Off-Broadway: Huff up the ridge again. Chutes 22-24 require
mandatory air and don't-blink-don't-think exposure.
Backcountry access: Skin 40 minutes on the Highway to
Heaven trail to the enormous amphitheater of Wolverine
Cirque; keep gliding for another 10 and drop into Alta's
Grizzly Gulch. Check avalanche.org for conditions, or sign
up for Back Tracks (801-534-1400, x2225), the ski patrol's
full-day, OB guided tour. The price, which includes
equipment and lunch, depends on group size. Bring four
buddies along, and you'll each pay $150.
Local's take: "Don't drink too much coffee if you're gonna
hike Fantasy Ridge. It's like walking a high-wire; you
don't want to shake yourself clear off." -- Kristen Ulmer,
extreme skiing pioneer.
Weather: Like a South Beach cocaine dealer, storms swing
in, drop their flaky white cargo, and disappear completely.
For thigh-high accumulation, visit in early March, when
two- and three-day weather cycles leave the mountain buried
in up to 40 inches (and usually glittering under blue
skies).
Don't miss: You won't find it on the resort's Web site, but
come mid-February, locals stage the Big Cottonwood
Olympics. Ask around for details, especially if you have
experience in broomball tourneys and naked ski jumping.
Essential gear: To scale Fantasy Ridge, you'll want your
hands free to grip that fixed line the patrol has strung
up. Strap your skis to Dakine's JMP (Jonny Moseley Pro)
pack with diagonal ski carrier ($70; dakine.com).
Apres: If you want a buzz in the Beehive State, hit a
"private club," like the Thirsty Squirrel. Once located in
a worn A-frame, it's now a clean-cut bar in the Powderhorn
Lodge.
Scene: Mention "nightlife" five years ago, and you'd get a
sarcastic cackle. Now, with the base village close to
completion, you merely get a snicker.
Fuel: With schnitzel, spaetzle, and Wine Spectator
accolades, St. Bernard's is the spot for white-linen
dining. Try Creekside for wood-fired pizzas slathered in
roasted garlic and tomatoes. For a five-course spread of
lobster crepes, rabbit stew, and duck breast in orange
sauce, cross-country ski 15 minutes by headlamp to The Yurt
(801-536-5709, reservations required). Stash a bottle of
wine in your pack -- it's BYOW.
Up all night: Don't count on disco balls. If you're staying
at the base, the last tap (in St. Bernard's) runs dry at 10
o'clock. Salt Lake's dance halls, private clubs, and
brewpubs are 12 miles down-canyon.
Finding thrills on those smaller hills
They're
where the locals hang out, in tucked-away Western resorts
far from the big crowds, high prices and clubby airs of ski
country's mega-mountains.
By
Grace Lichtenstein, Special to The Times
December 10, 2006
.....
Utah
SOLITUDE
lives up to its name, even though it is as easily reached
from Salt Lake City as Park City's three resorts. I have
never encountered a lift line at Solitude, even on days
when Park City Mountain is buzzing and crowds are waiting
to board the Snowbird tram to the slopes.
At first, it was mainly a locals' area. A few years ago,
Intrawest, a giant in the ski-resort industry, built a
small village with condos, so now it gets the occasional
out-of-towner.
Still, Solitude retains a serenity that envelops you like a
fluffy down parka. On a visit a year ago, I almost felt as
if I had the place to myself.
You can get there by public bus from Salt Lake City or
drive up Big Cottonwood Canyon to the Moonbeam base lodge,
which has a parking area, rental shop, lockers and
cafeteria, plus a new high-speed quad lift.
Intermediates love Solitude's blue and black
machine-groomed runs, accessible from the Eagle Express
quad, on the front of the mountain. When there's fresh
snow, local skiers head for Honeycomb Canyon, a V-shaped
forested stash of double and single black-diamond runs that
offer a taste of Utah's famed powder.
Solitude also has a cool lift ticket that its electronic
turnstiles can read even when it is in your pocket. It
stores data so that at the end of the day you can get a
computer readout of which chairs you took and how many
vertical feet you covered.
SEEKING
SOLITUDE POWDER YOUR
NOSE ON UTAH'S SECRET SLOPE
By
ANDREAand RICHARDBENNETT
December
5, 2006 -- For us, growing up skiing in Utah was just a
fact of life. At our school in the winter, most kids took
the ski bus on Fridays to Alta, Snowbird, Park City or Park
West (now part of The Canyons) for ski team.
On the weekends, naturally, you would ski. Our Christmas
Day tradition: skiing (until people caught on to the fact
that Christmas Day had the shortest lift lines). In a state
where the license plates read "The Greatest Snow on Earth,"
it was nearly inconceivable that you weren't on skis by the
time walking had become a feasible proposition. Naturally,
there were families that didn't, but it was likely that
they had moved from Somewhere With No Snow, and hadn't yet
seen the light. We always felt bad for those kids when they
struggled in their deep snowplow "V's" on the kiddie slope
as death-defying four-year-olds whooshed past them.
In Utah, a slope's holy grail is its untrammeled powder.
When the Olympics came to town in 2002, plenty of Utahns
saw the event as a community travesty because they knew
what would happen.
The state's perceived religious peculiarity could only
protect us for so long before tourists discovered how
highly awesome the powder was.
It's this reason that locals have always liked Solitude
Mountain Resort, 27 miles away from downtown Salt Lake
City, up Big Cottonwood Canyon, just one mile down the road
from Brighton.
It's hardly a secret that Solitude is there, but for years
its total dearth of lodging options drove out-of-state
skiers to Snowbird and Alta in adjacent Little Cottonwood
Canyon. This left locals with 1,200 acres of wide-open
bowls and perfectly groomed gentler slopes. Not bad when
you don't have to share an average of 42 feet of annual
snowfall with the tourists.
In 1989, Solitude installed Utah's first ever high-speed
detachable quad chairlift, the Eagle Express, and we had it
all to ourselves.
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