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marjoram_sage

newly addicted to skiing
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San Jose California
Does anybody who which is the fastest way to go up from the base in Park City? Can you get dropped off to one of those lifts that are accessible by road but don't have any parking? e.g. Iron Mountain. We are staying at Marriott Mountainside. @Wasatchman ?

Also, any experience with Jans in Park City. I went to a local ski shop (CalSkiCo) to get boots but they are out of stock for what would fit me. They recommended Fischer vacuum fit for me and Jans has them in stock. I called Gorsuch & Cole Sports; they don't have Fischer boots.
 

Wasatchman

over the hill
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Wasatch and NZ
Does anybody who which is the fastest way to go up from the base in Park City? Can you get dropped off to one of those lifts that are accessible by road but don't have any parking? e.g. Iron Mountain. We are staying at Marriott Mountainside. @Wasatchman ?

Also, any experience with Jans in Park City. I went to a local ski shop (CalSkiCo) to get boots but they are out of stock for what would fit me. They recommended Fischer vacuum fit for me and Jans has them in stock. I called Gorsuch & Cole Sports; they don't have Fischer boots.

If you're staying on Main Street in Park City, then you can head up the town lift which is unique. Otherwise, you're basically looking at the Payday or Crescent lift. You're close enough you can line up a little early on the weekend, otherwise a weekday shouldn't be too bad unless it's a pow day or wind hold this time of year.
 
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blackke17

blackke17

I'd rather be at Alta
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On the way to Alta yesterday i got a text saying they only got 2 inches overnight so rather than spending 1 of 7 IKON days on that meager total we headed back up to Solitude. Temps were in the mid 30's and the base elevation was just high enough to have that precipitation in the form of wet snow rather than rain. thank goodness for gore-tex! far from the usual Utah fluff but the skiing was good ( and exhausting) - Solly reported 4 inches the previous night and this wet snow that hit most of the day did a great job of filling in the trenches in the moguls. Colder part of the storm coming in now should setup a good weekend.
IMG_1572.JPG
stopped in for some really good pizza at the Stone haus pizzeria in the Village at Solly.
 

RJS

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Seattle area
I had an excellent day skiing at Brighton on Thursday, but I wanted to share some observations about people venturing into the backcountry and see what the folks here think. Brighton has a bunch of accessible backcountry gates that you can get back into the resort from, so you can essentially lap the backcountry run after run from the lifts. I talked to a bunch of people on the lifts who were lapping the backcountry, and while some appeared to be well equipped and know that they were doing, I also talked with (or listened in on conversations with) three different groups who didn't appear to have any avalanche gear (maybe they had beacons on but they had no backpacks, so no shovels/probes/airbags). The groups without avalanche gear were all from out-of-state, including a group who had rental skis on. Perhaps these people knew the terrain well and weren't skiing anything avalanche prone, but my gut says that these people had no idea that they could be putting themselves in danger. I understand how tempting it can be.

It felt like people just have a cavalier attitude about Brighton's backcountry gates? Or maybe I just happened to ride up with the minority who don't really know what they're doing :huh:?
 

Kyle

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Utah
Gave up trying to ski Snowbasin today as there was no parking to be had. I have never seen anywhere close to the number of cars trying to park at Snowbasin—it was much worse than the worst Christmas vacation day I had seen. Not sure if it was that bad on the slopes but the parking was beyond a mess.

Still contemplating going up for an hour and a half in the late afternoon.
 

4ster

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!
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7,219
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Sierra & Wasatch
I had an excellent day skiing at Brighton on Thursday, but I wanted to share some observations about people venturing into the backcountry and see what the folks here think. Brighton has a bunch of accessible backcountry gates that you can get back into the resort from, so you can essentially lap the backcountry run after run from the lifts. I talked to a bunch of people on the lifts who were lapping the backcountry, and while some appeared to be well equipped and know that they were doing, I also talked with (or listened in on conversations with) three different groups who didn't appear to have any avalanche gear (maybe they had beacons on but they had no backpacks, so no shovels/probes/airbags). The groups without avalanche gear were all from out-of-state, including a group who had rental skis on. Perhaps these people knew the terrain well and weren't skiing anything avalanche prone, but my gut says that these people had no idea that they could be putting themselves in danger. I understand how tempting it can be.

It felt like people just have a cavalier attitude about Brighton's backcountry gates? Or maybe I just happened to ride up with the minority who don't really know what they're doing :huh:?
I’ve seen this a bunch the past few years at Snowbasin which is attached to some pretty gnarly avalanche terrain. Today’s UAC forecast warned of some areas of considerable danger. I saw evidence of lots of long running deep sloughs yesterday, along with a few fresh snow avalanches reported nearby.
5856CC4B-0234-4259-83FC-BAA616AFF73E.jpeg
Mostly I think these people are just ignorant to the dangers and others just play Russian Roulette. This season I have seen a lot of high school age and college age kids out on snowboards with no AVI gear, all on the slope at the same time, stopping in the middle of avalanche paths, traversing across obvious stress points etc. . Sometimes I really want to say something to them but figure they’ll just think I am a crotchety old man who should mind his own business. I avoid going anywhere near these areas when there are riders not following proper protocol.

Gave up trying to ski Snowbasin today as there was no parking to be had. I have never seen anywhere close to the number of cars trying to park at Snowbasin—it was much worse than the worst Christmas vacation day I had seen. Not sure if it was that bad on the slopes but the parking was beyond a mess.

Still contemplating going up for an hour and a half in the late afternoon.
I got in and out early today. Wasn’t going to go at all but I had some unfinished business to take care of. I left at noon and have never seen so many cars parked on the road. I am wondering if a bunch of people who did not have passes this year just bought next years pass which allows them to ski the rest of this season. Combined with it being a powder day maybe this was the reason it was so crazy busy. I can’t imagine the adaptive school demo day could attract that many people? Funny thing is the past three days have been pretty mellow compared to the rest of the season. Today was insane!
 

4ster

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!
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& this from the UAC this morning...
Hopefully more details to come -
Ogden area backcountry adjacent to Snowbasin
A party of three triggered an avalanche on a party of two below. One member in the party of two was caught, carried and partially buried. No injuries or lost gear reported.
 

AmyPJ

Skiing the powder
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Despite no powder, I think I am glad we headed to Sun Valley this weekend! The snow was fabulous and the sun was out both days! Oh, and it wasn't crowded.
 

RJS

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Seattle area
I've been really interested in some of the discussions here about Deer Valley and how it's dealing with increased traffic from the IKON Pass. Yesterday was my first day at Deer Valley this season, and my eighth year in a row coming here. The first new thing that I noticed were signs welcoming IKON Pass holders, but telling people to pick up their paper day tickets. As I was in the ticket line picking up my ticket and getting 4 friends & family tickets, I noticed that the person next to me was also picking up tickets with his IKON Pass. I mentally prepared myself for the hordes, considering that it was a Sunday on a mid-March weekend with new snow.

The hordes never showed up. Maybe they tired themselves out from skiing hard on Saturday? With a group, I never waited for more than 5 minutes in line, and in the singles line never waited more than 2 minutes in a line. Sunday is always my family's first day of skiing at Deer Valley on vacation, and I didn't notice any difference in crowding yesterday. With the new snow the trails were very soft in the morning, but got bumped up as the day went on. I was loving it, but some of my family members weren't thrilled about stuff getting bumped out. If I'm remembering correctly, @Lorenzzo posted about how many of the trails can get very crowded, and I completely agree. Specific connector trails, like Bandana, Ontario, Sucess, and more, can have tons of people on them. Hawkeye was quite crowded too. The lodge was packed when I went in for lunch, but I picked just about the worst possible time, 12:10. I still managed to find a table on the first floor after a couple of minutes of searching around.

To be very clear, I'm not suggesting that we can make an inference about the effect that the IKON Pass has on crowding at Deer Valley just based on this one day. @Lorenzzo, @Started at 53 and other regulars will know better as you guys have spent many days at Deer this season and can compare to previous seasons, and you've said that this year does appear to be more crowded than normal. Personally, I'm starting to think that increasing the price of the IKON Pass and adding more blackout days to the Base pass are easy ways for Alterra to manage crowding while maintaining the basic pass structure.
 
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blackke17

blackke17

I'd rather be at Alta
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this stump almost got me at Solitude - skiing a double black solo flying around a blind turn - i had to throw them sideways and bang into the stump for a hard stop

IMG_1637.JPG

got out of that unscathed and had a terrific day of shredding - snowpack is so deep right now everything is skiing great
 

Jim Kenney

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this stump almost got me at Solitude - skiing a double black solo flying around a blind turn - i had to throw them sideways and bang into the stump for a hard stop

View attachment 68027

got out of that unscathed and had a terrific day of shredding - snowpack is so deep right now everything is skiing great

blackke, I took this photo of my son on Parachute at Solitude 8 years ago. No way it's the same stump?:eek:
parachute solitude.jpg

If we ever end up at Snowbird on the same day I'd love to make a couple runs with you. But I don't think I could keep up for longer than that. You are one of my Utah idols, stay safe.
 
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blackke17

blackke17

I'd rather be at Alta
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blackke, I took this photo of my son on Parachute at Solitude 8 years ago. No way it's the same stump?:eek:
View attachment 68092

If we ever end up at Snowbird on the same day I'd love to make a couple runs with you. But I don't think I could keep up for longer than that. You are one of my Utah idols, stay safe.

Hey Jim! yeah id love to make some turns with you sometime. I've been avoiding the Bird this year however after skiing LCC exclusively the last 3 winters. ( only 7 days in LCC on the IKON this winter so i go to Alta if its one of those days )

The Parachute is a great run and area for sure! - those moguls are really stacking high up top right now.

My stump was off the side gate into Honeycomb in the There be Dragons area. With the base being so deep i've really been pounding that area of the mountain lately
 

RJS

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I skied Park City for the first time in years today with my family. Normally, we ski at Deer Valley, but lessons at Deer Valley were all booked out yesterday and today for a family member who wanted one, so she got a lesson at Park City and we all spent the day there. Here's what I liked and didn't like about Park City, after spending a lot of time at Deer Valley.

What I liked:
  • I forgot how much phenomenal terrain Park City has (specifically the old Park City side of the mountain)! I took the Jupiter lift for the first time, and loved how you had to hike/traverse to access a bunch of the terrain. That helps preserve snow for people who are willing to work for it. When the snow conditions are right it looked like there was a ton of fun terrain on Pinecone Ridge. Much more expert terrain than Deer Valley.
  • Views - I hiked up to Jupiter Peak, and was astounded by how great the views were. You can see the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon from the top ( I was looking to see if I could see signs of Solitude but couldn't notice any).
  • Odd lift layout - made it easy to get away from crowds. While some lifts were crowded (see below), other lifts like Thaynes, Motherlode, and Jupiter had no lines
  • Being able to ski into town is super neat for a vacationer like myself. Not many places where you can do that

What I didn't like:
  • The lines for some of the major lifts, like Bonanza, Silverlode, and King Con were fairly long for a weekday. Longer than the lines at the major Deer Valley lifts yesterday
  • I was very underwhelmed by the food, especially for how much they were charging
  • Odd lift layout - made it difficult to get to/from places. Park City is similar to Deer Valley in that both mountains have lots of different terrain pods, but no fall lines runs that go from the top to the bottom, in contrast to a Snowbasin or Snowbird
  • Similar to Deer Valley, some of the connector trails or "easy ways down" were VERY crowded, almost dangerously so, while most of the advanced terrain had hardly anybody on it. Not sure if there's really a solution here. I appreciated all of the signs telling people to slow down and stay in control
Overall I had a good day. If I lived in Park City, I would get passes to both Deer Valley and PCMR. There is so much terrain I would love to explore. That said, Deer Valley actually felt a lot more "premium" after skiing at Park City. The food, the customer service, the whole ambiance felt a lot better at Deer Valley.
 

DB Cooper

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I prefer the Canyons side of Park City. Depends what you like. The PC side is more groomer oriented where as the Canyons side has more bowls, trees, and off-piste terrain. I prefer 9990 to Jupiter but that being said, Jupiter does have some excellent terrain but there is nothing on the PC side that compares to Dream Peak, Super Condor, Paradise Bowl, or even runs like the Pines. PC probably has better groomers, although as you noted, the lift lines can get busy off Silverlode. If you want to run groomers at PC I suggest the stuff off Crescent (Willy's especially) but only after the crowds at the base have died down. Although that lift is lower in elevation it has a good north aspect so most of the time Willy's runs really well. For Canyons side, Super Condor has good groomers off the north side (Alpanade, Kestrel). Condor is almost a little resort unto itself with a good mix of steeps, bowls, and chutes. I like going there on really cold powder days in February when the south facing chutes have filled in.

The one downside to the Canyons is if you felt like the lifts on the PC side had an odd layout, boy will the Canyons shock you! You really have to know the place in order to figure out the best way from point A to point B, especially getting back to either Red Pine lodge or the base at the bottom of Doc's. There are some connector trails, both at PC and Canyons that are crowded but us locals know how to avoid them when necessary.

As someone who works at Deer Valley, on one hand I agree that DV doesn't have much to offer in the way of expert terrain, but on the other, thats what makes it good for experts! The typical DV skier is looking for groomers and will stick to the main runs off the Sterling lift, some of the frontside runs back to Snow Park, the runs off Mountaineer and the Jordanelle Gondola, Northside, and the shoulders of Empire which leaves the rest of the mountain to us! The Mayflower side of the resort has some of the best terrain in the Wasatch IMO and you can lap Ontario Bowl pretty much all day and it won't get tracked out too much. DV does have some super-crowded and dangerous connector trails like Bandana but if you know how to avoid those you can have a great day as an expert skier at DV without too much hassle.

I skied Park City for the first time in years today with my family. Normally, we ski at Deer Valley, but lessons at Deer Valley were all booked out yesterday and today for a family member who wanted one, so she got a lesson at Park City and we all spent the day there. Here's what I liked and didn't like about Park City, after spending a lot of time at Deer Valley.

What I liked:
  • I forgot how much phenomenal terrain Park City has (specifically the old Park City side of the mountain)! I took the Jupiter lift for the first time, and loved how you had to hike/traverse to access a bunch of the terrain. That helps preserve snow for people who are willing to work for it. When the snow conditions are right it looked like there was a ton of fun terrain on Pinecone Ridge. Much more expert terrain than Deer Valley.
  • Views - I hiked up to Jupiter Peak, and was astounded by how great the views were. You can see the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon from the top ( I was looking to see if I could see signs of Solitude but couldn't notice any).
  • Odd lift layout - made it easy to get away from crowds. While some lifts were crowded (see below), other lifts like Thaynes, Motherlode, and Jupiter had no lines
  • Being able to ski into town is super neat for a vacationer like myself. Not many places where you can do that

What I didn't like:
  • The lines for some of the major lifts, like Bonanza, Silverlode, and King Con were fairly long for a weekday. Longer than the lines at the major Deer Valley lifts yesterday
  • I was very underwhelmed by the food, especially for how much they were charging
  • Odd lift layout - made it difficult to get to/from places. Park City is similar to Deer Valley in that both mountains have lots of different terrain pods, but no fall lines runs that go from the top to the bottom, in contrast to a Snowbasin or Snowbird
  • Similar to Deer Valley, some of the connector trails or "easy ways down" were VERY crowded, almost dangerously so, while most of the advanced terrain had hardly anybody on it. Not sure if there's really a solution here. I appreciated all of the signs telling people to slow down and stay in control
Overall I had a good day. If I lived in Park City, I would get passes to both Deer Valley and PCMR. There is so much terrain I would love to explore. That said, Deer Valley actually felt a lot more "premium" after skiing at Park City. The food, the customer service, the whole ambiance felt a lot better at Deer Valley.
 

marjoram_sage

newly addicted to skiing
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Nov 14, 2018
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213
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San Jose California
For whatever reason, some places in Utah receive much less snow than the cottonwoods. I was stunned to see the low YTD numbers for Pow Mow and Beaver on this blog post.

https://www.skiutah.com/blog/author...459094521&mc_cid=079893f064&mc_eid=2033de37eb


Alta Ski Area
Last 7 days: 40"
YTD: 463"

Beaver Mountain
Last 7 days: 16"
YTD: 189"

Brian Head Ski Resort
Last 7 days: 31"
YTD: 275"

Brighton
Last 7 days: 47"
YTD: 513"
Deer Valley Resort
Last 7 days: 30"
YTD: 311"

Eagle Point
Last 7 days: 35"
YTD: 314"

Nordic Valley
Last 7 days: 19"
YTD: 175"

Park City Mountain
Last 7 days: 35"
YTD: 352"
Powder Mountain
Last 7 days: 32"
YTD: 261"

Snowbasin Resort
Last 7 days: 35"
YTD: 339"

Snowbird
Last 7 days: 46"
YTD: 505"

Solitude Mountain Resort
Last 7 days: 43"
YTD: 428"
 

marjoram_sage

newly addicted to skiing
Skier
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Posts
213
Location
San Jose California
That said, Deer Valley actually felt a lot more "premium" after skiing at Park City. The food, the customer service, the whole ambiance felt a lot better at Deer Valley.

Great to know. I spent 6 days this season at PCMR. I will most likely go to DV next season.

It seems like PCMR and DV are predominantly tourist oriented places so they are crowded on weekdays from tourists who are staying the whole week as opposed to the local weekend skiers.
 
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