Just down the road from your Silverton base, you will enjoy a day of skiing at Purgatory Resort with its unique blend of long wide groomers to rip on and its tree skiing, while surrounded by gorgeous scenery in the heart of the San Juan Mountain Range. It is purgatory in name only as you will enjoy a laid back, no lift line resort known for sunny days after a storm, averaging 260 inches of the white stuff each year.
Snowbasin is a large ski area with almost 3000 vertical feet and 3000 acres. With this size it was able to host the 2002 Olympics for the Downhill, Combined and Super-G . You will enjoy plenty of vertical, fantastic wide runs with lots of pitch and large off-piste areas. Another legacy of the Olympics are the most luxurious base lodge and on-hill restaurants you will experience. Lots of lifts and lost of acreage equals very uncrowded slopes outside the weekends.
After skiing you will travel back to Salt Lake City to ski Alta and Snowbird. This allows you to catch any storm cycle that may have hit these areas while you were up north.
Powder Mountain is the most unique ski area you will ski in regards to services provided for off-piste skiing within a ski resort. You can ski an area called Powder Country that is an untouched mountain face which runs down to the resort access road where a shuttle picks you up after your powder run and returns you to the base area. You will also be able to pay $25 for a ride in a snowcat to ski virgin snow that is located within the resort boundary. Add all that to the great skiing in the regular chair serviced area and you have an off-piste haven that is dressed up as a ski resort. On top of all this, Powder Mountain has a friendly laid-back atmosphere with a limited number of skiers capped at 1500 per day which is rarely reached.
You will spend a day at Solitude which is located in the Big Cottonwood Canyon. Being next door to Alta and Snowbird it gets the same 500+ inches of dry snow per year but fewer skiers due to its smaller size and being less known. However It’s 1,200 acres is misleading as it delivers lots of great terrain from open bowls, step chutes, groomed cruisers with great pitch to great fall line tree skiing.
Skiing Snowbird is a must experience where everything is large. Large annual snowfall which averages 500+ inches (12.7 m) of dry Utah powder. Large vertical at 3,240 ft / 988 m. Large terrain choice with many faces of steep challenging terrain, large groomed runs with lots of length, and the backside provides large open bowl skiing. You will be whisked up the mountain by the famous Aerial Tram rising 2900 vertical feet (884m) in just 8 minutes and dropping you at an altitude of 11,000 ft / 3353 m. You will enjoy views all the way back down into Salt Lake City and from here you can access 80% of the mountain.
You will enjoy the famous 70’s style powder haven of Alta Ski Resort. It is a big resort with great terrain but with a small laidback resort feel. It is famous for good reason as it averages the most snow in Utah at 547 inches / 13.9 m, more than its neighboring Snowbird as it is at the end of the Little Cottonwood Canyon and snow storms hang here a little longer. Also with no Snowboarders allowed Alta is a powder haven. There are no large hotel or condo complexes. It looks and feels like the 70’s as it is all about the skiing here!
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