If you are big into skiing Park City Utah is the place for you. If you have three days, you can easily ski their three resorts. In fact, if you have the money and the inclination, you could ski all of them on the same day, because they’re only ten minutes apart.
Park City sits thirty two miles east of Salt Lake City, in the north-central Utah. Like Moab, the state’s other big resort town, it has the outdoors to recommend it, including some mountain biking, fishing and hunting, hiking and golf.
Moab and Park City seem like opposites, however. Moab is all about the warm weather activities, and Park City is far more about the cold.
Most people, though, have heard about Park City because of the Sundance Film Festival, which wraps up every February.
But not long after the town’s funding in 1870 by miners, residents discovered that above the mine shafts and underground train passageways sat mounds and mounds of fluffy white stuff, and it kept on coming, offering prime skiing real estate that they started taking advantage as early as the 1920s.
Many remnants of the town’s mining past remain beneath the resorts, and the town still sports more than 60 original Victorian buildings along its Main Street.
Add to the appeal a relatively carefree drive from Salt Lake. In good weather, which is most of the time, and during nonpeak times- which is any time that is not rush hour just before or after the lifts open and close- the drive takes about 30 to 40 minutes.
The folks in Park City even like to brag that it’s just as fast- or faster- to get from their mountain resorts to Denver than it is from Aspen to Denver any day, or to Denver from most resorts along the Interstate 70 corridor on those late Sunday afternoons in mid-February after a powder day.
And it turns out that they’re right: My travel time to Park City, including getting to the airport 90 minutes early, was four hours and fifty minutes.
It’s that combination of easy access, three varied-terrain ski areas and the quaint- albeit increasingly commercialized- town that makes Park City a continually irresistible winter draw.
According to some longtime visitors- and more than a few residents- the downside is that, between the largest independent film festival and the growing number of Californians choosing Utah’s ski areas over overcrowded hills in their own state, Park City has changed. It’s too crowded, they say, and no longer cool. But you can find plenty of happy repeat visitors who disagree.
Deer Valley also is popular and controversial as one of the last three holdouts in the U.S to prohibit snowboarding.
That’s why on another day, I find myself sharing a shuttle from Deer Valley to Park City Mountain Resort with my two friends who also snowboard.
Avid snowboarders, they have been coming to Park City with their families from Newport Beach, Calif., together, and occasionally separately, for about six years.
They offer the expected vocal support and encouragement for one another for their demographic-meaning, they frequently denounce each others’ shredding skills loudly and use the word “sucks” a lot-along with sharing their reasons Park City is a great snowboarding mountain and their picks for the best runs.
Park City also sports the enviable Town Lift, a chair smack in the middle of it all that makes it heart-wrenching to be a local with a day job. It adds to the sense that Park City is the every man’s mountain, the one with the most reasonably priced eateries dotting its base and the most varied terrain, with the largest number of beginner trails of the three areas.
All of that also adds to the crowds on any given day, it’s the only one of the three that might have what can be called anything close to a lift line.
By comparison, The Canyons usually feels dead. But that’s partly because it’s huge at 3,700 skiable acres over eight mountains, it’s one of the five largest in the country, and the people spread out quickly. And its low percentage of beginner terrain means advanced and expert skiers and snowboarders can mostly zoom around in peace without worrying they’ll scare the baggy pants off big packs of wobbly starters.
The Canyons also has it set up so that if you’re not staying at the resort, you park in one of the parking lots just outside and hop on the Cabriolet, an open-air tram that brings guests in. it cuts down on traffic and pollution inside the resort, and makes for a less chaotic, more exclusive feel.
Jack Landry is a resident of Utah and has written hundreds of articles relating to tourism and real estate. He recommends (http://www.parksedgeparkcity.com) for your next home in Park City.
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