Ski Utah held its annual pre-season press conference on Tuesday at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. The typical stats were tossed around about skier visits and resort upgrades. But the big news is that huge changes are coming to the Utah ski scene, so much so that Ski Utah Director, Nathan Rafferty, jokingly referred to the 2014/15 ski and snowboard season as, “Ski Utah 3.0.”
Never before has so much change happened so fast in Utah’s mountains. Vail bought Park City Mountain Resort. Deer Valley bought Solitude. Utah’s newest ski resort, Cherry peak, starts running lifts this December. And Nordic Valley (formerly Wolf Mountain) is getting a huge infusion of capital with massive expansion plans and resort upgrades already in the works. Rafferty says all this transformation will change Utah skiing forever.
“With this era of consolidation and new resorts, the big boys like Vail coming to play, and all this talk of interconnectivity, we are going to see something come of that. Whether it’s transportation, or over the snow ski connections. At the very least, it’s going to be skiing between Park City and Canyons next year. So I do feel like it’s kind of a new era and it’s exciting. It’s exciting to be a part of it and watch it grow,” Rafferty said.
Rafferty also thinks the weekly headline news about Utah skiing is due in part to skiers and business interests across the country waking up to what those of us in Utah already know: That we live and ski in the best mountains in the world. “People are taking notice, and if I were a business analyst, I’d say people are doubling down on Utah and they recognize the things that we’ve known all along: we’re half-an-hour from an airport, the snow is incredible, the people are fantastic, and all of a sudden people are starting to pay attention.”
So if you’re a skier or snowboarder in Utah, hold on tight, because Ski Utah says “Version 3.0” is just the beginning.
The Ski Utah press conference also went over the numbers from last year’s ski season. Overall snow totals were below average. Alta received 432-inches, while the annual average is 551. Utah saw the third-best season for skier visits with 4.16 million visitors; a 3.6 increase over the 2012/13 season. The upcoming season is looking positive, with a 7.4-percent increase in winter booking from November to March.
New for this year, is the announcement of Utah’s 15th resort – Cherry peak in the Bear River Mountains near Logan. The resort features 3 chair lifts, snow-making, 500 foot magic carpet, 5 lane tubing hill, ice skating, night skiing, and mountain bike trails. In addition, Vail purchased Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley purchased Solitude, Brian Head replaced the Giant Steps lift with a high-speed quad (the first in Southern Utah) and Eagle Point installed a new surface lift to access new advanced and expert terrain.
In addition, Alta re-graded the Corkscrew run, and Nordic Valley is being significantly upgraded with new trails, base area makeover and more.
Below are the expected opening dates for Utah ski resorts:
- Alta: Nov. 21
- Beaver Mountain: TBD
- Brian Head: Nov. 22
- Brighton: Nov. 22
- Canyons: Nov. 28
- Cherry Peak: Dec. 22
- Deer Valley: Dec. 6
- Eagle Point: Dec. 20
- Nordic Valley: Nov. 28
- Park City Mountain Resort: Nov. 22
- Powder Mountain: TBD
- Snowbasin: Nov. 26
- Snowbird: Nov. 22
- Solitude: Nov. 21
- Sundance: Dec. 5
For more information, visit Ski Utah.