Salt Lake City is heaven for skiers

By FRITZ FAERBER

updated 3:39 p.m. ET Dec. 29, 2005

SALT LAKE CITY - For skiers, Salt Lake City's numbers are incredible: 500 inches of snow a year at several resorts, 4,700 acres of skiing at the linked ski areas of Alta and Snowbird, 10 top resorts within an hour of the airport, and most impressive - a three-day ski vacation for two for $1,000.

Utah's skiing is built on what it calls "The Greatest Snow on Earth." The sheer quantity is astounding, with several of the snow-rich areas getting more than 40 feet a year. Toward the lower range of average snowfall in the Salt Lake City area, Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley and The Canyons still get 300 to 350 inches each year.

It's not just the quantity. The snow is also top-shelf quality. It's dry, fluffy and light: just perfect for powder pigs, though it was a big adjustment for this East Coast skier used to the crud. I kept catching edges and biting down hard on the mountain. Fortunately, the deep powder makes for a soft landing.

Any fan of the Winter Olympics has heard of Park City, but I skied - and fell in love with - the less glamorous resorts in the Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons just east of the city. Little Cottonwood Canyon hosts Alta and Snowbird. Slightly to the north, Big Cottonwood Canyon has Brighton and Solitude.

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These resorts are amazingly convenient to the city. In fact, I have woken up in Washington, D.C., flown to Salt Lake, checked into my hotel and still skied four hours on Brighton in the same day.

The two canyons are ideal for vacations where the main concerns are skiing and price. I booked a room at the Best Western Executive Inn in Midvale on Travelocity for $50 a night (breakfast included). The $47 Salt Lake Super Pass includes a day pass for city transit and an all-day lift ticket at any of the four resorts. Express ski buses pick up a block from the hotel and take from about a half-hour to just under an hour, depending on which resort you are skiing.

My favorite is Snowbird, with the linked neighbor of Alta a close second. Both get tremendous amounts of snow and have a wide variety of trails ranging from mellow to fiendish.

What I liked most about the Bird is the wide open Mineral Basin on the backside of the mountain. It's reached via the Little Cloud Lift or the Aerial Tram that goes from base all the way to the top. Once you clear the ridge, there's an immense bowl below, with descents ranging from looping milk runs to hair-raising sheer dropoffs. On a fresh powder day, which is pretty common out there, virgin patches of snow will linger all day.

The Bird offers tree runs, chutes, moguls, and challenging terrain to keep any expert busy. But I wouldn't recommend it for beginners or tentative intermediates. My fiancee's face went pale when she saw the mountain; I skied solo that day.

Next door, Alta is a time-capsule of what skiing used to be like. There is a new high-speed chair to the summit, but many of the lifts are slow, which keeps the slopes mostly uncrowded. There's no real resort village and restaurants and stores are mostly scattered. And no snowboarding is allowed. But the skiing is glorious. Riding the lifts up, you can see tracks from where daredevils somehow navigated down impossibly steep runs peppered with cliffs and boulders. Since I'm able to write this, it's clear I didn't try those runs!

Alta has something of a cult status among those who live to ski.

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