Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort
Snowbird, UT 84092
Phone: (801) 933-2222
Fax: (801) 933-2298
01/07/2007 Posted by gznokes
You'll like Snowbird if you like what I call "finger tip skiing". Snowbird employed a novel concept when designing their resort. Basically the planners said, "lets make sure all our lifts go to the top of the mountain or appropriate ridge". For some reason unknown to me most other resorts stop their lifts mid-mountain. Hence at other resorts you have to traverse and hike to get to the best skiing (Alta has a massive telemark culture built around this). Of course you can do this at Snowbird but 99% of the time just get off the lift, point your skis downhill and you will be skiing some of the most challenging spectacular terrain you can imagine. Even when you have to traverse to get to some secret honey hole (there are more of these than any other resort) you are usually encountering great skiing along the way because the lift already took you to the top of the mountain. The other thing is all of Snowbird's run s follow the fall line. Again, go to other resorts (the Canyons and to a lesser extent Park City is the worst in this respect) and half the time they have carved their run s diagonally through a stand of trees. The run s actually function perpendicular to the direction gravity is pulling you. Its very annoying. Snowbird is at such an high altitude that you can happily ski acres and acres of open bowls. Also because the resort is mostly on private land they can mow down as many trees as they want. Most resorts in Utah are built in the national forest and have to cater to all the tree huggers if they want to cut down a tree or make a new run. The short story is you'll like Snowbird if you like hitting combo-air jumps, dropping all sizes of cliffs, carving big mountain bowls, banging moguls, suffocating in powder, squeezing through narrow chutes, slaloming trees, bombing 50 degree slopes, and skiing advanced terrain in general.
Pros: extreme terrain, snow, very few beginner snowboarders
Cons: terrain park
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