The Best Extreme Sports Western Road Trip – Utah Skiing and Snowboarding

This is part of a series that discusses a western road trip that can blow your recreation mind, in winter or summer. Because I'm a big snowhead, I'll refer to the ski resorts a lot, but these areas have world class recreation in most categories and seasons.

We stayed in Park City on this trip. On the next one, there is a chance that I'd stay in Salt Lake, because the resorts in Little Cottonwood Canyon are just amazing. Park City put me close to Canyons, which is on my epic pass, but I think I'd rather be close to Snowbird, and drive further to the Canyons. Oh, such tough decisions.

I'm assuming it would be cheaper to stay in Salt Lake than Park City.
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The whole area is pretty incredible. I live in the recreation mecca of Fort Collins, CO, where the weather is amazing, the bike trails are long, the rivers are clean, and the mountains are just beginning. It's pretty awesome, but Salt Lake is about 30 minutes from Snowbird. And Solitude. And Brighton. And Alta. These are some of the world's best resorts. If one didn't get snow, the other probably did.

Plus, Utah resorts are less commercialized, less visited and less crowded than Colorado resorts. We went to Snowbird on a March Friday powder day, and the lift lines weren't bad at all. The fresh lines stayed fresh until the afternoon.

Snowbird also scared me a bit, something the resorts on my Epic Pass are wont to do. Look before you leap at Snowbird, because if you don't you could be leaping over a 100 foot cliff to your death.

The steeps are long, there are a lot of them, and where one ends another begins. It's some of the best skiing I've ever experienced and happy visions of it still flash through my mind.