Utah Powder and Steeps, Without the Crowds

During a quick swing through Utah last spring, I texted my husband a photo from a ski area of rock- and tree-lined steeps. “Is that Snowbird or Alta?” he responded. His guess was good, but he was about 70 miles off.

I was at Snowbasin in northern Utah, a 45-minute drive from Salt Lake City. Most skiers from out of state head to one of the resort clusters on the city’s eastern edge, to Snowbird and Alta, or Brighton and Solitude, or Park City and Deer Valley, which draw thousands of skiers on weekends and powder days.

Snowbasin, with 3,000 acres of varied terrain, efficient lifts and luxurious on-mountain facilities, stands apart and has yet to see the crowds descend.

It does have a few neighbors. The small Nordic Valley ski area attracts local families. And then there’s 8,464-acre Powder Mountain, the country’s largest ski resort. It’s the yin to Snowbasin’s yang, with seemingly endless rolling slopes, an appealingly old-school vibe, and a funky uphill transport system consisting of chairlifts, snowcats and shuttle buses.

The city of Ogden, emerging as a destination on its own, serves as a convenient base camp for visiting Snowbasin and Powder Mountain, each about a half-hour drive away. Closer yet is Huntsville, one of several small towns in the Ogden Valley, where a 15-room boutique property, the Compass Rose Lodge, opened last winter.

In early January, I returned to Snowbasin for another visit and to explore Powder Mountain. I stayed the first night in Ogden. Long a feisty counterpart to Salt Lake City, this one-time railroad hub now trumpets its proximity to outdoor recreation.

After checking into the Bigelow, the grand but aging dame of Ogden hotels, dating from 1891, I wandered next door to the Monarch, an arts incubator and event space that is part of what is being called the Nine Rails Creative District. A former garage for the Bigelow and now on the National Register of Historic Places, the industrial-chic building houses 40 working artist studios, a cafe, gift shop and more. On this First Friday evening, the place buzzed as locals wandered in and out of studios, wine in hand, and an alt-rock band played in the entryway. At Thomas-Printers, a letterpress studio with a vintage Heidelberg press, cheeky notecards riffed on the city’s ongoing transformation: “Greetings from Ogden. Utah’s Foremost ‘It Used to Be Waaay Worse City.’”

To the powder

The first clue that Powder Mountain offers something different is the ski tracks. They scribble down through trees and ungroomed pitches on both sides of the resort access road, their origins unclear. Turns out these runs are part of Powder Country: 1,200 acres of backcountry-style terrain that funnels down from three chairlifts. To return to the base area, skiers traverse to a designated pickup spot and catch a free shuttle bus.

To me these tracks signify that PowMow, as it’s commonly known, means adventure. As I soon discovered, the mountain feels like a big playground, fitting in somewhere between a traditional ski area and the backcountry (albeit avalanche controlled). Runs — 154 of them — spill every which way off the 8,900-foot main summit. With topography that resembles a crumpled piece of paper, the terrain encompasses four major drainages and several ridges. Get the lay of this vast land during one of the free, twice-daily mountain tours that meet at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. outside the Timberline Lodge.

That morning, I arced big turns down long, groomed cruisers and tucked through trees and around boulders, charting my own course off-piste. It didn’t take long to find fresh tracks on low-angle slopes in Cobabe Canyon, even though the last storm was more than two days ago.

PowMow earns its moniker by receiving an average of 500 inches annually of Utah’s dry, light fluff — the area doesn’t even have snow-making. Of the six chairlifts that ferry skiers up the mountain, only one is high-speed, which helps preserve the powder from getting too tracked up between storms. Not that there’s much danger of that happening anyway. As of 2016, the resort preemptively instituted a daily skier cap of 4,500 that has yet to be reached.

Belying the area’s adventurous feel, 40 percent of PowMow’s runs are rated intermediate. That rolling terrain also makes the slopes popular among snowboarders, who enjoy the surfy feel. I found steeper runs off the Paradise lift and in Powder Country, but some of the resort’s best expert trails require a bit longer to access. I bought a $25 ticket to take a 15-minute snowcat ride up Lightning Ridge (an additional cat serves an area on the resort’s opposite side on weekends). From the drop-off spot, I traversed and sidestepped for several minutes to ski Hook Chute, which funnels into a long tongue of snow between two rock walls. Had I wanted to boot-pack up another 500 vertical feet for 30 minutes to the summit of James Peak, I could have skied PowMow’s longest inbounds descent, some 2,500 feet down to the bottom of Paradise. But I chose to explore more of the mountain instead.

For even more adventuring, PowMow offers full- and half-day guided out-of-bounds trips. And last year the resort partnered with Whisper Ridge, an adjacent heli- and cat-skiing outfit that operates on 70,000 acres; book a trip directly at the resort.

For a late lunch, I ducked into the Powder Keg in the lower level of the 1980s-era Timberline Lodge. It was packed with people enjoying three kinds of ramen (including a sinus-clearing green curry), huge banh mi sandwiches, and burgers, along with nine local brews on tap and free popcorn from the machine by the entrance. When I left, a band from Salt Lake was already starting to set up on the small stage for après ski.

Upstairs in the lodge, the wooden tabletops are burnished to a glossy finish from years of use. A large banner by the fireplace bears a quote from Alvin Cobabe, a rancher-turned-medical doctor and the resort’s founder, about Powder Mountain’s bewitching spell. Dr. Cobabe opened the resort on his family’s land in February 1972 and ran it until 2006. More recently, in 2013, a group of young entrepreneurs behind a networking enterprise known as Summit teamed up with two venture capitalists with local ties to purchase the resort; they have big plans.

A pair of rustic-chic mountaintop yurts now hosts events through the Summit Series, invitation-only, socially conscious conferences that resemble a hybrid between Allen and Co.’s annual Sun Valley gatherings and Burning Man. High-end modern chalets have started to dot the mountain’s upper reaches; eventually the plan is to have 500 of them, along with a commercial village, condos and a hotel.

What does this mean for PowMow’s longtime no-frills persona? Other than a new lift and some additional ski acreage in 2016, it’s been business as usual on the slopes. For now, at least, the resort remains the type of down-home place that recently named a swath of terrain — Woody’s World — after a 40-year employee who died last year.

Snowbasin-bound

From Powder Mountain, I headed south, passing farmhouses and ranchland while driving from the small town of Eden to the equally small town of Huntsville, where I checked into the Compass Rose Lodge. Opened in January 2019 by Jeff and Bonnie Hyde, both of whom have long ties to the ski world, the hotel has creatively repurposed industrial-farmhouse décor, large guest rooms and a coffee shop. Moreover, its size and setup encourage the type of casual socializing I associate with old-time ski lodges. That evening over the daily complimentary wine and snacks, I chatted about skiing and auto racing with a couple from Alabama.

There’s also an observatory, cleverly built to look like a silo from the outside. I toured it one night (access is half price for hotel guests) with a student from Weber State University as my guide. Clouds obscured most of the stars, good for the next day’s skiing, though we did get some glimpses of the moon through one of the three telescopes.

Compass Rose adds a much-needed new option to Ogden Valley. Until Powder Mountain’s village is built, skier lodging for both ski resorts consists primarily of off-site condos and a few bed-and-breakfasts.

As I drove toward Snowbasin the next morning, the resort’s topography revealed itself. The ski area resembles a vast white curtain strung along six high peaks, trails plummeting for 3,000 vertical feet among the folds and ripples.

Thanks to the billionaire Earl Holding, who purchased Snowbasin in 1984 (he already owned Sun Valley), the resort benefited from a slew of upgrades that kicked into high gear in time for the 2002 Olympics. Mr. Holding, who also owned Sinclair Oil and Salt Lake City’s ornate Grand America hotel, specified some of the most majestic base-area buildings and on-mountain restaurants you’ll ever see, with gigantic timbers, plush carpeting, overstuffed couches, creamy marble and oversize chandeliers. What you won’t find: slopeside lodging. Mr. Holding died in 2013 and though his family still owns the resort, including two square miles at the base, it’s unclear whether building real estate is among its priorities.

The resort’s lift system enables skiers to access much of the mountain via two gondolas and a tram (there are six other chairlifts), meaning one can ride in warmth and comfort when the weather turns blustery. The grooming is thoughtful, too. As the snowcats rake perfect corduroy overnight, they’ll often leave some ungroomed snow on one side, allowing skiers of different ability levels or preferences — moguls versus packed-down snow — to descend the same run.

The day began sunny and cold. Even though it was a weekend (and Snowbasin now accepts the Epic Pass, which allows skiers to visit multiple resorts for one fee), the slopes were relatively uncrowded. After riding the Needles Gondola up the mountain, I skied a series of top-to-bottom, flowy cruisers served by the Strawberry Gondola — that is, after pausing near the top to view the Great Salt Lake’s Antelope Island. On clear days, those in the know begin on the Strawberry side of the mountain and work their way across to follow the sun.

Late morning, I decided it was time to hit one of the resort’s classic steep runs. From the top of the Strawberry Gondola, I traversed right and slightly uphill to Lone Tree, a svelte chute with a precipitous drop. Some 610 vertical feet of short-radius turns later, I was back on flat ground by the Needles on-mountain lodge.

As clouds started to roll in, I zigzagged my way across Snowbasin’s vast expanse, dipping into the trees between runs and even trying out Bear Hollow Woods, a new-this-year children’s zone that wends it way among gladed aspens. The trail map lists 106 runs but there could easily be twice as many — skiable lines exist all over the mountain.

I made it a point to stop for lunch at the John Paul Lodge, a window-lined circular aerie that looks out on the improbably steep start of the Olympic men’s downhill course. With a new executive chef at the resort this year, the lodge has added Bavarian fare like schnitzel and giant pretzels, as well as an all-day waffle bar. Munching on a pretzel, I took a closer look at the massive gold-plated chandelier overhead; two tiers of winged dragons encircle it, one dragon per each electric candle. At what other ski resort could you see fixtures this ornate and still enjoy some serious terrain, without having to fight the crowds, to boot?

By then, the clouds had begun to unleash swirls of snow and visibility was low, so a post-lunch foray up No Name Peak no longer seemed like a good idea. It’s the site of some of Snowbasin’s most technical terrain and a five-minute hike from the top of the Allen Peak tram. Instead, I navigated the trees under the John Paul Express lift, finishing up in a gully that guided my skis side to side, up and down, like a natural halfpipe.

The blizzard had set in. If I had snapped a photo at that moment, not even I would have been able to figure out later where I’d been.

IF YOU GO:

Rooms at the historic Bigelow Hotel in Ogden (2510 Washington Boulevard, 801-627-1900) start at $90 for a spacious, serviceable suite with a queen bed. More modern lodging downtown includes the Courtyard by Marriott (247 24th Street, 801-627-1190; from $140); the Hilton Garden Inn Ogden (2271 South Washington Boulevard, 801-399-2000, from $150); and the Hampton Inn and Suites, in the renovated historic Eccles Building (2401 Washington Boulevard, 801-394-9400, from $140).

Ogden’s Slackwater Pub and Pizzeria (1895 Washington Boulevard, 801-399-0637) offers 18 types of specialty pizza, and an extensive beer menu.

At Powder Mountain (6965 East Highway 158, Eden, 801-745-3772), daily adult lift tickets are $95, and tickets for night skiing off the Sundown chairlift are $33. Lunch dishes at the Powder Keg range from $9 to $13.

Whisper Ridge (4776 East 2600 North, Eden, 801-876-4664) runs daylong cat-skiing trips for $795 per person, and day heli-skiing trips for $1,440 per person on terrain next to Powder Mountain. Backcountry yurt overnights are $380 per person.

Rooms at the Compass Rose Lodge (198 South 7400 East, Huntsville, 385-279-4460) start at $209 for a room with a king bed. Two rooms with two queen beds and two bunks are also available, starting at $279. The $20 observatory tours ($15 for children 5 to 12) are half-price for hotel guests.

Dining options in the Ogden Valley are still limited. Kuna Bistro (2429 North Highway 158, Eden, 801-500-2335), new this winter, serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday. The Brazilian-inflected dishes include coffee-roast short ribs, vegetarian ceviche and cassava fries (entrees $15 to $29). Powder Mountain also offers weekly Tuesday community dinners at its mountaintop Skylodge ($50 per person) and, on Thursdays, “Pizza and Pints” ($20 for unlimited food; alcohol not included) at a lodge the resort owns in the valley.

At Snowbasin (3925 East Snowbasin Road, Huntsville, 888-437-5448), daily adult lift tickets are $125 on weekdays and $139 on weekends, with discounts for advance purchase online. Lunch dishes at the John Paul Lodge range from $10 to $16.

A longtime New York Times contributor, Cindy Hirschfeld writes about skiing and other outdoor adventures from her home in Basalt, Colo. Follow her on Twitter: @cloverdog4

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