Day 6 after a short Cross Country interlude was our final day boarding in Utah. We decided to mix it up and head over to Canyons. The weather forecast was SNOW all day (up to 10 inches) and there was already 4 inches on the ground.
Park City was effortless for buying tickets but Canyons just up the street proved to be a real pain. We bought tickets online ahead of time to save some time and money but when we got there the line for tickets was taking people about 30 – 40 minutes to get through. Talk about a SERIOUS waste of time on a powder day.
The trick here is to go to the Ski School window inside the building where they have more agents just waiting to help you out with ZERO line. I don’t know why this wasn’t better load balanced or advertised for customers that had already bought passes online.
Once we got on the slopes we didn’t have too much trouble getting around but we did have trouble with the conditions. It didn’t seem like anything had ever been groomed so the terrain hidden underneath the snow was pretty inconsistent. You’d plow through a powder pile and slow down, then at the end it would all go to hell when the last bit of the pile slid away due to the ice underneath. It was tough on us boarders but the skiers said it was brutal since the conditions varied from one ski to the next.
The Dream Catcher area was definitely our favorite of the day. It appeared to have the most untracked powder and the most consistent conditions underneath. The next favorite area was called Red Pine Road which had a lot of free areas along the side to head off into the trees with the deep stuff. We only did this run once on the way out and couldn’t find an easy way to get to it again without taking two lifts.
Overall thoughts: We picked the right housing location by being “Ski In – Ski Out” at Park City. It had plenty of groomers to keep the skiers and boarders zooming in fast conditions. It also had a lot of fun Adventure Alleys to let people run through the trees. On top of that it just seems really well put together in terms of navigation. We never had a problem figuring out which lift to take or where to go. Everything just flowed! Canyons seemed tougher to get around with conditions that just didn’t lend themselves to high speed runs. Park City was non stop fun no matter which way we went!