Best Of Skiing: How To Enjoy America's New Largest Ski Resort, A Guide To Park City

For winter sports fans, it’s easy to enjoy Park City, Utah, America’s most accessible major ski town and home to the country’s largest ski resort, some of its finest snow, and best skiing. Home to the famed Sundance Film Festival, the town of Park City is less than 45 mostly highway minutes from Salt Lake City airport, a major international hub that is rarely affected by weather. To complicate things, Park City is also the name of the new mega resort within Park City the town, which overnight has become the largest in the United States – by a wide margin. This nomenclature is especially befuddling given that the town is also home to another famous major ski resort, Deer Valley. But once you get past the rather bewildering fact that Park City is not synonymous with Park City, but rather one of two ski resorts in Park City, your next baffling project will be figuring out how to make the most of a vacation at the new resort, given its enormous size. Here is a guide.

After $50 million in infrastructure upgrades for this season, the new Park City is a combination of the former Canyons Resort, which was Utah’s largest, and the former Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR), plus some all-new terrain. The result is 300+ trails and nearly 40 lifts across 7,300-acres which includes 14 bowls, three to four times the size of famous destination resorts like Snowbird, Steamboat or Copper Mountain. This is nearly a 50% jump from the previous champ, another merger which combined Montana’s Moonlight Basin and Big Sky into 5,800-acres.

But while it is easy to get hung up on numbers, the big keys to the success of the new Park City – easily among the very best ski vacation choices in the world – is its incredibly user friendly location and its home, the charming Old West mining town itself, full of ambiance, great restaurants, bars, and lots of lodging choices. Also, since it is owned by Vail Resorts, the company’s global and industry leading Epic Pass is good for free skiing here.

The first question is where to stay, given that there are two distinct sides to the resort. The former Canyons resort is now the Canyons base area of Park City, and offers the best selection of true ski-in/out condos and hotels with fast access to the slopes. However, the tradeoff is staying in a purpose built base area outside of town with a dated and somewhat soulless feel and little in the way of shops, nightlife or dining, with one notable exception, a standout eatery, The Farm.  Easily the best lodging choice here is the (sort of) ski-in/out Waldorf Astoria Park City, but it has little competition and is not quite on par with other flagship ski resort luxury hotels. The Canyons base is 10 minutes from the heart of Park City (the town), but access is easy via an excellent free bus system, hotel shuttles or Uber.

Staying in town ups the charm, food, retail and après options considerably, but makes it a bit harder to actually ski. There is the famous Town Lift, which runs right from Main Street, but this is is within walking distance of just a handful of properties, most notably the soon to be greatly expanded luxury residential hotel, Sky & Main. But for most people staying in Park City proper, the day starts with a shuttle bus ride to the old base area of the former PCMR, even more dated than the one at Canyons – and with virtually no public parking

Connecting the two sides is the new Quicksilver gondola, which runs from the Iron Mountain section of what was Canyons to the former Snow Hut Lodge on the Park City side of Park City. Snow Hut was replaced by the huge and impressive Miner’s Camp, a new lunch flagship at the gondola portal. The high-speed lift runs in both directions and takes just 8 ½ minutes from end to end, with a mid-station atop the ridge, a four-minute ride from either terminal. There are several existing expert-only trails from the mid-station on the town side that were previously accessible only by hiking. These are now served by the gondola, but only in one direction (Canyons towards town). Three new trails have been added on the Canyons side to allow skiers downhill access from the mid-station, suitable for advanced beginners and up (but only in the town to Canyons direction). To improve traffic flow to and from the new gondola, the existing King Con high-speed quad chair was upgraded to a six-passenger lift, and the fixed triple MotherLode chair was upgraded to a detachable quad. As a result, skiers and snowboarders move very well here, with fast rides and minimal lines, and the integration has proven pretty seamless. You can easily ski all the way from Main Street to the Canyons base area, or vice versa, in under two hours.

There are several strategies for managing your skiing here. Some locals drive to Canyons in the morning where parking is ample, then take free buses back to town and start their ski day there, finishing at their car. Many Canyons guests time their finish for après on Main Street in town, and even stay through dinner before riding the bus or Uber back to their lodging. Whichever side you start on, it is also entirely possible to ski to the other end and back in a single day, but in general for a multi-day visit, it typically makes sense to focus on just one side daily, since each half of Park City is still bigger than the vast majority of destination ski resorts.

Canyons Base: The mountain here rises steeply from the base, with a variety of long green, blue and black runs coming all the way back down so that even the last run home can be a good one. Canyons has the better lift network and many start their day on the Orange Bubble Express, the nation’s first heated, covered chair, which quickly connects to other key lifts. One of these is Super Condor, among the very best expert chairs in all of skiing, sort of a resort within the resort all its own, and it is entirely possible for advanced skiers to spend an entire day riding this one uncrowded chair. It serves a long ridge with seven double black trails off one side and half a dozen single blacks on the other. This area is heaven for advanced skiers seeking conventional trails rather than the bowl, chute and cliff extreme variety. For these, visit the adjacent Chair 5 and 9990 Express, which climb to the very summit and serve many double black chutes and two double black glades, including the vast Fantasy Ridge area, along with one single black glade.

Despite all its formidable terrain, the Canyons is the better side for beginners, because it has a nice collection of green trails off the High Meadow chair in a higher area at mid-mountain, while most resorts delegate the least experienced guests to the more crowded and less scenic lower mountain. For intermediates there are tons of blue cruisers here, many of them quite long, mostly in the middle of the Canyons side, from the base of the 9990 chair.

Dining on this side is varied but not too exotic as ski resorts go. The best on-mountain choices include the newly rebuilt Cloud Dine, an example of the new generation of upscaled ski cafeterias, with lots of freshly made to order pizzas and salads. My favorite is the Tombstone Grill, a lively Western BBQ with decent smoked meats. It sits at the base of the Tombstone Express chair, and is great on sunny days with lots of outdoor seating. In the base village, the farm to table Farm is the top choice for dinner. Rare among U.S. ski resorts, Canyons village also has a dedicated upscale kosher restaurant, Prime.

Town of Park City: The Town lift is a long slow chair that runs right from lower Main Street in town. It sits just outside the excellent High West Distillery & Restaurant, the world’s only ski-in/ski-out distillery and Park City’s premier choice for après and a great spot for lunch. A trail runs right down under the lift, and this makes the heart of town essentially slopeside. But for most skiers, the Town Lift is a better place to end than begin, since it is only within walking distance of a few lodging entities, mainly Marriott vacation rentals and the luxe Main & Sky.  After a day on the slopes, finish here and you can walk to fun après places along bustling Main Street, such as the gritty No Name Saloon, with motorcycles and snowmobiles hanging from the ceiling and excellent bison burgers, or the now classic Wasatch Brew Pub, Utah’s first microbrewery. If you do board here, either in the morning or after lunch, from the top of the Town lift you quickly access the Bonanza chair, serving plenty of intermediate and advanced terrain.

The main gateway on this side is the former PCMR base area, several blocks off Main Street. It’s tough to park here, but most hotels have shuttles and there is extensive free bus service. The small and tired pedestrian plaza has a handful of bars, restaurants and shops, as well as a large base lodge with ticket office, ski school and rentals. Smaller lifts here serve a learning area at the bottom, but most visitors jump on the high-speed quad Crescent chair to head up the mountain. This serves several black trails that can be easily lapped, and also deposits skiers and snowboarders at the main people mover on this side, the high-speed 6-passenger King Con chair. Awesome for intermediates, King Con serves over a dozen blue and double blue runs set apart from more aggressive skiers, enough for a whole day of cruising. King Con also connects to the Quicksilver gondola and the other side of the resort. True experts seeking maximum challenge tend to prefer this side with its back bowls full of steep cliff bands. Head to the McConkey’s Express chair which climbs to the top of Jupiter Peak and plenty of double blacks in bowls and glades. The double blacks down from the gondola mid-station are a new lift-served treat this year, but be forewarned, these usually require a lengthy skate/walk out on a slightly uphill catwalk.

Just about every large resort in the country offers a free daily guided group mountain tour to familiarize visitors, and this is probably a good idea at this giant, where tours are offered on both sides. However, the tour from the old PCMR base lodge is a hidden gem, exceptional and not to be missed, because unlike the others, it combines the regular ski tour with a historic mining experience that is unrivalled in skiing. PCMR was originally a mining site and the ski mountain was started by a mine company, and this side of the resort is still covered with artifacts, including mineshafts, aerial trams, heavy equipment, ore processing facilities, assorted mine buildings, and even a onetime workers’ dorm that was the former U.S. Ski Team headquarters and has been restored into a historic on-mountain eatery. Today the Mid Mountain Lodge is locally beloved for its hearty meatball subs, one of the best-kept food secrets in skiing.

The other on-mountain dining highlight is the new 500-seat Miner’s Camp, which opened this year at the Quicksilver gondola. This represents the current state of the art take on the more gourmet ski cafeteria, with lots of made to order stations, including an extensive custom salad island. Even though it is cafeteria style, there is an emphasis on fresh and local, and the bison chili is a standout, along with fried cheese curds made with Utah’s famous Beehive cheddar. There is a Mediterranean station and I had a gyro here simply for the novelty – this is a dish I have never seen on the slopes before.

But the best lunch (and dinner) at Park City is a local’s secret, the family owned ski-in/out Silver Star Café at the base of the lower Shooting Star lift, which mainly serves a condo development and is off the tourist radar. Its outdoor deck is open on nice days and annually voted best in the town. At lunch they feature made to order standout burgers, sandwiches and pizzas, with an emphasis on drug free natural meats and high quality ingredients. At night the Silver Star offers a much more upscale menu of highly elevated comfort foods, and while few know it, I think this dinner is superior to – and cheaper – than any of the fancier Main Street restaurants, and often with live music. Likewise, High West Distillery offers both standout lunch and dinner, but you have to brave massive crowds. The nicer in town restaurants like Zoom, Riverhorse, 501 Main and others are all reliably good, but have a sameness to them, with upscale Rocky Mountain cuisine that revolves around pricy bison chops, steak, duck and trout. A happy exception is the new Handle, which has creative small plates that are delicious and allow mixing, matching and a lot of variety, though it tries a bit too hard to be Brooklyn-hipster.  While Silver Star Café is my overall dining favorite, the most unique option is the independently owned on-mountain Viking Yurt along the ski trails on the town side. The six course candlelit dinner in a tent includes a sleigh ride commute, live pianist, and full-blown four hour Scandinavian experience so good that the King and Queen of Norway ate here.

The new resort dwarfs the terrain at neighboring Deer Valley, especially for advanced skiers, and Deer Valley does not allow snowboarding at all, so for most visitors the slopes at Park City are an easy choice. However, Deer Valley has some excellent restaurants worth the very short commute from town (5 minutes), including the resort’s famously decadent weekly Seafood Buffet, the unique open hearth Fireside Dining experience, and the restaurants at the Forbes 5-Star Stein Eriksen Lodge and 4-Star Montage Deer Valley, which among other things offers a unique gourmet burger, bourbon and milkshake spot that is a ton of fun.

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