Snowbasin

Snowbasin is one of the oldest continuously operating ski areas in the country and, for years, one of its best-kept secrets. It sits on the back side of Mount Ogden in Weber County, about 33 miles northeast of Salt Lake City and a short climb up from the historic railroad town of Ogden, whose restored Ogden Union Station anchors the valley below. The resort began not as a business but as conservation work: in 1939 and 1940, the city of Ogden, the Forest Service, and the powder-skiing pioneer Alf Engen developed the slopes as part of an effort to restore the overgrazed Wheeler Creek watershed, and the area opened to skiers in late 1940 with rope tows, a handful of runs, and, by some accounts, a fleet of dog-sled taxis.

For half a century Snowbasin stayed a modest local hill. That changed in 1984, when Earl Holding — the Salt Lake-born owner of Sinclair Oil, the Little America hotels, and Idaho's Sun Valley — bought the mountain and set about transforming it. In the run-up to the 2002 Winter Olympics, Holding built a sweeping new lift system and a trio of famously lavish lodges, and Snowbasin hosted the men's and women's downhill, super-G, and combined races on courses laid out by the former Swiss champion Bernhard Russi. The ski jumping and sliding events, by contrast, ran an hour south at Utah Olympic Park.

What the Olympics left behind is a world-class mountain that still draws surprisingly small crowds. Snowbasin spreads some 3,000 acres across six peaks, with long groomers, open bowls, and a nearly 3,000-foot vertical drop, served by two gondolas and a small fifteen-passenger tram up Allen Peak — one of only two jig-back trams in the United States. Its base lodges, all timber, stone, and big mountain-view windows, feel closer to a grand national-park hotel than a ski hill. Still owned by the Holding family as a sister resort to Sun Valley, Snowbasin has in recent years topped national best-resort rankings while keeping the unhurried feel that makes it a favorite of Utahns who would rather not fight the crowds at the Park City and Cottonwood resorts. Across the Ogden Valley rises its neighbor Powder Mountain, the largest ski area in the country.