There are more than a few entities who would like to put the kibosh on SkiLink. Gauging from the packed church at last night’s forum in Park City, Utah, the proposed gondola between Canyons Resort and Solitude Mountain Resort will definitely not go quietly.
“Park City residents are here because they’re concerned about this being in their backyard,” said Sierra Club’s Tim Wagner. The discussion centered on whether to support a land swap between the feds and Talisker Corp. which owns Canyons. Congress would have to sell 30 acres of federal land in Big Cottonwood Canyon for SkiLink to run and backcountry enthusiasts fear that means Talisker would have some serious control over their playground.
Those ‘for’, like the idea of propelling Utah skiing to the forefront of the industry. They say it would light the fuse to connect the other Utah resorts and create a ski experience similar to those in Europe and unlike anything in this country. They add it would alleviate traffic and congestion in the canyons, and create 500 jobs.
Those ‘against’, say a gondola would crush the backcountry and set a “dangerous precedent.”
Solitude Mountain’s Dave DeSeelhorst says that’s not a realistic fear. There’s plenty of water available outside of this particular watershed space and the gondola could be built with minimal environmental impact.
There’s still time to weigh in. The possibility of construction is a long way off. First Congress has to approve the sale and then the local governments would need to meet to decide whether SkiLink is a viable and beneficial project before Canyons can make a groundbreaking move.
The panel discussion last night is the first of many public forums to come about SkiLink. We’ll keep you up on the drama as it unfolds.
Damn, it’s cold. Perhaps it’s the coldest stretch Utah has seen in decades? I’m no weather dude so I can’t speak to records but for the first time EVER I’ve run out of my stash of handwarmers.
It was officially two degrees colder today than yesterday but once you’re below the teens does it really make a difference? The snow was so cold…how cold was it? So cold that I had to grab onto Alta’s rope tow from the start rather than glide alongside it most of the way. (Cold snow = sticky skis.) It was so cold my snot froze. So cold my boyfriend had to drive with his ski boots on because he couldn’t pry the plastic open until the heater thawed them.
We headed up to Alta at 8:30 a.m. Saturday morning thinking that we were dressed as warmly as possible. The problem is that no matter how toasty your body is, the chairs are cold and boots are cold. ‘Snowbird’s the best on cold days because you can ride the tram,” Ryan said as we passed the Bird going up LCC. But yesterday friends reported waits of more than an hour for the tram. So the tram is warm but your wait isn’t. Kind of makes the ride moot.
I was prepared for the freeze after my few hours at Solitude yesterday. It was 9 degrees and that was cold enough. I made four runs in the 8 inches of windblown powder then raced down to the Moonbeam Lodge to rescue my feet. Three more runs and I was done. I probably would have stayed home today if it wasn’t so much fun to finally get freshies at Solitude. It had been nearly two weeks since the last big storm.
Alas, the most recent storm system has migrated east, clearing out the inversion (i.e. smog) in the Salt Lake Valley and leaving more snow in the city than in the mountains. Huh? A foot versus more than two feet on the Valley floor. The Utah Avalanche Center says it got “too cold to snow at the upper elevations. The best temperature range for dendridic crystal growth occurred in the lower elevations where it was a bit warmer.” Some areas north of Salt Lake rang in with 40 inches! The Cottonwoods got about 11″. The UAFC says the sub-zero temperatures above 9000 feet are the coldest of the season so far.
I hear it’s supposed to be even worse tomorrow. Make sure at the least you’ve got toe warmers, hand warmers, down coats and thick fleece baselayers. Do not leave home without them or that will be one expensive ‘lodge’ ticket. I really that it gets warm enough to snow. We’re about 50″ shy of a great base depth.
Utah’s winter has finally kicked in. Perhaps last season’s weaksauce snow turnout was Mother Nature’s way of putting us in our place. One can only hope that with this past week of storms, we’re back to “normal”. At least it sounds that way on Facebook.
FB is to the ski industry what the movies were to the military. There’s no quicker/better way to get the stoke rolling and to get everyone to ‘enlist’. There’s that brief, pure storm and Whammo! hundreds of posts and reposts:
“Received 10 inches of snow today”, “The Bird Gets the First ‘Dump’ of the Year!”, “Got some fresh stuff today! Who is heading up?”, “Bring it on”, “The white stuff is coming!”, “Yippee!!!!”
Carston Oliver at Alta Resort, December 15, 2012. Photo by Lee Cohen.
December is bringing cold temps and more snow than we ever saw last Christmas. Social media photos of skiers blasting through knee-deep plus erupt faster than zits on a teenager. “Snow in the forecast,” is all it takes to rile the natives.
Utah gets snow and Facebook lights up like Disneyland’s Main Street before a parade. Welcome to, as one prosaic poster wrote, Ski Season Foreplay.
Utah’s 14 resorts are now all open for business and one to two feet of snow is expected by Wednesday. Plus, the evening chill is enough to keep the guns cranked. Most of the resorts are touting ‘increased snowmaking’ as their greatest improvements for 2013; a result of the barren slopes of 2012.
Only Deer Valley and Snowbird threw down the gauntlet this past summer, spending millions on perceivable upgrades. I gotta say it’s about time for both of the two new high-speed quad lifts that debut this season.
The “old” Deer Crest lift. Photo courtesy of skilifts.org.
Deer Valley has replaced the excruciatingly slow Deer Crest lift on, you guessed it, Deer Crest. The new “Mountaineer Express” will carry 1200 skiers/hour much to the chagrin I’m sure of ski instructors who often took clients there to kill time. Look for that scenic side ofn the lower mountain to see huge upticks in skier traffic on its eight groomed runs. I’ve had my eye on the line under the lift ever since they opened Deer Crest but I’ve yet to see it open. Maybe now with popularity will come access.
DV invested more than $8 million over the summer (Snow Park Lodge was renovated and the Empire Lodge deck remodeled as well) but it’ll be Snowbird’s upgrade that makes all the difference in the Wasatch this year. The new Doppelmayr High Speed Little Cloud Express will zip riders to Hidden Peak in half the time. I foresee more skier traffice this year for the mere fact that you won’t have to wait an hour in the tram line to get fresh tracks on a powder day anymore (fingers crossed). Ride Peruvian, cruise into Mineral Basin, ride Mineral Express and drop over to LC for sweet laps in the bowl or, if the Tunnel isn’t yet open and you feel like parking in Gad Valley, ride Gadzoom and go straight to LC.
If reports are correct, the new Little Cloud lift is a hit. Skiers claimed it felt like the mountain was empty on the lift’s opening weekend. Now if only, UDOT (Utah Dept. of Transportation) could figure out how to make the drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon feel empty we’d really be in business.
Ba-Bye old Little Cloud!
P.S. The SkiLink proposal to join Canyons and Solitude resorts is still trotting along. Salt Lake County Councilman Michael Jensen and Canyons Resort Managing Director Mike Goar spoke to the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands on December 2, 2012. Many in the ski industry think adding this kind of resort-to-resort access will be a game changer.
The skiing’s good. No, seriously, I expected to be sliding around on hardpack today at Alta after a whole week of 50-degree days but the windbuff had me smiling. The wind itself didn’t, but what was under my feet came as a pleasant surprise. Even off-piste it was soft and chalky. I stayed out all day and played around. I used my shaped ‘rock’ skis just in case but I never even came close to a rock.
We stopped for lunch at 12:30 pm in time to watch the wind outside rage. And here I gripe- WTH happened to the curly fries at Goldminer’s? They were my favorite part of lunch but alas, they have lost out to those dastardly ‘straight’ fries.
Back on the hill we made only two more runs because of the 50 mph constant wind and blowing snow that made visibility irrelevant.
The report says 4-7″ by morning. It was raining back at my house in Park City by 4 p.m. I called up to Snowbird and it was raining at 6:30 p.m. The rain, however, changed to snow by 9 p.m.
Check out the Ski Utah Snow Report at 7 a.m. to find out what really fell tonight.
Wow. Way to drop a bomb and run. For nearly six months, we’ve laid in wait wondering what the future might look like for Park City Mountain Resort. If you weren’t paying attention last week you might have missed the next big step in their struggle with Talisker Land Holdings, the parent company of Canyons Resort. That’s because Summit County’s Third District Court Judge Ryan Harris decided to rule right before Turkey Day and let the headline get buried under all the holiday gravy.
Here’s the gist:
Harris has dismissed several of Park City Mountain Resort’s claims but not all; therefore “PCMR v. Talisker” is headed to trial. “We certainly have a basis for alleging that they (Talisker) want to take over the resort,” said PCMR attorney Alan Sullivan. The lawsuit is meant to force their hand. “Winning means we proceed with our operations on the 3700 acres covered by the leases as they provide,” said Sullivan. “Losing would require us to shut down.”
At dispute is a long-standing lease between PCMR and United Park City Mines which allows PCMR to operate their resort on UPCM land. PCMR alleges that the agreement with UPCM was intended to extend through 2051. But then UPCM sold their land to Talisker in 2003, including most of PCMR. (PCMR, however, owns the base facilities and infrastructure with snowmaking and water rights so the resort isn’t much good to Talisker without those.) When PCMR missed the deadline to provide written notice of its intent to extend the property leases (which expired in April, 2011), Talisker was swift to swoop.
“The Park City Parties had an obligation to strictly comply with the leases’ renewal provisions, and they failed to do so,” Harris wrote in his summary. He dismissed PCMR’s claim that Talisker had a duty to notify the resort of the requirements of a lease renewal before the expiration date. He also dismissed PCMR’s antitrust claims. But he wasn’t about to hang PCMR out to dry completely. He allowed PCMR’s argument that Talisker should be stopped from claiming the leases expired. “PCMR alleges in 2009, 2010 and 2011, there were specific conversations about the leases and there was a shared understanding when they made investments,” said Sullivan. “The improvements they made (to the resort) would only make sense if there was that understanding.”
Judge Harris also allowed PCMR’s claim for damages if it is found that Talisker failed to disclose early on that they considered the leases to be expiring.
Sullivan says they’ll begin initial discovery to gather depositions and documents to support their claims but hopes an agreement can be reached. “We’re always hopeful that this can be settled,” he said. “And we’ve made that clear to Talisker from the beginning.” When asked why PCMR doesn’t simply renew the lease at a higher rate, Sullivan hinted that it seemed no amount of money would satisfy their opponent. Talisker, on the other hand, has always contended that they do not want to own PCMR but are unwilling to say what exactly they do want from them.
So here the two parties stand; awaiting a trial date which could be many months out.
