WELCOME
For our annual ski trip, we chose Park City, UT this year! We skied both Deer Valley and Park City resorts over the three day trip, and I'm excited to share our experience as part of my first itinerary on PTO Travel Pro. Enjoy!
DESTINATION GUIDES:
ARRIVAL
The beauty of getting to Park City is that the flight is the easiest of any ski trip we've taken so far. Salt Lake City's Airport is about 45 minutes from Park City, so even though we had a late flight, the trip was quick and easy. Because our flight was so late (and our departure flight would be incredibly early) we chose to book a private car, but I also saw options for shuttles or even using UberSki if you have your own gear. Coming from LA, we were settled in at our hotel in under 2.5 hours after take-off.
We chose to stay at the Waldorf Astoria on the Canyons Village side of the resort, and the first impression is beautiful. You pull into a portico flanked by two large fire pits and then step into a craftsman-luxe style lobby. We were pretty wiped out, so we headed straight to the room and would have to leave exploring the rest of the hotel until tomorrow.
DAY ONE
DEER VALLEY
MORNING
Friday morning we woke up to what should have been a skier's dream - a winter storm had rolled in the day before, and it was still coming down! Unfortunately, enough snow had fallen that the resort was doing significant avalanche control, and the lifts couldn't run because of the strong winds. The entire Canyons side of Park City had shut down for down for the day, which is exactly where we were planning on skiing.
We went ahead and picked up our skis and started heading in the direction of the Park City base. As we rode the bus packed like sardines, we heard people all around us talking about how they were still only able to open two lifts and the lines were out of control. I glanced up at the bus route name and saw that we were on a route that actually continued on to Deer Valley. I called an audible, and we stayed on the bus after hoards got off at the Park City stop.
DEER VALLEY
A quick ride later, we arrived at the Snowpark Lodge at Deer Valley, and got in line to buy a lift ticket. Good news for us - Deer Valley has a half-day lift ticket. Perfect! Unfortunately, we learned after getting to the window that you can't buy the half-day until noon, and you can start skiing with it at 12:30. It was about 11:00, so we ducked into the lodge to grab a bite to eat before starting our day on the mountain.
Deer Valley is famous for a few things: perfect grooming, limited ticket sales, no snowboarders, and an elevated experience with regards to service and food.
The experience was truly great as promised - staff at the resort was abundant and helpful. Between the "traffic cops" to help form and order groups and automated gates to scan your lift ticket, I've never had such a smooth experience getting on a lift. The absence of snowboards was also something I never knew how much I would love, but could really get used to!
Where we saw Deer Valley at its relative "weakest" directly related to the storm - the snow had brought in droves of people and erased any grooming efforts from the night before. The crowds came up in conversation often with locals on the lifts, but as outsiders we really didn't notice. Some of the popular lifts had lines, but they were so well handled we didn't mind. What affected us more was the grooming. I have zero reason to complain - who wouldn't choose freshly fallen powder over, well, anything? You shouldn't. The snow conditions were amazing, but with all these skiers enjoying the powder, bumps were forming everywhere, even on the greens! Unfortunately, I've always avoided moguls like the plague, and today I learned through trial by fire. I survived, even if it wasn't always pretty as I accidentally launched myself over a few. That said, we sought out as much smooth terrain as possible, which meant we limited the difficulty of the runs we chose and maybe didn't explore as much as we would have liked. All in all, we left with big smiles on our faces and a promise to ourselves to take a lesson on skiing bumps!
GETTING HOME
Awesome news! Deer Valley came through with 5-star service once again with complimentary overnight ski check. We just skied right back to the Snowpark Lodge and left our skis so we wouldn't have to lug them back when we came back the next day.
Unfortunately, that was where the smooth-sailing ended for us. I had heard such wonderful things about the Park City bus system, and we had had a smooth enough experience getting to Deer Valley that we didn't think twice when we hopped on the bus to get home. It should've been just a short ride to the transit center, a change to the white bus, and two stops until home. What we didn't account for was how much the requested stops every 100 yards would add up, not to mention the second bus being 30 minutes late and the gondola back to the hotel shutting down literally as we stepped on the platform. All in, it took us longer to get from Deer Valley to Canyons than it did to get from LA to Canyons. We trudged our way back to the hotel, arriving hungry and in search of a cocktail.
DINNER
After our experience with the bus, we called a Lyft to get us down to Main Street, the epicenter of dining and drinking in Park City.
We had heard great things about High West Distillery, so we decided to give it a try and see what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, we didn't even make it inside. As I reached for the door, I was abruptly stopped by an impossibly rude doorman who made it very clear he thought we were completely out of our minds for thinking we could get a table there. I had checked ahead of time to see if they took reservations, and they don't have a line on their site nor are they on OpenTable, so I'm still not sure how you go about getting a table. I'm not even sure how you go about getting a drink - we never saw the bar, and we didn't want to. We were so off put by the experience that we walked out and never looked back.
I already had a plan B in my back pocket, so we walked up Main Street for take two. Unfortunately, plan B was closed for a private party. We were now very hungry and window shopping for anything that looked decent and available. We landed at the Annex. We were seated quickly, but were never greeted by a waitress (for at least 20 minutes). At this point we were starved, annoyed, and not wanting to risk it picking another restaurant, so we moved to the bar. Finally, our evening started to turn around. The bartenders were awesome and the food satisfying, standard bar fare, perfect for us after our trying evening. I also felt better after I learned they had just recently opened. We ended up having several rounds of food and drink, for a solid ending to a roller coaster of a day.
DAY TWO
DEER VALLEY
MORNING
We finally decided to work smarter, not harder, and it really paid off today. I had read online that the Waldorf had a shuttle, but it wasn't well explained, so we asked the front desk for the lay of the land. Turns out the shuttle leaves every hour at the top of the hour, moving between the bases of Canyons, Park City, and Deer Valley. Then later at night, it runs laps between the hotel and Main Street every half hour. We hopped on the shuttle, retrieved our skis from the overnight check, and were seamlessly back on the slopes.
This time around, the storm had subsided and we were skiing under beautiful blue skies. There was enough fresh snow that we still didn't experience Deer Valley's famous corduroy, but most of the bumps had been smoothed. We were able to explore more of the mountain and had an absolute blast! Our only regret was that we didn't find some of our favorite runs sooner.
There was still plenty of chatter from the locals about the crowds, especially because this was a sell-out day. Some blamed the Ikon pass for making it too easy and too affordable to cherry-pick great ski days. Some claimed that it was Deer Valley's fault for raising the limit on ticket sales. (I heard it was bumped from 5k / day to 9k / day, but that's not confirmed. Also, not confirmed how the Ikon pass holders factor in.) Once again, it really didn't bother us much because we had battled much worse lift lines before.
We stopped for lunch at the Empire Lodge. It was pretty crowded, which is interesting because another local told us the ticket cap isn't based on skiing or lift capacity, but on dining capacity. We enjoyed our lunch and thought that Empire had a few more options than Snowpark. While we ate, I called in a reservation at The Eating Establishment, just to be on the safe side. Once again, trying to work smarter.
We didn't realize when we booked, but Deer Valley was hosting a World Cup Freestyle Skiing competition. We had wanted to make it over to the aerial event Friday night, but after our ordeal, never made it. Saturday night was the final night featuring dual moguls, but we weren't holding our breath on being able to see that either. We ended up having the happiest of surprises when we decided to ski home via Big / Little Stick. The run feeds into the Champion run where the moguls were taking place, so we got to ski alongside the athletes as they made their way to the top. If that wasn't cool enough, the lower part of the run feeds right into the spectating area. We were able to ski right up to the base of the competition and watch the athletes taking their practice runs! I had seen the moguls on TV, but it was pretty amazing to see the speed and scale in person.
We stopped at the EBS lounge for a beer before catching our shuttle. Utah requires that you be seated to order alcohol, and you must also order food, but don't worry cookies count! It had started dumping down snow again, so the outside tables were the only ones available. We didn't mind because we enjoyed watching the snow and the moguls from the top deck.
In contrast to yesterday, we timed the Waldorf shuttle perfectly. The valet took our gear, and just like that we were home! The Waldorf ski valet puts your boots on warmers to pick up on the 4th floor in the morning, and they put your skis on racks by the gondola so the start of your next day can be extra easy.
DINNER
The shuttle also made it smooth sailing to get to Main Street for our dinner reservations at The Eating Establishment. We ended up having an awesome meal. Lots of places in Park City seemed to try really hard to be super foodie - I picked this place because they seemed really real without being at all boring. The food included everything from tacos to pasta to classic mountain fare. It's also worth noting that they offer breakfast all day! Michael took advantage of that and ordered a sizable plate of huevos rancheros, while I had the pork chop with apple chutney. I'm a big fan of spicy drinks right now, so we both had the spicy margarita and then ended the evening with a hot toddy, Irish coffee, and bread pudding. Michael claimed he wasn't hungry, but this bread pudding was so awesome that he seemed to forget!
We topped of the night with a soak in one of the hot tubs back at the hotel to ease our sore legs before getting back on the mountain for one final day!
DAY THREE
PARK CITY
MORNING
Today was our easiest start to the day since we would be skiing right from the Canyons base. We grabbed our boots and walked across the street to the gondola where our skis were waiting for us. The gondola took us to the Canyons base where we hopped on the Orange Bubble Express, and we were on the mountain.
The lift drops you off at the beginner area, which continues into some slow-zone blues. We thought this would be a great place to warm-up for the day, and apparently so did everyone else because it was incredibly crowded. We headed over to Iron Mountain in search of solitude and Cloud Dine's doughnuts. We missed the turn to get to the lift for Cloud Dine, so we unfortunately missed out on the doughnuts. We also missed out on the solitude because we decided to hop on the gondola connecting the Park City side of the resort, which turned out to be even more crowded.
By the time we made it to the Park City side, we were hungry and decided to stop at Miner's Camp. I was really bummed we missed out on Cloud Dine, but Miner's Camp hit the spot, and we were off! We skied a number of awesome blues around that part of the mountain, but then ended up on a run that was a little over our heads. It was a mix of powder on hard-pack that resulted in a steep, slicker side and a bumpy side of the run heading into a drop-off. At this point in the weekend, my legs were just not up for that and we both fell on our butts for the first time all weekend. Luckily, a mountain guide happened to ski by and gave me the pep talk I needed to ski the rest of the way.
After that, I just wanted a nice, comfortable reset run, so we skied down one we knew we liked. I was actually really enjoying taking a step back for a moment so I could gear up to finish the day strong. But, as I was minding my own business, all of a sudden I was slammed into from behind. As I was taking a left turn, a snowboarder had ridden over the back of my skis and plowed through my downhill leg. For better or worse, I didn't fall. My left ski stayed in place, facing the left side of the run, but my right ski swung around almost 180* and was now pointing uphill and to the right.
I yelled in pain and then said a few expletives, but the snowboarder continued down the slope. Luckily, I was fine, but my already-sensitive knee was not thrilled with the experience. The most disappointing thing was not just that a grown man had almost caused a major accident, but that the instructor he was with didn't say or do ANYTHING. Michael was ahead of me and heard the snowboarder joke with the instructor about the whole thing. He eventually did ask if I was okay (from several hundred yards away) and yelled that he was sorry as he continued boarding down the slope.
DINNER
Luckily, we were already at the end of our day anyways, so we decided to go ahead and head home. That said, the whole incident left a really terrible taste in my mouth. We had been battling crowds all day, and the crowds had finally won. Our shuttle driver had mentioned that Vinto was a great place for some casual Italian, so we dropped in there for dinner, and they delivered. A bottle of wine and some carbs later, we were full and ready to head home on our ridiculously early morning flight.
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