Utah Has 15 Ski Resorts — and I Skied Them All in One Day

Inside ski writer Tim Neville's epic day in Utah.

A light snow fell through the beam of my headlamp as I pushed off my edges down the slope. Ahead of me, five more disembodied beams skittered across the snow, each emitting from the skiers ahead of me. Otherwise, it was pitch black. We were deep in the forested highlands of the Markagunt Plateau of southern Utah on a ski run at Brian Head Ski Resort, about 220 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. My watch read 4:36 a.m. The most gonzo ski trip of the season had begun.

Utah looms large in a skier’s world with spectacular terrain and so much snow. California may have dominated the freaky weather news in most of 2023, but Utah is where winter truly went berserk. On that brisk mid-March morning — with weeks of winter remaining — about 700 inches of snow had already fallen at some resorts. That’s 58 feet, ten cars stacked atop each other, and the most snow Utah has ever received in the shortest amount of time since official record-keeping began in 1943.

With conditions like these, even in spring, the skiing here is primo, and your choices are ample. You could come here to Brian Head, the highest ski resort in the state, or go to Cherry Peak for night skiing in the north. In between, you have Sundance and Deer Valley, where attendants will carry your skis, and Brighton, where they will not. Some of the best runs of my life have been on the double black diamonds at Snowbird. I learned to do a 360 in the terrain park at Woodward.

A visit to even one of these resorts during these deep, epic times would make my friends at home in Oregon rather jealous. But I wasn't there to ski just any Utah resort. I was there to ski all 15 of them. And I would do it in a day.

More Places to Ski in Utah

If this sounds ridiculous, know that it is, but understand how ridiculously awesome it is, too. For as impractical and silly as this feat is, we all knew it was doable. No helicopter required.

That’s because this has already been done before, sort of. The idea to ski all of Utah’s resorts in a day was hatched in 2009, when a group of skiers from Ski Utah, the nonprofit marketing arm of the Utah Ski and Snowboard Association, did at least one run at what was then all 13 of the state’s ski resorts. In 2012, a new ski area came online, Eagle Point, and so Ski Utah revisited the idea. That time, a group ticked off a run at all 14 resorts in just under 17 hours.

Now, more than a decade since that last adventure, the skiing landscape has shifted once again. Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons are now fused into one mega-resort called Park City Mountain, while two new areas have opened, Cherry Peak in 2015 and Woodward in 2020. That means Utah now has 15 resorts, not including a private mountain open only to members, and Ski Utah is at it once again. This time, the group included a cast of six diehard fanatics, including three Ski Utah staffers, two writers, and a pro skier. We all believe beyond any doubt that driving for more than 600 miles to spend no more than 15 minutes at each of the 15 ski areas sounds like a total blast — at least to us.

“I’d rather fly to Singapore in a middle seat,” my brother Jonathan said when I told him the plan. “That sounds less exhausting.”

It’s true. The whole project hinges on a relentless logistical dance that means skiing at some areas before they open and at others well after they close. Brian Head came first since it sits the farthest south near the adventure town of Saint George. With no lifts spinning at this ungodly hour, Ski Utah had permission to drive a van up a Brian Head service road to the top of a short feeder run called Blackfoot Access. On most days, this run would be forgettable, a run to reach other runs, really, but on that night, it felt magical. Shadows played across the slope. The hiss of our skis seemed louder and crisper with no one else around. Tommy Flitton, the pro skier, played in the soft snow off to the side. “This is so fun!” he boomed.

In less than a mile and exactly 637 vertical feet below our start, we met up again with our driver, Mario, and a van full of snacks, drinks, and costume props (because, why not). He had dropped us at the top. While we skied, he drove the van around to meet us in a parking lot. Reunited, we loaded up our skis, switched off our headlamps, and piled inside. Everyone was too excited to sleep.

One down. Fourteen more to go.

From Sundance to Park City

We drove north along the predawn roads, dodging deer and tackling the curves to Eagle Point, where the temperature at the 9,100-foot-high base had dropped to a frosty nine degrees. The faint crescent of a waning moon hung over the trees. Here, like at Brian Head, we could drive up the ski area, this time to a collection of mid-mountain homesites called Aspen Crest. Once again, we skied by headlamp, this time covering 0.8 miles and 504 vertical feet in less than ten minutes. A warm, welcoming light slipped out from one of the houses, and I pictured someone inside, unable to sleep, wishing they were out here, too.

Back at the van, I took off my ski boots for the longest drive of the day, a 190-mile, three-hour push to Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort in the north fork of Provo Canyon south of Salt Lake City. Somewhere between Sulphurdale and Meadow, daylight leaked into the sky, cold and pale and beautiful, the farms below the peaks of the Pahvant Range scrolling by the window. For the first time since waking at 3 a.m., I got some sleep.

Sundance was a blur of activity when Mario fought his way through the parking lot to drop us off at the base of the Outlaw Express chair. Ski Utah sells a ski pass called the Yeti that’s good for a day of skiing at each of the 15 resorts, and it’s a steal at $669 or about $45 a pop. (A single-day ticket at Deer Valley or Park City can cost you north of $250 alone). We could burn that pass in a day, I supposed, but instead, we had arguably Utah’s most coveted ski pass in our pockets, the Ski Utah Gold pass, which is good for unlimited days at all of the resorts. At $10,000 each, the pass is fully transferable. Companies typically buy one to share among employees as a perk.

Sundance would have been a fun place to linger, with a stunning location against 12,000-foot Mount Timpanogos. In the 2022/23 season, the resort opened 40 new acres of terrain and ten new runs, but those would have to wait. Instead, we blasted down the Outlaw and Stampede trails to be back at the van in less than 13 minutes. We were getting efficient.

Three more resorts around Park City fell in a matter of minutes. We hit Deer Valley by way of the Jordanelle Gondola, a good place to look for parking on crowded days, and got views of a new chairlift for beginners. At Park City Mountain, a beast of an area with 7,300 acres and 3,200 vertical feet of skiing, we did but half a mile run down 289 vertical feet. At Woodward, a facility that’s basically one big terrain park, I flew off some jumps but left the 360 for another day.

We weren’t yet halfway through, and the crux had yet to come.

In and Out of the Canyons

There are more practical ways to ski multiple Utah resorts in a day that offer a lot more skiing, too. Namely, you could hire a guide and cast off on the Interconnect, a lift-accessed skiing route that traverses the Wasatch backcountry from Park City in the east to the resorts in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons near Salt Lake City. It begins with a chairlift ride at Deer Valley and ends with a run at Snowbird, linking as many as six ski areas along the way. It’s a big day, about 25 miles, but you don’t need special backcountry skis. The chairlifts take care of most of the climbing.

We took the long way around to Big Cottonwood Canyon, driving past Post Malone’s house built on a hillside above the road, and getting in our longest run yet, a full 1,138 vertical feet, at Brighton, where people were grilling in the parking lot and the vibe relaxed. At Solitude, we amazed a skier from Maine who couldn’t believe this was resort No. 8 for the day, and it wasn’t yet noon. At Alta in Little Cottonwood Canyon, we rode the Sunnyside lift, a new six-person chair for this year. The most frustrating run happened next door at Snowbird, where a spectacular cable car whisks you thousands of feet up and into movie-worthy terrain. Nope. Instead, we skied a bunny slope, our shortest run so far at a third of a mile and 157 vertical feet.

The terrain in these canyons is so choked and the snow so apocalyptic that we worried we might hit our logistical breaking point trying to drive out of the canyon in traffic moving too slowly for us to reach our goal. A recent storm had dropped even more new snow, and road crews planned to close the road to control the avalanches. Even without the roadwork, traffic in and out of these canyons can be horrendous, so locals launched a new bus service this year, the Cottonwood Connect, that offers $10 round-trip rides. Luckily, we timed it all beautifully, and by 4 p.m., we were back on the interstate heading north.

With five resorts still to go and the sun getting low, I was physically beat and began to doubt whether we’d actually make it.

15 Resorts in One Day

The record for skiing the most ski resorts in a single day is 23, and it happened in early 2022 in Michigan, which has 39 resorts, the second-most ski resorts of any state after New York, which has 52. The previous record had stood at 17 resorts. That had happened in Japan.

For us, the final five resorts felt like a Guinness-worthy mix of determination and absurdity. We skied a short access run at Snowbasin, which had closed by the time we arrived. At Powder Mountain, the largest ski area in the country with 8,464 acres, the lights were just coming on for night skiing, and we took a rare moment to pause and watch the sunset melt over the mountains from the top of the Sundown lift. Nordic Valley, which you can see from the top of Powder Mountain, might have intrigued me the most, with $19 lift tickets, $10 of which is a credit to spend around the resort.

On the road to the final two resorts, with victory in sight, the mood turned celebrator, if not a bit wistful, like we all couldn’t believe we'd get what we sought. At Beaver, we beat our record for the shortest run with a 50-vertical-foot drop down a 0.1-mile beginner slope, which was fine with me. The temperature had plummeted to 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s been glorious,” Tommy said. “I’ve made a lot of memories in my life, but this is one of the sickest.”

It was 11:45 p.m. by the time we got on the lift for our final ride at Cherry Peak, a resort close to the Idaho line in the Bear Mountains. The owner, Dustin, had groomed an intermediate run, True Blue, to buttery bliss, and left the lights on. We raced down, high-fived, and took some celebratory pictures. It had taken us 20 hours.

But there, in the end, I didn’t care that despite the magnificent conditions, we hadn’t experienced Utah’s epic skiing at all. Instead, we’d had a day of all the wonderful things that being a skier lets you do. We traveled to new places. We pushed ourselves, made friends, and got to play on snow in a way most of us will never do again. Exhausting? Yes, but every one of us would do it again.

And so, we sorta did. With the feat in the bag, and all of us so tired we could barely stand, we did what we knew we had to do. We rode the lift up once again and glided off into the night. 

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