Powder Mountain’s operators have made it no secret to pass holders that some radical changes would be put in place at the Eden-area ski and snowboard resort for the 2024-25 season.
Privatizing some established public lifts in a first-of-its-kind resort-management experiment? Check.
Installing four new lifts, including two that open up previously difficult-to-reach terrain? Check.
Raising pass prices while simultaneously dropping its unique cap on the number of season passes it sells? Check.
Implementing paid parking on weekends and holidays? … Not so fast.
Season passholders say they were blindsided when an email from Powder Mountain sent Tuesday informed them that the ski area will require paid parking this season. The resort plans to charge $12 per car on weekends and holidays until 1 p.m. at all lots. Parking is free Monday through Friday.
Colton Rice, 33, of North Salt Lake said he and his girlfriend had no indication before buying their passes that they would also need to budget for parking. He said he feels duped by the resort and described the policy as “super misleading.”
“I think in a time when the resort is already undergoing so many changes, and people are already so skeptical, and they already closed off part of the mountain to give to landowners and all these changes,” Rice said. “And then they go ahead and just drop that bomb on all the local season passholders that they’re now paying for parking and there’s kind of nothing you can do about it?
“It’s just, like, a lot at once.”
(Ash Christiansen | Powder Mountain) A helicopter delivers a tower for the new Lightning Ridge lift at Powder Mountain ski and snowboard resort near Eden prior to the 2024-25 season.
Powder Mountain operators said they forewarned season passholders that parking changes were afoot for 2024-25. In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune in March, when Powder announced it would be dropping its 3,000-person cap on season passes, general manager Kevin Mitchell said the resort would be tinkering with its parking. At the time, he said he expected the plan to include aspects of free parking, paid reservations and carpool incentives.
However, an email sent to season passholders in February and shared with the Tribune appeared to indicate that Powder was leaning toward adopting a model similar to Snowbird’s. In that system, most parking is free but skiers and snowboarders can pay for a reservation if they want to ensure they have a spot.
“While we’re still confirming parking details for the 2024/25 season,” the email said, “guests can expect that in addition to our current first come/first serve system, we’re working to incorporate paid parking, carpool incentives and increased bus and shuttle service.”
Season passholders do get free transit to the mountain on the UTA Ski Bus and a spokesperson said the resort is working to coordinate frequent shuttles between the Wolf Creek neighborhood at the mountain’s base and the resort. For day-pass users, the adult and youth fare for the UTA Ski Bus is $5 each way.
Carpools of three or more people can park for free every day. Furthermore, Ashton Stronks, Powder Mountain’s communications director, said parking remains first come, first served. Guests will not need reservations and parking will be paid via an app, similar to the system used in downtown Salt Lake City.
Solitude, which in 2019 became the first Utah resort to charge for parking in all its lots, now charges for parking every day during the meat of the ski season. The cost is $10 on weekdays and $35 on weekends for cars carrying two or fewer people. At Park City Mountain’s Mountain Village lots, parking is $28 daily.
Powder instituted paid parking on weekends, Stronks said, to incentivize skiers and snowboarders to use alternate modes of transportation on busy days.
“We’re ultimately trying to lessen the number of cars on the mountain,” Stronks wrote in an email to the Tribune. “The price point (half of what most Utah resorts charge) is not intended to be a revenue driver, it’s meant to incentivize better transportation methods so guests will experience less friction on arrival during the busiest hours of the week”.
Several people discussing the changes in an online chat said it’s a solution in search of a problem. Parking at Powder has rarely been hard to come by, they said.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Reed Hastings, the recently retired CEO of Netflix talks about improvements that are planned for Powder Mountain ski resort, on Monday, Aug. 28, 2023.
“Weird,” one person in the chat wrote, “cause there was never a huge issue with parking up until now?”
Skiers and snowboarders may actually soon have more room to park. Stronks said little to no parking was lost with the privatization of the Mary’s and Village lifts and the resort is working on adding more parking on the mountain.
Rice said he’s more immediately concerned with saving the money in his wallet than with saving himself a few steps to the slopes or a few extra minutes looking for a parking spot. He said he now will either have to budget $400 more for parking or will have to start reserving a locker or buying lunch at the resort, which could set him back considerably more than $12 a day. Last winter, a basket of chicken tenders at the Hidden Lake Lodge cost $13.
“Between us we spent about $3,000 bucks on season passes, expecting to be able to do the thing we’ve been doing, which is to go on the weekend or whenever we want to go and use our passes,” Rice said. “We now have to spend another $400 or figure out how to take the bus and buy lunch up there. So it’s really just incredibly annoying "
Rice used to work and ski at Alta Ski Area in Little Cottonwood Canyon. When that resort implemented Utah’s first parking reservation system in 2021 — a practice since adopted by Brighton, Solitude and Park City Mountain — Rice said he felt a similar amount of frustration. Reservations were hard to come by, the bus was frequently full and even though he had a pass he often couldn’t use it. So, he and his girlfriend put their names on Powder’s season pass waitlist, and last year they got in.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Sundown Ski Lift at Powder Mountain Ski Resort, on Friday, December 8, 2023.
“[Alta] just made it harder and harder to go skiing,” he said. “And so the idea of being able to show up at Powder Mountain without a reservation, you know like the good old days where you buy a season pass to just kind of be able to go whenever you want? And really the ability to do that has been fading away very silently. And Powder Mountain was kind of like the last place that really allowed you to just kind of wake up whenever you want and go skiing.”
It’s clear that by the end of this season, another change will have come to Powder Mountain. It may be Rice and other passholders’ attitude about paid parking. Or, it’ll be where they park their money.
Update: Oct. 4, 2024, 1:15 p.m. • Parking at Powder must be paid via an app, not a kiosk as stated in an earlier version of this article.
