Solitude — and Utah’s skiers — race to get ski season started

Brighton • Liz Dean is concerned she’s creating “first chair monsters.”

On Thursday night, she, her husband, Courtney, and their two kids, Rainier and Teddy, huddled together to sketch out a game plan. That night, they would pack up sandwiches and snacks and load all of their ski gear into their truck. Then they would rise before dawn and drive from their Cottonwood Heights home up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Solitude Mountain Resort. They would lay their skis in the snow in front of the Link chairlift, the boys first followed by the parents. As they waited for other skiers to arrive, they’d make homemade egg McMuffins and play in the snow. Then, they’d trade off standing sentry at the front of the lift line until they finally slid onto a chair around 9 a.m.

The plan worked. On Friday morning, for the third year in a row, the Dean family snagged first chair for Solitude’s ski season.

The novelty of being among the first to ski the state’s slopes hasn’t worn off for 11-year-old Rainier and 7-year-old Teddy, nor, it seems, for their parents. But it is getting more stressful.

“I am feeling more pressure as time goes on, though, about getting first chair,” Liz Dean said Friday around 10:30 a.m., after her family had stopped for their first hot cocoa break. “The whole part of loading four people into the car, planning the meals, all the gear, all the things, and then if we were to come up here … and find out that someone else got first chair? Great for them, but I can’t imagine what my boys would do.”

Solitude subjected itself to a similar scramble Thursday afternoon when it abruptly announced it would open the next day. It offered just one beginner run off its oldest two-person lift and planned to close during the week before opening for the season Nov. 15. Yet, because it began the day an hour before Brian Head Resort — which set Friday as its opening day more than a month ago — it could stake its claim to being the first Utah resort to open for the 2024-25 season.

This is the second year in a row that Solitude has opened the Utah ski season and the third time since 2021. The Deans have been the first aboard the resort’s lifts the past three years.

Courtney Dean said that because both Rainier and Teddy are members of Solitude’s ski team and are on the mountain an estimated 50 days a year, the family has established a routine for getting to the resort as efficiently as possible. Ever since word got out that they typically show up five-plus hours before the announced opening time to secure the coveted first chair, though, they’ve been stressing over their streak. So much so that Courtney wouldn’t disclose what time they arrived at Solitude on Friday morning.

The most he would say is that someone showed up not long after them, saw he wouldn’t have first chair and went back to his car, likely to take a cat nap. So when did the next skiers arrive?

“Let’s call it 7,” Courtney Dean said with a grin.

Conner Bailey, 13, confirmed it was close to that time that he and his grandfather, Kenneth Rose, skied into the line behind the Deans. Rose, 71, of Saratoga Springs said they hoped they might get first chair and that they will consider chasing that honor next week, when Solitude opens for the season with its annual DJ + Donuts party. But Bailey, a Solitude ski ambassador, said he has other priorities.

“We’ll just come,” he said, “because we also would rather sleep in.”

Other skiers and snowboarders appeared to share that sentiment Friday. An estimated 80-100 people were in line when Link started carrying people up the hill — a stark contrast to last season when, despite Solitude running two lifts, lines for Moonbeam backed into the one for Link about 75 yards away. Wait times were less than 15 minutes Friday morning compared to up to an hour last year. And Easy Street, with a 10-inch, mostly artificial base, offered plenty of room for skiers and snowboarders cruising the terrain park features and the ones working on their turns or taking lessons.

Meanwhile, some 250 miles south of Big Cottonwood Canyon, Brian Head opened six runs to skiers and snowboarders off of two lifts. About 80 people had queued up by the time the Navajo Express lift started turning at 10. The ones who grabbed first chair reportedly arrived around 8:30.

Brian Head plans to be open daily through May 4.

Solitude’s opening terrain wasn’t challenging for Erika Myhre, 31, of Salt Lake City. Still, she said she and the other three members of her “Glitter Girls” gang — so dubbed for the sparkly streaks they applied to their cheeks and noses — had had enough challenges this week. What they needed was an escape.

“We wanted a little bit of joy,” she said. “And, honestly, any ski day is a good day.”

That’s the lesson Liz Dean is hoping to impart to her sons. Yes, she said, the hunt for the first chair can be fun. But just as fun is the time they spend together waiting for the resort to open — like when the boys built a snow wall in Friday’s 14-degree cold and used it to protect them from the billowing blasts of a snow gun in a game they called “Survivor.” She tries to emphasize that when that loses its appeal, or when someone beats them to the lift, it doesn’t have to ruin the day.

“We try to have that conversation,” she said. “Like, ‘Guys, it could happen. But we still get to ski. That’s the best part.”

Brighton, located at the end of Big Cottonwood Canyon, announced it plans to open for the season this Thursday. Three other resorts — Alta Ski Area, Park City Mountain and Woodward Park City — expect to open Nov. 22. The following week should see the start of the season for Snowbird (Nov. 28) and Snowbasin (Nov. 29), with most of the rest of Utah’s resorts eyeing December openers.