There is nothing in the ski world quite like the cluster of resorts tucked into the snow-blessed valleys just east of Salt Lake City. Here, six ski areas are close together yet extraordinarily varied, each highlighting different facets of the sport — groomers to glades to gulleys, and all in their own way glorious. For many visitors, skiing any one of the resorts can be a bucket-list experience. But the ultimate in alpine gluttony, the grandest powder buffet on Earth, is to try and ski all six areas in one day.
Early last April, at 8:15 on a snowy morning, I met my group at a lodge in Deer Valley’s Silver Lake base area to attempt the Ski Utah Interconnect Tour, as the adventure is called. This is a guide-mandatory trip — there are multiple crossings of ski-area boundaries — available exclusively through Ski Utah, a nonprofit marketing and membership association representing Utah’s ski and snowboard industry. Our team included two veteran guides, Luke Ratto and Matt Meinhold, and five skiers from Utah, California and Washington, D.C., all of us buzzing with anticipation. Luke and Matt handed out backpacks and avalanche transceivers and conducted a safety briefing, then we rolled out the door as the lifts opened. We began the day with a high-speed romp down Bird’s Eye, one of Deer Valley Resort’s impeccably manicured, wide-open runs.
You don’t need prior backcountry experience to join the Interconnect Tour, but you do have to be an advanced skier (no snowboards are permitted) with plenty of energy. The trip is a splurge; the price this season is $575 per person, which includes lunch, lift tickets and transportation back to the starting point. And the tour, as with all things skiing, is unpredictable. New snow had fallen overnight, which seemed like great news, though it also meant that avalanche conditions could be worrisome. Our guides were in radio contact with ski patrollers at several areas, but by the time we reached the far edge of Deer Valley, atop the Lady Morgan lift, we were uncertain if clearance to complete the tour would be granted.
Despite the uncertainty and the cost, the Interconnect, which has been running since 1984, is unique. There isn’t a comparable ski tour anywhere in North America, and even similar journeys in the European Alps don’t have the terrain variety. I’d been wanting to try the Interconnect, no kidding, for over 20 years, and had finally run out of excuses. Raquel, the skier from D.C., had changed her plane flight to fit the trip in. None of us knew if we’d picked a good day.
The first test of our fortunes was upon us: the out-of-bounds ski between Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort. A patroller lifted the boundary rope and we slipped beneath. An untracked meadow lay before us, the surface flashing in the partial sun, a field of diamonds. One turn was all it took. The powder was dry and billowy, bottomless-feeling, and we each floated in the little snow clouds created by our skis, whooping and grinning, porpoising through the pristine Wasatch snow. We had hit it just right.
Park City Mountain Resort is immense, with almost a big-city vibe — each lift is like its own neighborhood demanding to be explored — and our group skied to the funkiest of these districts, the beatnik, out-of-the-way Jupiter lift. At the top, we learned from the guides that the avalanche threat had been deemed minimal. We’d been permitted to continue the Interconnect. And with this good news, we passed under another boundary line and danced giddily through more powder, weaving through well-spaced trees — aspens, spruce and subalpine fir — until descending to the bottom of Big Cottonwood Canyon and the base of Solitude Mountain.
Solitude is friendly and unpretentious, with a locals feel that is precious and increasingly rare among ski resorts. We skied a few meditative runs as a snow squall passed through; fat, lazy flakes drifted around us snow-globe style. The Interconnect Tour has many variations — the journey, the guides said, is never quite the same twice — but the route we were on, starting at Deer Valley, is the classic. The day is extremely ambitious, and our group had been savoring each run, unhurried, taking extra time on the short uphill pushes at the bottom of the backcountry shots. Raquel from D.C. mentioned that her home was exactly six feet above sea level, some 10,000 feet lower than much of the tour, and she needed to nurse her stamina.
Our group had bonded well as we were in it together, on the same team, which is one of the beauties of skiing: everyone can win. We decided, upon consultation with the guides, that rather than picking up the pace and risk a mad rush, we would skip the other resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon: Brighton, the oldest ski area in Utah, established in 1936, a true, down-home classic. For us, Brighton was the fish that got away.
We needed the time because the canyon-hop from Big Cottonwood to Little Cottonwood required a slog up the Highway to Heaven, a steep, dramatic route beneath the ramparts of Mount Superior. Twenty minutes of tricky, strenuous side steps brought us to the lip of Little Cottonwood Canyon, the meteorological phenomenon, practically mythic in stature — one of the snowiest places on Earth. We rested, slouched over our poles, then rewarded ourselves with more untracked powder down Grizzly Gulch and into Alta Ski Area.
Alta is wild, free-spirited, majestic. The better the skier you are, the better Alta becomes. Here, we finally stopped for a late lunch, followed by a couple of exceptional runs, highlighted by a waltz down Ballroom, embraced by Alta’s awesome rock walls.
Our legs were heavy but there was no stopping now. We passed through the Mineral Basin gate with only seconds to spare before it was shut and into the skiing wonderland of Snowbird, stocked with enormously long runs and daunting steeps. We ended, sapping the remainder of our energy and then some, by navigating the vertiginous chutes of double-black- diamond Upper Silver Fox. By the time we reached the base, the lifts were no longer loading.
The van to take us back to Deer Valley was waiting, and we piled in a little after 5 p.m. Our guides, consulting their watches, announced that we had skied more than a marathon — 29.5 miles to be exact — and 14,777 vertical feet. With our ski boots finally off, our feet freed, we rumbled down the canyon, exhausted and euphoric at once, the ultimate in alpine bliss at the end of a one-of-a-kind day.
