Crazy as this may sound, I have favorite specific turns on the mountain. Coming off Home Run underneath Bonanza Express, I made a few setup swings on the cat track above Berg’s Bowl before setting my left edge at speed into a nicely carved arc onto the face of Silver Queen.
What a great feeling!
It was a first tracks morning with SOS Outreach last week, true to form, with 4 to 6 inches of untracked predawn snowfall sitting nicely on a hard corduroy base. I swung over to a right-footed turn, gazing down the broad shoulders of the run just before 9 a.m. with no one there yet. Below were the remnants of the now long-forgotten angle station from the 1963 gondola, which saw its last ride in 1997.
I’m sentimental about memories and points in time. The 60th anniversary of Park City Mountain has taken me back along the timeline, reminiscing about the past. Today, Canyons Village is more my mountain home — I don’t get over to Mountain Village as much. So a first tracks there was a real treat.
My introduction to Park City Mountain came during Christmas 1972. I was a relatively new skier ripping it up at Cascade Mountain in Wisconsin when some college buddies and I flew out to Salt Lake City with the plan of skiing Snowbird. A freakish snowstorm dumped over a foot in the valley and many more in the mountains, closing the Cottonwoods. So everyone descended on the one ski area that was open — Park City. With only the 22-minute gondola ride out of the base, we waited over two hours to get up onto the mountain that day.
But the other memory that stuck with me was how much fun we ended up having!
Fast forward 16 years later, I was a new Parkite taking our teenage daughters out to ski for the first time. Coming down Home Run from the Summit House, one slid off to the right — the hard way into Blue Slip Bowl. The other veered into the redrock cliff face to the left. Eventually, they made it safely back to the base.
Once she became comfortable with the sport, daughter Meghan and her friends used to love the trees off Jupiter Access, lapping the Thaynes chair. I gravitated more towards Prospector and Parley’s Park and the old Prospector lift.
We moved to Park City in 1988, amidst the heydays of America’s Opening. I only shared about a year in town with the legendary Craig Badami, but it was an electrifying period in our mountain’s history. Thousands would hike up to the base of Willy’s Run to watch ski racers like Alberto Tomba battle a steep race course with a sidehill pitch that could easily throw you off the racing line.
My only notable ski injury (knock on wood) came during a massive powder dump the day before Christmas 1989. Powder laps on Jupiter were still a thing for me then. Traversing out along the top of the ridgeline, I mistimed one of the whoop-de-doos, jamming my leg in a precarious way. I knew immediately I had done something. But I also knew I was not about to go down in a sled. So I nimbly dropped into 30 inches of powder, navigating down Portugese Gap with weight on just one ski, taking Thaynes up and sliding down to the patrol shack atop the gondola before riding it down to the base area clinic — tibial plateau fracture.
The top-to-bottom run from the This Is Your Mountain sign atop Silverlode Express, swinging around to Summit House, down Home Run past the Viking Yurt to Silver Queen, then shooting across Payday to King’s Crown is about as fun a 2,300-foot vertical run that you’ll find.
Crossing Payday, I was reminded of my late friend, journalist Wina Sturgeon, who used to love to put on her racing suit for night skiing and rip speed runs down in the dark. Arcing to King’s Crown, I almost felt like I was skiing on a private run tucked away from the mainstream skiers funneling down Treasure Hollow, ripping big, wide turns into the fresh snow before dropping down to the base.
Park City Mountain has brought decades of memories with family and friends up on the mountain. And it’s making memories for the future with the smiles on my great-grandaughter Dakota as we slide around the magic carpet.
Thanks for 60 great years!