My story in today’s New York Times — “In Utah, Getting a Lift to the Top of Powder Mountain” — covers Powder Mountain, to which few ski areas in North America compare when looking at raw acreage and skiable terrain in-bounds. Indeed, Powder Mountain, a sprawling resort near Ogden, in northern Utah, offers five mountains and more than 7,000 acres of terrain.
But while chairlifts monopolize uphill transport at most ski areas, each day at Powder Mountain about 20 percent of the visitors elect to use one of the area’s other means — be it a $125 helicopter ride or a free bus pickup after skiing off a back bowl. Powder Mountain, old-school and underdeveloped, has only four chairlifts to serve its ample supply of alpine bowls. But harder to see are one helicopter, two snowcats and a fleet of roving buses on a road below the resort that help move droves of skiers and snowboarders uphill each day. “It’s kind of planes, trains and automobiles here,” said Rod Kelly, a manager at Powder Mountain.
Read my full story — “In Utah, Getting a Lift to the Top of Powder Mountain” — here: https://travel.nytimes.com
