There is none. Little Cottonwood Canyon is for skiing and don’t let anybody tell you differently. The local town of Alta may have a marshall, but he mostly chases skiers who have ducked boundary lines. He occasionally catches them. Steer clear of that guy and you can have a great trip. There's not much nightlife, but there are enough good restaurants at Snowbird and its neighbor Alta to keep a five-day trip fresh.

This is not even a contest at Snowbird. The Cliff Lodge is the premier property on the Salt Lake side of the Wasatch. Its powerful concrete edifice stands up to the steep terrain of the mountain rising up quickly behind it. The Aerie Restaurant and sushi bar on the Cliff Lodge’s top floor is a treat.

At Snowbird 18.9% of winter days see 6 inches or more of snow, 40% of winter months see 90 inches or more, and a measly 3% of months see less than 30 inches. This is elite, blue-chip style snow frequency, rivalled only by Alta and Grand Targhee in the Rocky Mountain states. But Snowbird is as renowned for its quality as quantity of snow. Utah professor Jim Steenburgh has analyzed decades of Cottonwood Canyon snowfall and determined that most storms deliver the ideal “right side up” snowpack that powder skiers crave. The surface layer is usually blower powder over a soft but supportable layer of denser snow that initiated the storm.

Accumulation and Preservation

Snowbird is a relentlessly steep area with base elevation 700 feet lower than Alta, so despite the copious snowfall it needs 5+ feet of base to open much of the terrain. Snowbird averages 84% open at Christmas and is less than half open by Christmas in about 10% of seasons, which is still an excellent record for an area this steep. A high proportion of those steeps face north, so preservation of packed powder snow into the spring is superb. Snowbird is Utah’s premier spring skiing area and is usually open weekends to at least Memorial Day. In overall snow reliability Snowbird trails only neighboring Alta in North America.