Originally published in the November 2018 issue of SKI Magazine. Published online October 30, 2018. By Jeremy Pugh. Read the original at skimag.com.
Meet Utah’s new power couple: Snowbasin and the nearby ski town of Ogden.
The pitch goes something like this: spend your days carving 3,000 vertical feet of some of the least-crowded, best-maintained terrain in Utah at Snowbasin Resort, then retreat each night to the gritty, revitalized railroad town of Ogden, 17 miles down the canyon, for dinner, drinks and a dose of Wild West history. It’s a two-day trip that pairs a big mountain with a small, characterful city—and it’s quickly becoming one of Utah’s most compelling ski getaways.
Day One: Snowbasin
Snowbasin doesn’t get the visitor numbers of its Wasatch Front cousins closer to Salt Lake City, and that’s exactly the point. Built out for the 2002 Winter Olympics downhill and super-G events, the resort has infrastructure—marble-floored day lodges, a gondola, high-speed quads—that punches well above its visitation weight. On a powder morning, my guide for the day, yellow-jacketed ski ambassador Megan Collins, walks me through the mountain’s split personality: groomed cruisers off the John Paul Express for warming up, and steep, technical terrain off the Strawberry and Needles gondolas for the days when the snow is deep.
We ski laps through untracked powder in the trees below Mt. Allen, Collins pointing out lines she’s skied a hundred times, and by early afternoon we’ve barely seen another skier. That’s Snowbasin’s whole appeal: Olympic-caliber terrain without the Olympic-caliber lift lines.
Night One: 25th Street
Ogden’s downtown corridor, historic 25th Street, was once notorious as one of the rowdiest stretches of the American West—a railroad boomtown strip of saloons, brothels and opium dens that gangster Al Capone reportedly called too tough for his taste. These days the street has been reclaimed, its brick storefronts now home to restaurants, breweries and bars that trade on that outlaw history without the actual outlawry.
Dinner is at one of the street’s newer restaurants, followed by drinks at a bar built into a former bank vault, its original steel door still swinging on its hinges. The scene is unpretentious—more flannel than fur—but there’s a genuine buzz to the place, evidence of a town in the middle of a slow, deliberate comeback.
Day Two: Back on the Mountain
A second day at Snowbasin reveals more of what makes the resort special: the view from the top of the tram at Needles Peak stretches across the Great Salt Lake to the west and deep into the folds of the Wasatch to the east. We ski until the lifts close, chasing the last soft snow of the afternoon on the mountain’s northeast-facing runs.
Trip Planning: Snowbasin and Ogden, Utah
Stay: Ogden’s downtown hotels put you steps from 25th Street and about a 25-minute drive from the Snowbasin base area.
Eat: 25th Street’s restaurant row has expanded rapidly in recent years, with everything from wood-fired pizza to upscale New American fare.
Drink: The bank-vault bar is worth seeking out, as are several of the street’s newer craft cocktail spots and breweries.
Play: Beyond skiing, Ogden’s Union Station houses rail, firearms and natural history museums housed in the old depot—a good rainy-day (or rest-day) stop between mountain days.