The next two mountains on our to-do list were Park City Mountain and Canyons. I’m giving these a combined post because as of next year, these mountains will be connected via a gondola! For now they are separate resorts but soon it will be Park City Mountain and Canyons at Park City Mountain.
First we visited Canyons. Happily I was back on my snowboard to hit the slopes. It was lucky because I felt like the Canyons slopes were a bit more challenging than what we were doing at Deer Valley. There were limited greens at Canyons so I’d recommend this mountain for skiers/boarders comfortable hitting the blues and blacks.
Park City Mountain was our third stop, we visited this mountain twice. All over were signs about a 50 million dollar renovation taking place before next ski season which I think means I have to plan another visit in the near future. But even pre-$50mil renos, this place was great! The mountain offered a wide range of terrain, making this a good place for beginners up to the advanced folks. We covered everything from greens to blacks and even tried some moguls (which on my end were mostly a fail but hey, I tried!).
The first day at Park City MM and I both signed up for workshops, he was in a ski workshop, I was in one for snowboarders. PCM offers a few different lesson options but they can be pretty pricey (upwards of $500) so we opted for the workshops which were offered for intermediate to advanced level, $110 for 3 hours. We weren’t sure how big the group would be but we got lucky, mine ended up being one-on-one and MM was two-on-one. There was actually one other snowboarder signed up for my session but she wanted to hit the terrain park, me not so much, so they gave us individual instructors. Basically a 3-hour private lessons for $110, you can’t beat that. If you’re on a budget, I recommend going for the workshop since they cap the groups at a small number and you might get lucky with a one-on-one.
I’m a fairly confident boarder but hadn’t taken a lesson since learning to board in high school and figured it might be good to get some pointers. My instructor Jack took me on blues and helped me perfect my form. We played around on the moguls and it was a very informative 3 hours. He adjusted my bindings and gave me ways to fix my form which I never knew about. MM also found his lesson to be very helpful.
On the second day at PCMR, the Ski Utah director of communications joined us for some runs and gave us the lay of the land, showing us where the gondola to Canyons was being built, showing us where the mid-mountain lodge would be moving to and giving us a mini history lesson on the mountain. Also, I want his job. He goes skiing in the middle of a Monday for work. But I digress.
PCMR has a lot to offer. Some of the runs were closed since there hasn’t been too much snow this year but even so, we were occupied with varying terrain for two days.
We had a great time at both PCMR and Canyons and I’d love to get back there again after the big update!
