October 29, 2004
Paul Foy, The Associated Press
The
Daily Herald
Brighton ski resort was preparing to fire up four of its lifts today to get Utah's ski season off to an early start.
Brighton and other Cottonwood Canyons resorts, just east of Salt Lake City, had more than five feet of packed snow, with Thursday bringing another storm.
"We have plenty of snow," said Brighton general manager Randy Doyle, who was scrambling to assemble a ground crew.
Brighton just got a new lift, the New Majestic quad, licensed last week. It replaces a double chair lift that opened in 1955 at the base of the mountain. Doyle said he sent parts of the old lift to a sister resort at Big Sky, Mont., and gave away some chairs to old-timers as a keepsake.
Alta expected so much fresh snow the resort was closed to early birds hiking up the slopes for fear of avalanche danger. It plans to open Nov. 18.
Snowbird will hasten its opening by two weeks to Nov. 5 for the weekend, then close for a few days before opening again for the season Nov. 12.
That will mark Snowbird's earliest opening in 33 years of operation. It already has more than five feet of settled snow at higher elevations.
"It's every ski operator's dream to have this kind of snow in October," Snowbird spokesman Dave Fields said Thursday.
"This is way earlier than we planned on opening. It's our earliest opening ever, so we are scrambling to get our employees here early," he said.
At Sundance Ski Resort in Provo Canyon, the scheduled opening date isn't until Dec. 10, but workers say lifts will most likely open earlier than that.
The recent snow fall has
increased the chances of a November opening, but officials said that decision will be made on a week-to-week basis.
Thursday's storm was poised to deliver even more snow to southern Utah, where
Brian Head resort was capturing a bounty of snow --
almost 6 feet so far this season, now packed into a 3Ý-foot base. Brian Head
plans to open its lifts Nov. 13.
Utah resorts traditionally open by Thanksgiving except for Park City's Deer Valley, which usually holds out until early December. In Colorado, A Basin and Loveland are open. So is southern California's Mammoth Mountain. But many resorts in Oregon are still waiting for enough snow to open.
The Utah resorts' biggest problem was getting crews recruited, trained and deployed for paying customers. It takes about 100 ground workers to operate Snowbird for skiing, Fields said.
Thursday's storm was expected to linger in the Wasatch mountains for a day and a half. Then, a shift in winds from the northwest was expected to add lake-effect snow from Great Salt Lake.
"We're driving every inch of the mountain we can with snowcats trying to get it packed down, so it's less likely to blow away," Fields said.
Herald writer Todd Hollingshead contributed to this story.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.