The Canyons was awesome. People were very nice and helpful. We went april 9,10th. There was a blizzard storm. People in Park City are very nice. The bus is free. I cant wait to go back.

Just returned from a week in Utah (Mar. 9-15, 2008) in which I sampled a couple of resorts and skied @ the Canyons for 2 days. These are some of my thoughts...

1). Value-The Canyons is typical of most ski resorts. The on-mountain cuisine is nothing special but over-priced. A brownie and bottle of Powerade cost me about $6.50, which is typical. The brownie wasn't bad but I can make one just as good. However, I did find the skiing at the Canyons to be a bargain since I purchased a 2 day ticket at Canyon Sports in Downtown SLC for $102.00. This is about $40.00 cheaper than at the resort. If you are skiing Utah, check them out because they sell discounted tickets to all of the resorts in the SLC area.

2). Terrain-The lay-out of the resort is extremely confusing. The Canyons is basically 8 individual mountains that are connected thru a confusing system of cat walks. It is very easy to get lost here, I would suggest that you always carry a trail map. Because of this lay-out, you tend to spend more time on cat-walks and connector trails and less time skiing better terrain-I don't care for this. On the positive side, I did find some pretty good skiing. There were some long groomers and double blacks off of the Super Condor lift and a nice bowl and some steep blacks off of the Golden Eagle double chair. The Peak 5 chair had some good tree runs. I wasn't particularly impressed with the terrain off of the Ninety-nine 90 chair-but the snow conditions weren't the best either. Overall, there is some good skiing here but too much traversing to suit my tastes.

3). Lifts-Mostly everything here is high-speed so you can get a lot of skiing in, if you like. About the only complaint that I have with the lifts is the Golden Eagle double chair. I thought that the terrain serviced by this lift was among the best at the resort-yet this extremely slow chair was the only way to access it from the eastern side of the resort. It would seem that this would be a good ploace for a high spped lift. The only downside is that the terrain would get skied out much more quickly.

4). Overall-I liked some aspects of the Canyons but disliked some others. There is some good skiing but you have to spend too much time travelling to find it. The resort advertises huge vertical and acreage but a whole lot of it consists of flats and connector trails. I would ski here again but only on a discounted lift ticket.

Stayed at the Canyons (Westgate) from 2/9 to 2/15 with the family and had a great time. This whole area - Park City and Cottonwood - has world class snow and resorts, including the Canyons. The Canyons is gigantic and would take days to hit it all. Lots of variety for skiers and snowboarders. Terrain park not as difficult as Park City, but for us that was probably a good thing. I ski - the kids are boarders, but I got them into black / double diamond trees and bumps which they would never see back in NJ. Suggest starting at Dreamcatcher/Dreamscape side in AM and work your way back to SuperCondor side in the afternoon. Lots of soft snow there but only snowed about 6 inches while there - still great conditions.

Also staying at the bottom of the mountain with valet service makes it fun and easy. Westgate was great place to stay. Indoor/outdoor pool, hot tubs/ saunas helped make the vacation more relaxing. And of course going into Park City at night for some great food (Chimayo/RiverHorse/ Wahsu/Ruth Chris) made the wife happier. Most important of all when in this area on vacation - bring lots of $$$ especially if your paying for a party of 6-8 people everyday. FYI - we did 3 days at the Canyons and 3 at Park City.

The Canyons is large, and when the storms are rolling in fast it can be a good alternative to Alta or Solitude for untracked powder. The Supper Condor Chair services some terrain that will offer fresh lines all day if your skiing a good storm.
Also there is good access to the back country through their gate if you are so inclined.
Honestly if there is a big storm and Little Cottonwood is opening late the Canyons is a good bet

User Photos (click to enlarge)

Just returned from a quick trip to the Canyons, which was our first trip to Utah. We stayed at the Sundial, which is the second closest Condo to the gondola, the Grand Summit being the closest.

Convenience: The Canyons and Park City are incredibly convenient from SLC airport: 35 minutes and I'm in the lobby of the Sundial. And, all the Park City resorts give you free skiing the day you arrive via air, so we left Chicago at 7am and were skiing by 1pm. 3 hours of skiing in the afternoon (for free) gives you a great opportunity to get the layout of the mountain without feeling you need to ski as much terrain as possible. At the time we were there, the Canyons had an incredible deal where $99 gets you a lift pass for two plus lunch: a burger and beer for each of us (which on the menue would cost $15 each). Without buying advanced discount passes in the fall, I can't image a better deal in North American for a major ski resort.

The accommodations: The Sundial was great for us; my wife and I stayed in a studio, which was perfect for what we needed. It was clean, had a kitchenette, fireplace, deck etc and plenty, I mean plenty of very nice towels and towel robes. Nice rooftop hot tub too. They have a ski check in the lobby, which is definitely better than having your own locker, just had the guy your skis and poles and your done. It also had underground parking. I'd say it was a 200 yd walk from lobby of Sundial to gondola; not great but doable. The people-mover lift from the main parking lot drops folks off at about 150 yd walk. The best and most convenient is definitely the Grand Summit, where the gondola is about 25 yds out the back door of the lobby. It is also has more hotel amenities than the Sundial and would be my choice to stay next time.

Eating: Downtown Park City is awesome; best looking downtown to a ski area I've experienced. Very historic yet upscale at same time with lots of art galleries and upscale shops. It has a ton of restaurant choices for all types of folks and pocketbooks. We ate at the Italian Cisero's one night and it was great. We also splurged at the Stein Erickson restaurant (Gliterand), which had outstanding service, very very fancy and complex fare with prices to match.

The skiing: The most disappointing part of our trip was the quality of snow. While Park City received a ton of snow over the last month, we unfortunately got there after all that and worse, after a warm up and cool down. The result was very crunchy snow. We spent a large part of the time trying to find good snow that wasn't hard, chunky or icey. I know you can't blame the resort for mother nature, but we were disappointed that we didn't get to savior that famous Utah powder. As for the mountain layout, it was very different than Colorado resorts. The Wasatch Mountains are full of mountain peaks and valleys all over the place (hence the "canyons"); so its not like skiing down one big hill; but going up and down about 7 peaks into valleys, each leading to another. Its very wide and spead out with lots of off-trail terrain everywhere; which we unfortunely didn't try much of because you just didn't know what type of snow you'd get into. I would suggest studying the trail map before you venture, as you need a plan to get around the mountain. Although they say there is 3000 verticle, given all the peaks and valleys, it felt like most of the runs were alot shorter, maybe 1/2 of that. I wonder if its 3000 from the highest possible peak (9990, which we did by mistake) to the base at the Gondola, which is 3 or 4 mountains away. As for trail markings, generally good. I thought the grading of trails was over-stated; I am an upper intermediate skier and I thought the blues were more like Colorado greens, the double-blues more like blues and some of the single black diamonds more like double-blues in Colorado. We did one double-black on 9990 by mistake, and that was definitely a double black. There was a lot of terrain with ridiculous pitches through dense trees, for the true experts. One incredibly unique aspect of the Canyons is The Colony, which is a group of $5-10 mil homes built up the side of the mountains with ski trails traversing and winding through, with a lot of bridges and tunnels to avoid the access roads; very cool.

Overall, we had a great visit and nothing but good things to say about the Canyons and Park City. For convenience of travel, you just can't beat it. The accommodations were on par with similar slopeside accommodations in Colorado, and the atmosphere of downtown Park City is outstanding. The ski resort is large with great variety of terrain that I only regret we couldn't fully experience because of the snow conditions. I don't hold that against the resort, only mother nature, and look forward to returning to exact my revenge.