Alta United States

Legendary

Kid Rating:

By 1872, Alta had 3,000 residents, 180 buildings, a red-light district, and enough saloons to keep a silver-rush town running around the clock. Then the mines dried up, a fire tore through in 1878, and a catastrophic avalanche in 1885 buried what was left. By the 1930s, the entire town had exactly one resident: a self-proclaimed mayor named George Watson who lived alone at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon.

That near-ghost town is now one of the most celebrated ski mountains in North America.

In 1935, the U.S. Forest Service sent Norwegian ski champion Alf Engen up the canyon to assess its potential. His report was glowing. Two years later, a Salt Lake City lawyer named Joe Quinney raised $10,000, repurposed an old silver ore tramway into a single-seat chairlift, and opened Alta to skiers on January 15, 1939. Three hundred people paid 25 cents a ride that first day.

That chairlift made Alta the second lift-served ski area in the western United States, just behind Sun Valley, Idaho.

During World War II, paratroopers from the 10th Mountain Division trained on Alta's slopes before deploying to the Italian Alps. The avalanche research program that grew out of those years became one of the most important in the country, using artillery to trigger controlled slides and protect the slopes below.

Alta averages 545 inches of snow a year, more than most resorts in Utah. The Great Salt Lake pulls moisture from incoming storms and drops it as light, dry powder, the kind that skiers travel across the world to find.

It's also one of only three ski resorts in the United States that still bans snowboarders, alongside Deer Valley and Vermont's Mad River Glen. That policy has survived lawsuits and keeps Alta firmly focused on skiing the way it has been done here since 1939.

Take a run through Alf's High Rustler or drop into the Baldy Chutes for steep, open powder fields. The resort stays purposely low-key, no gondolas, no sprawling village, just skiing. Combine a day at Alta with neighboring Snowbird on a joint pass for access to 4,700 acres of terrain without moving your car.