Heightened competition and economic ups and downs are maintaining a clear and present pressure on ski towns. Without a major competitive advantage, staying in the game is hard and the best efforts often yield minimal results. It comes down to economics where growing market share is key, but generally come at a very high cost.
A fully operative network of resorts would require a small investment for enormous future returns and would make a Utah winter sports destination a temptation very hard to resist and a truly unique product because it's unlikely to be replicated anywhere in North America.
Salt Lake Airport to Park City: A smooth 20 minute ride...Skiers and snowboarders will want to experience the “adventure-style,” village-to-village discovery that only linked resorts can offer. Most importantly, they'll return after they've tasted it; the experience is highly addictive, as the Alpine interconnect experience has shown.
Easy access, the major current benefit for coming to Utah for skiing or riding, can also be enhanced in the process with more mass-transit (rail, funicular) made available to complement the infrastructure and allow for an environmentally sound car-free vacation experience.
Eventually, some mountain operators will patch over to other lifts, like Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley in California, Vail, Minturn and Beaver Creek and even perhaps Breckenridge and Copper in Colorado, but these will pale in comparison to what a Wasatch seamless snowfield will be able to deliver.
Of course, If asked, the same resorts in Colorado, Tahoe or British Columbia, would never, never want to see the creation of an interconnect in Utah, but deep inside, they probably all fear that it's only a matter of time...
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