Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What's already linked?
A. Alta and Snowbird are already connected and offer the "AltaBird," a common pass and free skiers circulation between both resorts. That significant step forward already goes back to 2001, with Snowbird shouldered the lion’s share of the costs in developing Mineral Basin and building two quad lifts to connect to Alta.
One canyon away, Brighton and Solitude also offer a common lift ticket, the "SolBright" pass and free circulation from one resort to the other, but this linkage has not been much publicized and few skiers and snowboarders are aware of it....

Q. How can resorts share revenue from one single ticket?
A. Computerized processing of lift tickets actually started with the Alpine interconnects, in 1977 when two Austrians, Leopold Lutz and Guenther Walcher came up with the idea for replacing traditional ski passes with a system that would support automated processing from a variety of portals at different resorts. This means that at the end of each day, month or season, all the interconnected lifts are tracked for usage and the proceeds of the common ticket are pro-rated based on the actual traffic and distributed accordingly to each operator. Since 1987, wireless technology has been added to the system for real-time validation of any pass sold and automated control and validation through card-reading portals.

Q. Why has no significant network been built yet?
A. Even though interconnected mountain resorts have been in existence - and thrived - in Europe since the late sixties and early seventies, Utah resort operators have not known enough about them to emulate the system. The most important factor however is fear of the unknown and fear of losing control. Fear of losing customers to less successful resort partners in the network is also often cited as major obstacle. Also, inertia, indifference, lack of leadership and procrastination are other significant hurdles to proceeding forward. Finally, the American winter visitor has largely been left in the dark about this alternative form of "adventure" skiing and riding and because of it, is not demanding that leap forward...

Q. What's the "Ski Utah Interconnect Tour?"
A. At the moment, this is a 25 miles backcountry tour between Deer Valley and Snowbird or Snowbird and Deer Valley, available on a guided basis only. It's available, weather permitting, to a select few adult skiers (advance to expert) that can afford its relatively high cost ($250 per person plus tip.)

Q. Is each resort's personality at risk of homogenization?
A. This concern has not proved to materialize in Europe, where in a given interconnect, each ski town has held on to its character. In fact, the opposite often happen, where resorts develop their own “specialties” like mogul skiing in Deer Valley, parks in Park City, ski-only in Alta and Deer Valley, etc.

Q. What impact could a 7-resort interconnect have on the environment?
A. Skiers and snowboarders have negligible impact on the environment per se. In fact, they generally cause much less physical harm than hikers or mountain bike riders do, the rest of the year.
Most importantly, linking resorts will lessen the skiers/snowboarders density per acre and also provide an opportunity to rethink the access to each resort, greatly reducing vehicular traffic by stimulating park-and-ride locations in conjunction with new means of mass-transit as well as other types of “people movers” that will lessen the impact of automobiles into our canyons.

Q. Can Colorado, Tahoe or BC respond to Utah's interconnect?
A. They may actually steal Utah's “thunder” if nothing gets done rapidly. This would hamper the attention Utah could receive if it developed its interconnect after competitors have already attempted something similar (and probably much smaller) elsewhere in North America. Likely candidates are Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley in California, and Vail-Minturn-Beaver Creek in Colorado. Aside from Whistler-Blackcomb, other Canadian resorts are spread apart too much to consider practical linkages. Utah still has the opportunity of making a huge splash by being the first in the game and by offering a product very hard to match elsewhere in North America.

Q. How are visitor days counted?
A. "Skier days" include all day and multi-day lift tickets, whether paid or not. Those are fairly easy to tally. Some areas scan season passes and count them that way, which is also fairly accurate. But other areas, including many smaller ones, estimate pass visits, with varying degrees of accuracy. However, so long as they use the same method every year, even the estimates provide a fairly accurate year-to-year comparison. The specific numbers might be off, but they tend to be off by close to the same amount each year. And that makes year-to-year comparisons more accurate than one might expect.