I know we are all celebrating the presence of Fall finally making it’s way here. All we can think about is pumpkins, college football, Halloween costumes and leaves. But there is also another thing you ought to be thinking of: your winter vacation. It’s no secret that I live in Salt Lake City and I haven’t really done a post on my own town. Most people know Utah as the mecca of snow sports. This is what I adore about this state and really what has kept me around for these past two years. The powder here is unlike powder in any other place.

You may or may not have known that Utah offers 13 ski resorts many within just an hour or much less of each other. Salt Lake International Airport boasts a good number of flights arriving before noon and with a handful of premier ski resorts less than an hour of the airport you can land in the morning and be skiing in the afternoon. A lot of people get the impression that if they come to Utah for skiing they need to head up to Park City and pay for a super expensive condo right on the resort, and if that’s within your budget and how you prefer to vacation you will have a wonderful experience. But unfortunately, not all of us can spend that kind of cash and I’m a firm believer everyone deserves the opportunity to experience Utah powder.

Here are some tips that will help you save some serious cash on planning your trip. You don’t need to rent a condo in Park City. You can actually stay in a hotel either down in Cottonwood, downtown SLC or you can even try renting a house in either of these areas if you have a big group( try vrbo). This comes with quite a few benefits. Not only will you save on the lodging costs but restaurants, groceries and movies will be a lot cheaper and you won’t be limiting yourself to just the three ski resorts in Park City. You can head up either Big Cottonwood Canyon and visit Brighton or Solitude or up Little Cottonwood Canyon and visit Alta (skiiers only) and Snowbird.  You don’t even have to rent a car if you don’t want to because UTA (Utah Transit Authority) public transportation system has buses to these major resorts, and some hotels even offer shuttles.

Another great option to save some cash is to buy passes early. And when I mean early I mean now. Fall is usually the cut off for resort discount coupon books. These can save you up to half on your lift ticket. We usually buy a couple of books, one for us and then one on hand for our friends who come from out of town and then sell them passes so they can save some cash too. Lift tickets really do add up so it’s smart to think ahead. If you missed that opportunity to can always check  Salt Lake City Craigslist because in the winter people are constantly selling lift tickets at a discounted price.

If you do decide to stay in the valley instead of at a ski resort and you need to rent equipment, there are many great places to do that in and around Salt Lake City. You will save a little cash by doing this instead of renting at the resorts and you can usually rent it for longer than a day so it will save you time if you are going to be up at different resorts for a couple of days.

A great resource for anyone planning a ski or snowboard trip to Utah is SkiUtah. This is a coalition effort of all thirteen Utah ski resorts and offers tips for vacation planning, information on all the resorts and much more.

Tags: Alta, Brighton, park city, Salt Lake City, Ski Resorts, SkiUtah, Snowbird, Solitude

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Travel Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.