Snowbasin, Utah, can seem like a hike from Salt Lake City after being spoiled by how close the resorts are in the Cottonwood canyons. The drive is super easy, with very little traffic on the highway until the access road. The drive up to the mountain is beautiful.
Skiing
Skiing at Snowbasin, Utah, is like skiing on sugar. The lake effect snow is honestly something out of this world. The snow is easy to glide and turn in. The resort boasts 104 trails and 11 lifts on 3,000 acres. There is quite a bit of skiing here. They do not have RFID scanners here, so you must take your pass out at all base lifts to be physically scanned. They do offer free lanyards to help with this. You would expect scanners based on how luxurious their lodges are, but I am sure this upgrade will be implemented soon.
Strawberry Gondola services some amazing bowls and gives access to some of the minimal tree skiing the resort has. At the peak of this lift, if you go towards the Elk Ridge trail, you can see Salt Lake off the backside. You can see for miles on a clear day like ours. It is worth taking this lift for the views alone.
The Mt. Ogden Bowl is epic, and I highly recommend heading over to check out the almost untouched powder.
The slopes had a few bottlenecks, one being the Strawberry Gondola. That should get partially alleviated by the new lift they are putting in for the 23/24 season.
Village and Food
If you want luxury everything, Snowbasin is for you. The bathrooms and railings were gold in the base area lodge, Earls Lodge. I am not joking when I say even the toilet paper holder was gold-plated. All the lodges had carpeting, huge leather chairs for relaxing, and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. It was extremely over the top and very different from all the other lodges we saw at nearby resorts.
Lunch tables have these reserved signs on them. If you do not look closely, it could appear that all tables must be reserved in advance. This is not the case; the signs are reserved for people buying food from the resort, which means you can't sit at the table and eat the food you brought home. The tables fill up fast once it is around lunchtime and stay full past when food stops being served.
We had lunch in the John Paul Lodge, a mid-mountain lodge. Like all the other lodges, it is over the top in decor and stature. We went for lunch almost toward the end of lunch hours and still had to wait in extremely long lines. The line flow at John Paul needs a bit of work. The food is also incredibly expensive.
Ruben ($17)
Chicken tenders with fries ($16.49)
We found out after Snowbasin posts all the menus and pricing for all their lodges. This can be extremely helpful if you travel with little ones on the picky side.
They have one main shop in the base area. It does have many options, whether you are looking for mountain merch or actual gear. We were hunting for some sweatshirts because that is one of the things we like to get from each resort, and they didn't have any for adults. We ended up leaving with just stickers for our Thule.
Parking
Parking is usually a problem at resorts in Utah because of spacing. There was a lot of parking; from what I could tell, it was all free. When we arrived, we were lucky enough to get one of the last spots. I recommend arriving earlier to make sure you have a parking spot.
Lodging
They do not have lodging on-site at the resort. You will have to stay somewhere in town or Salt Lake City. Check out the amazing Airbnb we stayed in; we can't recommend it enough.
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