In coming days, ski resorts across the country will begin opening for the season. Among them is Snowbird Ski Resort, the challenging Utah mountain just outside Salt Lake City.
Operating a resort, especially one as big as Snowbird, which has 149 runs across 2,500 acres of skiable terrain, is a complicated dance that involves not only lift operators, ski patrollers and groomers, but also bakers, bus drivers and mechanics. Though the mountain is open to skiers and snowboarders just seven hours a day, the work goes on long into the night and starts up again before daylight.
Here’s a look at the work that happens behind the scenes to make it possible for visitors to hit the slopes.
Managing the Snow
What can’t be controlled is the weather — and at Snowbird, sometimes, there can be too much snow. In fact, on the resort’s planned opening in 1971, events had to be delayed because of a blizzard.
“Mother Nature — just did it to Snowbird — gave us too #($)@(# much snow … too #)*&¢ early,” a news release quirkily announced that November.
This would turn out to be very on brand for the Utah resort, a mere 32 miles but seemingly a world away from the Salt Lake City airport.
There is only one way in and out of Snowbird: a relatively narrow access road, State Route 210, up Little Cottonwood Canyon. And there are 64 spots along it that are avalanche slide paths, which means that the Utah Department of Transportation often closes it because of the danger of slides, in effect cutting off Snowbird and its neighboring resort, Alta. The resort plans for those events by closely monitoring the weather forecast and busing some employees up to the mountain ahead of time. When people are stuck at the resort by a road closure, Snowbird puts up employees in available lodge rooms; if there aren’t any, they sleep on cots in offices and whatever spare spot they can find.
While Snowbird is famous for powder, it grooms about 500 acres of its terrain per night, with two consecutive shifts using as many as eight Sno-Cats. The first grooming shift starts as soon as the lifts close at 4 p.m. in the Gad Valley area, where most of the resort’s intermediate runs are, and runs until 1 a.m. Then groomers on the graveyard shift head to Hidden Peak and Mineral Basin on the mountain’s upper reaches — both of which can be windy, so saving them for last means less time for gusts to mess up the new corduroy for morning skiers.
Because much of Snowbird’s terrain is very steep, the resort’s fleet includes four winch Cats, which can hook up to an anchor point with a cable, allowing the drivers to groom black-diamond runs like Regulator Johnson and Lone Star.
Readying the Lifts
Snowbird has an aerial tram, 10 chairlifts and three conveyor-belt lifts. For the crew, the day starts with a quick meeting covering resort news and weather, and then the lift operators — or lifties, as they are known — head to their stations around 7:30 a.m. They will dig out any overnight snow, put the Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) gates that read skiers’ passes in place, ensure the loading ramps to the chairs are in good shape, and set up the mazes that funnel people into orderly lines. At 9 a.m., the first skier boards.
Lifties spend a lot of their shifts out in the elements. Nick Pellegrino, 27, who was stationed at the Peruvian Tunnel, a conveyor lift that connects the Peruvian Gulch and Mineral Basin areas, sticks a piece of tape on the tip of his nose to protect it from exposure. “The wind gets so crazy in the tunnel — the skin freezes instantly,” he said.
And then there’s the tram, which carries about 85 people at a time from the resort’s base to Hidden Peak, the highest point on the mountain and home to the Summit restaurant. The 10-person tram crew is organized in two teams working three and a half days each. Members of the team take turns spending a night alone at the Summit, so they can make sure the tram’s landing and cabin are ready at 7 a.m., when employees start going up to the top, long before the first guest has arrived.
That person gets to the top just after 4 p.m. and sleeps on a folding mattress. Some choose to set up in a small room off the ski patrol’s meeting room, while others like to sleep in the dining room next door.
Patrolling for Safety
Avalanches within the resort’s bounds are a reality at Snowbird, and they have covered parking lots and beginner trails, not just the steeps at the top of the mountain. In April 2023, an avalanche crossed Route 210 and spilled onto Chickadee, a green run at the base; luckily nobody was hurt.
The Snow Safety and Ski Patrol teams work closely as part of the Mountain Operations Department. Ski patrol — whose headquarters are at the Summit, with a smaller outpost at the top of the Gad 2 lift — constantly monitors the terrain, weather and snowpack. As part of avalanche mitigation, patrollers trigger controlled avalanche slides using explosives. They have two military howitzer cannons from which they shoot 105-mm rounds at the slopes across Little Cottonwood Canyon. They also plant charges and then detonate them from a distance.
Naturally, ski patrollers stay ready for the worst and conduct regular rescue drills. A drill might have them turn up at a scene where an avalanche has been simulated and conduct a search for skiers, while staying in radio contact with patrol HQ. Search methods include checking for signals from beacons and from special reflectors sewn onto some snow gear, probing the snow with long thin poles and, of course, dispatching avalanche dogs. (Dogs are not allowed in Little Cottonwood Canyon, which is a watershed for Salt Lake City, so Snowbird must get permits for its six canines.)
“When we’re not doing the job, we prepare for the job,” said Mark Michael, 58, a patroller who has worked at Snowbird for 31 years.
Patrollers also handle calls for assistance from people who get stranded or injured on the slopes, and help get them down to the base if needed. This requires carrying a lot of gear. On a recent visit, the patroller Paul Spranklin, 36, shared what was in his work vest: a rescue card with a list of questions to ask witnesses in case of an avalanche, shears to cut clothes, Band-Aids, sunscreen, splints, a probe, a harness and a small saw.
Perhaps because their job can be dangerous and carries many responsibilities, patrollers are a tight bunch. “I was riding a chair with somebody and they asked me, ‘What’s the best part about the job?,’ expecting me to say skiing powder or blowing stuff up or rescuing people,” Mr. Michael said. “But I said it’s the camaraderie of the group, the kinship that we have.”
Feeding the Skiers
Even feeding guests involves tricky logistics. For the executive pastry chef Jessica Shelton, 41, who works out of a kitchen in the Cliff Lodge at the mountain’s base, baking at altitude means adjusting most recipes. “The sugar content, the leavening and the liquids all change,” she said. “It’s drier, and also water boils at a lower temperature. If we’re making a caramel, we have to use more water or else the sugar will crystallize.”
Snowbird’s emblematic restaurant is the Summit, Utah’s highest restaurant, which opened in 2015 and sits at 11,000 feet, right off the tram station. Members of the food and beverage team ride up in the 7 a.m. car with supplies — you can hear bags of potato chips popping in their cartons because of the altitude — and immediately get to work.
The executive chef, Matt Hoppe, 26, oversees the food at the Summit, where he and his team feed between 1,000 and 1,500 guests a day.
Everything that the restaurant uses has to ride up in the tram, and waste has to ride back down at the end of the day. Transporting used oil is such a headache that the Summit does not have a fryer. They also must finish the post-lunch cleanup in time for the crew to catch the last tram back to the base at 4:10 p.m.
“We close food service at 2:30 and all service at 3:30, then we need to break everything down, clean everything up and reset for the next day in a 40-minute window,” Mr. Hoppe said. He then jumps on his snowboard and rides down. “A really busy day may have been stressful,” he said, “but the second I strap in and start heading down, it just melts all the way.”
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Ruth Fremson is a Times photographer, based in Seattle, who covers stories nationally and internationally.
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