Please come to Denver with the snowfall
We’ll move up into the mountains so far that we can’t be found
And throw “I love you” echoes down the canyon
And then lie awake at night till they come back around
— Dave Loggins
SALT LAKE CITY — Oddly, they don’t write a lot of love songs about Salt Lake City. Seems like they don’t write a lot of songs, period, that can’t be sung by a tabernacle choir. Romance isn’t really the city’s strong suit. After all, the city is named after salt.
Come to think of it, it’s hard to say exactly what its strong suit is, beyond that beloved tabernacle and a group of tall guys inexplicably referred to as the Jazz. For a while there, I considered it America’s biggest ski town. Until a Salt Lake local set me straight.
“I thought that was Denver,” he said without a flinch. And, after a subsequent visit, I decided he was right.
There’s little question that the 2002 Winter Olympics put Salt Lake City on the worldwide winter sports map. The area pretty much has been growing since, attracting skiers and snowboarders eager to sample the self-proclaimed “Greatest Snow on Earth.”
While the skiing is undeniably stellar, the surrounding town remains somewhat suspect. A few myths prevail.
Salt Lake ski proponents like to point out that their city is “only 30 minutes from the slopes.” And while that may be technically accurate, it’s a rare ski day that visitors are actually 30 minutes “to” the slopes. Big difference.
On a genuine powder day, count on rising with the sun and spending at least an hour in two-lane gridlock snaking up the nearby Little Cottonwood Canyon from Salt Lake City to the legendary resorts of Alta or Snowbird. Two hours if you punch the snooze button.
Getting back “from” the mountains is rarely a problem. Then again, most folks generally aren’t racing to town for fajitas at Chili’s and a hot cup of instant decaf.
True, the same can be said of Interstate 70 on most winter weekends. But at least nobody in Colorado is marketing how easy it is to get to the mountains. And generally speaking, extra lanes are a good thing during a snowstorm.
Before spending time in Salt Lake, I had never really considered Denver a ski town. That’s a title better reserved for quaint mountainside hamlets such as Aspen, Steamboat Springs and Telluride. Or so I thought.
But how many cities can actually claim ownership of a ski area as part of their parks- and-recreation system? Denver-owned Winter Park comes to mind, including the downtown Ruby Hill Rail Yard, and not many others. Echo Mountain, Eldora, Loveland, Arapahoe Basin and the Berthoud backcountry are equally close at hand.
There’s a trade group in Utah — Ski Salt Lake — tasked with the job of selling the city as a ski town. It quaintly describes the smog as “fog” and points out that there are 11 ski areas (only nine if you snowboard) within striking distance of the metropolitan sprawl, allowing you to base out of Salt Lake and even ride a city bus to some.
To my knowledge, no such trade group exists to promote Denver’s deep skiing roots. Yet somehow the Mile High City continues to rise up.
The thing that separates Denver as the superior ski town in my mind is the fact that there are genuine skiers. Denver-based Colorado Ski Country USA places the number of active skiers and snowboarders in the state at more than half a million, and a sizable chunk of them hail from its largest city. Little wonder that the largest international ski and snowsports industry trade show will be landing in town later this week.
Little wonder as well that Colorado attracts about 12 million skiers and snowboarders to the slopes annually, since the experience extends far beyond the slopes. There is a genuine enthusiasm in Colorado surrounding a ski culture built on the backs of authentic skiers.
While similar pockets of authenticity prevail on the other side of the state line, I can’t seem to shake the sensation that Salt Lake is a town with ample skiing talent yet lacking a skier’s soul. A small resort such as Utah’s Solitude will offer a quality uncrowded ski experience on most days, just no one to share it with afterward.
Sure, there are some obvious advantages to that, especially if you’re a Rewards Club member at Motel 6. But don’t try putting it to music. Nobody’s buying that jazz.
