Thanks guys!

Denis, I thought I remembered you posting something about the buses filling up a while back....thanks for re-posting that information.

Jim, this whole trip is due to your posts last year! I showed the family your thread and they were sold! I didn't realize that you put it in article form...that's a nice concise summary.

IMHO, regarding Snowbasin, since you are based in Sandy you should ski the four convenient cottonwoods ski areas, maybe return to the one you liked best. If you are bent on max exploration, then make the additional trip to Snowbasin (about one hour from sandy??), it's great and worthy of a multiday visit, but given your logistics I wouldn't sacrifice a day at Brighton for it unless you have special motivation. In someways Brighton is the most scenic of the bunch and is particularly well suited for maximum mileage on blue square and single black diamond runs.

To the OP, DCSki has an improved search function. You'll find all you need to know about Utah (and even more) on previous threads. Check this one out:

Utah Info

Jim, Brighton sounds great! We're there for about 7 days so its good to know what our options are. Like you, we like to explore; we did a ski vacation in New Hampshire a few years ago similar to yours where we hit Breton Woods, Wildcat, Attatash, and Loon.

John, I'm embarrassed to say that I had used the search function back when we bought the plane tickets (October), copied the relevant threads into Word documents (including the one you cited) and then, promptly forgot I had done that. Thanks for the reminder!

How old are your boys? When are you skiing? My 11yo DD and I will be at Alta Lodge April 3-10. Meeting up with friends, including a family from DC who have a 11yo son and 9yo daughter. The kids are on spring break that week.

Would you consider dropping off the family, then parking? The Soli, Brighton, Alta parking lots are not really that big. For weekdays without a powder dump, won't be that busy. Alta has two areas, the ski school is at the second, which is called Albion. Have never parked at Snowbird.

This TR includes pics of at the base of Alta, Brighton, and Soli. Went there plus Snowbasin Feb 2011 with pagamony and another ski buddy. Except for Honeycomb Canyon, I generally liked Brighton better than Soli. Snowbasin and Brighton would be where I would like take my DD if we did a trip based in SLC instead of Alta Lodge.

http://www.skinc.com/messageboard/showthread.php?t=13490

Hey Marz, nice trip report! My boys are 14 and 16 and we'll be out there from the 29th to the 7th.

I can't really make heads or tails out of the weather forecasts...guess we'll just play it by ear. Looks like there could be some snow early next week....

Thanks again Marz for setting that up, I would not have done it otherwise. My preference was more the terrain at alta and soli, though I could be happy anywhere, so the lesson is try them all! If you get up early enough, parking will not be a problem :-)

btw, hating on deer valley.

It's not been a great snow year and you're getting late in the season. The Cottonwoods (Alta, Bird, Brighton, Solitude) have the highest base elevations.

Park City, Deer Valley, The Canyons, Snowbasin and Powder Mountain have lower base elevations. They'll lose base quicker, especially at the bottom. Check their websites for their exact base elevations; depending upon weather, you'll need to take that into account.

If you don't know the mountains wells, some of the areas can be tricky if you do get a lot of snow and visibility is poor. Avoid Snowbasin at all costs during a low viz or high wind day. Brighton has a lot of treed trails (and nice mellow shots in between); it is a good choice on a low viz day for newbies. Alta and Da Bird can be epic on pow days, but they both have some unavoidable open areas at top (lift dependent) which can swallow up newbies with vertigo and suck them into some serious terrain by accident. If you've skied them before and have paid attention to terrain, then you should be fine and know what areas will be tricky.

hey still out here ... while today was nice late spring skiing conditions (like you would find in the middle of May?) not stellar and quite frankly there are no big storm cycles moving in for the next two weeks ... and then there is this :

CPC 14 day Apr 4-10

We were at Deer Valley today the epitome of snow conditions and I found it very inconsistent and while firm on some runs that supported huge amounts of g-force loading was errrr ... ok not really great due to the re-frozen nature of it.

Unless you are planning to catch a perhaps-dump in early May at Snowbird I'd stay away from UT this season. It basically sucks.