Vail Resort plans to connect two of North America’s greatest ski areas, Park City and Canyons – creating the largest resort in the United States. Together, they will include 7,300 acres for skiing and riding, and the whole project will cost $50 million. That will be a transformational makeover of one of Utah’s best-known resorts. It will boast a new gondola, a new restaurant, new chairlifts and a range of other improvements for better snowmaking.
An eight-passenger, high-speed gondola will ride from the base of Silverlode Lift at Park City to Canyons’ Flatiron Lift. When conditions allow, gondola passengers will be able to unload at the top of Pine Cone Ridge and ski or ride directly down to Park City’s Thaynes Canyon trail.
Two Park City lifts will be upgraded from a 4-person to 6-person high-speed detachable chair, meaning increased lift capacity. Motherlode will switch from a fixed-grip triple to a 4-person high-speed detachable, similarly improving the number of guests it can carry.
Three restaurants will undergo renovations. A completely new Snow Hut restaurant, replacing the current Snow Hut, next to the base of Park City’s Silverlode Lift and the Park City terminal for the Interconnect Gondola, will include 500 indoor seats and a top-of-the-line kitchen and culinary experience. Meanwhile, upgrades to Summit House will improve the flow of diners and increase seating.
At Canyons, Red Pine Restaurant will be renovated to the tune of 250 more indoor seats.
Other improvements include additional snowmaking in the Iron Mountain zone of Canyons and a backlog of various maintenance projects at Park City.
The combined resorts will be known in the future as Park City Mountain Resort. Canyons will be known as Canyons at Park City. It is expected to be ready by the 2015-2016 ski season.
