Powder Mountain, Utah, has announced the completion of a 1,000-acre expansion, therefore topping Park City Mountain Resort as the biggest ski area in the United States with 7,957 acres. (8,464 including its sidecountry cat-skiing zones.)
This is the largest lift-serviced resort expansion in North American history, highlighted by two new SkyTrac lifts, “Village Lift” and “Mary’s Lift,” which will be fully installed by mid-December. Powder Mountain will also cap season and day passes to achieve the “lowest skier density of any major ski area in North America,” according to a press release. Only 1,000 season passes and 2,000 day passes will be allowed per day, “enabling a skier density less than 10 percent of what is found at comparably sized resorts.”
In addition to the terrain expansion, Powder Mountain is developing an entire Euro-style town, modeled after Wengen, Switzerland and comparable in size to the downtown areas of Aspen and Telluride.
“The town will feature a main street with pop-up stores, micro-apartments, farm-to-table restaurants, yoga boot-camps, public art, media labs and educational outlets offering training in everything from Transcendental Meditation®, software development and athletic performance,” Powder Mountain outlined in the press release. “It will embody a next-generation urbanism that nourishes social entrepreneurship, connection and collaboration and responsible living.”
Much of this change originally sprouted in 2011 from Greg Mauro, a passionate local season pass holder who has since become a chairman at Powder Mountain. He approached a group of entrepreneurs with the idea of improving the area, but without going overboard like many other major resorts in the U.S. with over-the-top developments and too much focus on growth. In 2013 that group, dubbed Summit Powder Mountain, took Mauro’s advice and bought Powder Mountain through a successful crowdsourcing campaign. According to the mountain’s press release, “Since the resort is not owned by a large corporation or private equity firm, it has the ability to reject the usual corporate resort formula of mega-homes, luxury outlets and crowds reminiscent of an amusement park.”
Advanced-priced day tickets are currently going for $79, and Powder Mountain plans to open as soon as natural snow allows, as the resort relies completely on Mother Nature.
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