Utah resorts look at tunnels, cables to connect region

By Published On: November 8th, 2006Comments Off on Utah resorts look at tunnels, cables to connect region

Gov. Jon Huntsman is calling together government and resort officials to discuss a system of tunnels, snow sheds or cable systems connecting seven Wasatch Range ski resorts, an idea that's been kicked around for years.

SALT LAKE CITY — Gov. Jon Huntsman is calling together government and resort officials to discuss a system of tunnels, snow sheds or cable systems connecting seven Wasatch Range ski resorts, an idea that's been kicked around for years.
    Skiers could drive or ride between resorts in minutes, avoiding traffic-heavy canyon roads and highways that can shut down because of avalanches.
    An investment banker put out a "talking points" memo to shape the discussion at the governor's office on linking resorts in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons — Alta, Brighton, Snowbird and Solitude — with the Park City and Deer Valley resorts on the east side of the Wasatch range.
    The resorts' borders are separated by no more than 1 ½ miles, but driving from one side of the Wasatch range to the other can take an hour.
    Ski Utah offers an Interconnect tour in which you ski to all six of the resorts in a day, demonstrating how close they are to one another. If the resorts were linked with tunnels and the like, it could bring together 12,000 acres of skiing and make for North America's largest skiing complex — more than twice the size of either Vail or Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia.
    It could be accomplished with a few strategically placed chair lifts, but Goldman Sachs & Co. vice president Jeffrey D. Holt is promoting a more ambitious, expensive project.
    In his unsolicited memo, Holt advocates a $250 million tunnel between Big and Little Cottonwood canyons, plus another $150 million tunnel or year-round road over Guardsman pass between Brighton and Park City ski areas.
    Holt, a San Francisco-based banker specializing in infrastructure projects, even offered a name for the single-bore tunnel, the AltaBright, and another, CottonPark, for the Guardsman pass link, now a summer road.
    But the cost has been a stumbling block since 1990, when the Mountainlands Association of Governments studied options from traffic tunnels to cable tramways. The report was shelved as too grandiose, but time has only drawn the resorts closer together.
    Spurred by the 2002 Winter Olympics, many of the Wasatch resorts added high-speed lifts and expanded their borders, making interconnecting trails a cinch. Already, neighbors Alta and Snowbird offer a joint pass, along with Brighton and Solitude.
    Water officials for Salt Lake City, which controls the Cottonwood canyons, have said they generally oppose any larger developments in the canyons and could stop them.
    But they may not be able to stop new transportation systems.
    Gale Dick, the 79-year-old patriarch of Save Our Canyons, has made the case against any elaborate ski resort links, saying more chair lifts would spoil the high-elevation, moderately sloped terrain prized by backcountry skiers for deep, stable snow. The resorts ring this limited range of the craggy Wasatch that offers the finest skiing.
    — The Associated Press 

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About the Author: Pete Rugh