Utah’s Powder Mountain is the latest to claim to have the biggest lift served ski area in the United States, it is the third resort in three years to make the claim.
In winter 2014-15 Big Sky in Montana claimed to be the ‘Biggest Skiing In America’ (now its trademark) with 5,800 acres, taking the ‘title’ from either Aspen (which added its four un-linked areas together to claim the biggest) or Vail (Biggest single mountain in the US), depending on how you look at it.
Then last winter Vail’s owners merged the ski areas of two centres they bought in Utah, Canyons and Park City Mountain to claim the new biggest in the US with 7,300 acres.
This claim was always disputed by another Utah ski area, Powder Mountain, which claimed a bigger ski area, although the debate was just how much of it was lift-accessed. This winter the resort seems to be setting such criticisms to rest by adding two new chairlifts, claiming 7,900 acres of lift accessed skiable terrain – not far behind the continent’s biggest, Whistler Blackcomb north of the border with 8171 skiable acres – the gap has certainly narrowed fast over the last three seasons.
In fact Powder Mountain also offers guided cat skiing which it says does make it the biggest in North America taking its skiable acreage to 8,464.
Resort management say that despite the expansion and plans for a new altitude resort village, they want to keep the resort’s slopes empty with day lift pass sales capped at 2,000, and season pass sales capped at 1,000. So with a maximum of 3000 people on the slopes at any one time, skier density will be just under three acres per person at worst.
