the greatest snow on earth is a marketing line. Don’t believe it. although it is good.

there are other spots around Utah with good terrain and snow, but usually not as much snow. and much more restricted access.
the benefit of SLC is you can work a pretty well paying 9-5 and still ski 4-5 days a week as a 15-30minute drive puts you at a skin track, and 30-45minutes of skinning can get you a run ranging from 700-2000vertical making before/after work turns a really easy thing to do. and when we do get a good classic wasatch powder cycle it’s pretty fucking incredible.

The wasatch experience isn’t really any better and actually kind of worse than other locations. It’s crowded and you gotta get up early and skin fast to get first tracks down anything. There isn’t the option of going further/deeper as that will just put you in another resort or town.

the utah avalance center is amazing and a model for almost every other avalanche forecast center in the US. plus there is a never ending roster of partners. so there are benefits.

you answered your own question. It’s a small region thus the fuss. with no low elevation snow to speak of the past few years and doubtful that it will return. the amount of skiable terrain above 8000ft is largely controlled by the 4 major resorts so if they take over all of that terrain which is what interconnect would do, there would be essential no place for other backcountry users to recreate. sure there is great terrain closer(and some of my favorite) to the city but even famous lines such as the Y couloir failed to fill in last season due to warm temps and low snow.

If you have a good job opportunity here I would move here, it’s a fun city that is cheap. But I wouldn’t move here for the skiing. Plus the air quality sucks.

The Greatest Snow on Earth moniker applies to about 50 of Utah’s 85,000 square miles. And 20 of those 50 square miles are in or adjacent to resorts. 20 of the remaining 30 square miles is either heli-accessed, overcrowded with tourers, or both. The remaining 10 square miles are awesome!

Nowhere in Utah has the snow quality, snow quantity and terrain of the Cottonwoods. You will always be missing one of them. But neither do those areas have people.

So far, this is looking like the third season where the greatest snow is not working. Some years the storms are consistent enough that we only have instabilities in the new layers. We usually have warm temps before each storm that glue up the old snow and make a strong interface with the new pow. It’s usually lighter snow on top of heavier which makes for great fast, stable bottomless riding.
I feel like a historian talking about it. I feel even older when I think about killing time up at Alta waiting for another party to break the trail up to the lcc/bcc divide. 🙄

It seems like a rare treat now when the terrain outside of the central Wasatch is deep and stable and covering up the brush, but the pendulum must swing back eventually. Wasatch surfs breakdown was spot on, not the best locale just for riding, but can be the best option given all life factors. I imagine that if I went from here to Denver, I’d probably buy a carving board and plan annual trips to where the snow was that year.