A car parked on the street in my leafy Salt Lake City neighborhood has a bumper sticker that reads, “Nobody cares you ski at Alta.” Two things I can surmise about this person: (1) They probably snowboard and are resentful about the resort's no-snowboarders policy. (2) They doth protest too much.
All to say, anyone who finds pleasure in the dopamine-inducing rush of standing on top of a hushed peak, staring down at snow-frosted pine trees you'll have to maneuver around to make it down alive, does care. Like, a lot. Located at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, in Utah's Wasatch National Forest, Alta is a case study in old-school, purist alpine traditions. It's so uncommercialized, so frozen in time in a good way, so blessed by the high church of skiing conditions that people give up their real jobs and reorganize their lives around it.
Here's the hitch: I married a snowboarder. This means that even though this skier's nirvana is 30 minutes away from my driveway, I rarely make it there. But this past year, I was hell-bent on initiating my 10-year-old daughter, Emma, into a fraternity that I deeply care about. I got the sense that even though she has been skiing since she was three, her enthusiasm for the sport was waning. I get it—waking up at 6 a.m. to single-digit temps and a sun that seemingly refuses to rise is a big hurdle to get over. I dangled a hot chocolate and a decal sticker for her helmet, and the deal was sealed.
When we arrived at the Collins lift, it was freezing. As in there were frostbite warnings written on the whiteboards. “You okay?” I asked Emma, unable to see any how-long-are-we-here-for expression, as her head was all helmet and goggles. As we rode the lift, I felt the need to go full Clark Griswold and waxed enthusiastic about how some of the old-timers on telemark skis below had been here since the '60s! When tickets were only $4.50! She turned to me and replied, “Should we get hot chocolate now or…”
We jump-turned on some forgiving hardpack and made our way to Baldy's Brews. As promised, Emma got a steaming hot chocolate and a sticker that she promptly unpeeled and slapped on to her electric-blue helmet. For kids, and some mountain-jockey adults, resort stickers on the helmet equate to bragging rights about where you've been that everyone else, well, hasn't. Now, even though we had mostly just drunk warm beverages, she had been to Alta.
We headed back out and made our way across the mountain. Just a few turns in and Emma's entire attitude toward skiing transformed. The sun streaming through passing clouds was like the heavens giving us a thumbs-up.
When it was time for lunch, we rode the tow rope, a masochistic contraption that is exactly what it sounds like, to Snowpine Lodge, where we each ordered our own pizza and were left with too many leftovers. “Can I have a box?” I asked the waitress. “How are you going to ski with a pizza box?” Emma said, laughing.
I took my poles in one hand and the pizza box in the other. We zipped down the revered mountain, making our own memories, happy and wiped out and feeling tremendously lucky about our magical backyard.
This article appeared in the November 2022 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
