▲ View from Jupiter Peak

Went to Park City in late Jan / early Feb, 2026, my first time skiing in Utah. Overall a very solid mountain.

Snow coverage was really bad, according to the locals it’s like the worst in 20 years. So many parts of the mountain weren’t open.

Here’s my review for this ski resort in different aspects.

Terrain

Beginner-Intermediate

Park City really is a great beginner - intermediate terrain. Big, wide, and long groomers are everywhere. There are so many lifts in so many places, sometimes even 3 in one spot, so the line never gets long either.

If you’re an intermediate comfortable in groomed blues, you can really ski all over the mountain, except for the pockets of expert terrains.

Advanced

There were 2 main single black diamond areas that were open during my visit, the canyon facing slope in the Park City side, including Thaynes, Motherlode, and Silverlode chairs, and the Dreamcatcher area in the Canyon side.

Both areas have a mix of groomers, open mogul fields, and trees. But main lift of the latter is a super slow fixed grip chair, which makes the area a slog. The former one is very solid tho, a substantial footprint powered by a few fast lifts.

Expert

The Super Condor Express area wasn’t open during my visit, so the only expert terrains are 9990 Express, Jupiter, and McConkey’s Express. I think having 3 expert terrains in 1 resort is pretty impressive already, but they’re all just pockets of spaces across 2 mountains, and they’re pretty far apart from each other. The vert also isn’t very impressive. You’d just ski some steeps and then connect to some big flat traverse back to the lift.

Jupiter

If including the hike-to areas, then Jupiter certainly takes the crown. It is essentially 2 big bowls, one bowl ranges from Jupiter Peak to the chairlift ridge (Shadow ridge), another from the chairlift ridge to Pinecone ridge. Unfortunately, if you don’t hike, then you can only access a pretty smart part of the 2 bowls.

In the 2 big bowls, it’s woods and open bowls intersection each other. During my visit, it’s after 3 weeks of drought, so all the open bowls were big moguls.

I did the hike to the top of both bowls. To the top of Pinecone ridge only requires a 3 min hike, but it took me 25 min to hike up to Jupiter Peak.

Along Pinecone ridge it’s just a huge open bowl, pretty straightforward.

The view on Jupiter Peak is great, and it’s very serene. Unfortunately, the upper section off Jupiter Peak had very little snow, so you had to ski through rocks and branches to get down.

McConkey’s

The McConkey area is also a big bowl, ranging from Jupiter Peak to the ridge to Deer Valley. So basically the whole Park City side is just overlooked by the 3 big wide bowls at the very top.

Tho most of the terrain in McConkey’s is double black, it also serves a groomed black and blue, so the lift is definitely busier than the other 2 areas.

Right off the lift you get McConkey’s Bowl at the skier’s right and Sundog at the left. McConkey’s Bowl is another big steep moguls field, while Sundog is an icy groomer.

Further traversing right, you get Molly’s, a big wide and steep forest, and it’s very fun to ski. If you go down the blue ridge run further, you’ll get to Black Forest, which is a more spaced out but darker forest. It’s easier than Molly’s as it’s more mellow and the trees are more spaced out, a single black diamond more like.

Further traversing left, you get to all the juicy stuff. It’s very much like Jupiter’s bowl on the skier’s right, trees and open bowls. But if you start from the lift you can only get to the lower part of the terrain. To access the full terrain you need to hike toward Jupiter Peak.

The hardest section of this area is definitely harder than Jupiter. On the McConkey’s side of the face off Jupiter Peak, it’s some super gnarly chutes.

I did the hike to Jupier Peak from both the Jupiter side and the McConkey side, and I’d say the it’s a lot harder from the latter. The path is less defined, and the elevation difference is bigger.

9990

Tho serving only double blacks, 9990 Express is a detachable high speed quad, which is unheard of for me. Usually this kind of lifts would just be fixed grip 2-3 people chairs.

It provides access to essentially 3 bowls.

Right off the lift, on skier’s right, you get a big wide open bowl. Since it’s so close to the lift I’m pretty sure this would always be filled with moguls, hence the run “94 Turns”. Across the valley, there’s The Abyss on the other side of the face, which is a steep woods, and accessible not by 9990 Express but the Peak 5 chair. Below that bowl it’s some mellow glades.

On skier’s left, it’s the 2nd bowl, which is a lot more narrow. You get a steep slightly gladed slope off the ridge, East Face, the main gully penetrating the area, Fright Gully, and a steep glade on the other side of the ridge face, Dutch Hollow. This area is a lot more technical than the others as it’s either narrow or steep. During my visit there are a lot of exposed rocks on the steep ridge faces.

And again, these 2 bowls lead to a final flat runout back to the lift. That’s said, the vert 9990 Express provides, 1550ft, is much more respectable than Jupiter and McConkey’s.

Now if you traverse all the way left from the lift, you can get to the 3rd bowl, which is a big wide bowl. On the ridge face close to the 2nd bowl, it’s some glades, hosting Magic Line and Charlie Brown. After the glades it’s a open bowl. The bowl area is pretty steep. And after skiing through the steeps you’ll get to a flat runout back to Red Pine Lodge.

I really like the 9990 area. Fast lift, decent vert, and steep runs with a good variety.

Lifts

There are so many lifts. In many parts there will be like 3 lifts going in different directions. I never really encounter any line on weekends, which is absolutely wild for the biggest resort in USA, maybe because of there are so many lifts.

Most of the lifts are pretty decent for American resorts, like having gates, 6 occupancy, and bars with foot hold. However, there are some lifts that are slow fixed-grip while they shouldn’t be, like Pioneer & Dreamcatcher. Those are long lifts serving many intermediate runs, so there’s no reason they’re not fast detachables.

8/10

The navigation is very confusing. On the Canyon side, due to some historical issues I think with private & public lands & the billionaire houses (The Colony), the ski areas are very shattered. On the Park City side, the map does a very terrible conveying the direction. For example, I would never have guessed that you can ski from the top of Crescent Express to McConkey’s Express.

And the most ridiculous is the navigation between the Canyon side and the Park City side. It requires 4-5 lifts to go from one’s main area to another’s, making it inefficient to ski both sides in one day.

This is much worse than the other big mountains with navigational problems. In Whistler Blackcomb, a single Peak 2 Peak gondola takes you from one main area to another. In Heavenly, You can ski between California/Nevada simply by taking the lift to the highest point in each side. Technically in heavenly it still requires a few lifts to get from a base to another, but in terms of the main area it’s just 1 lift, while in Park City the connection point on the Canyon side it a pretty remote area, and the shattered nature of Canyon means you need to take a few lifts from that remote area to the main area, causing the navigational hazard.

But I lowkey like these hard to difficult mountains because it makes them seem complicated and mysterious.

3/10

Lodges

Seriously the on-mountain facilities in Park City is on another level. I haven’t stepped into any of them except in day 1 but it’s so crazy, every corner there’s a decently sized and aesthestic lodge. I thought North America resorts all have shitty on-mountain facilities mainly from my experience in Heavenly but I’d say Park City is ahead of Zermatt. Per facility Zermatt is better (I think, tho I haven’t got into most of the Park City ones) but Park City just has more.

10/10