Solitude spokesperson Travis Holland said details still need to be ironed out, but the resort plans to require paid parking reservations on weekends and holidays during the 2023/24 winter.
“It’s a step in the right direction for canyon traffic,” Holland said. “We do think it’ll alleviate a little bit. We are still going to need people to carpool and use public transportation when possible. But after Little Cottonwood resorts started doing parking reservations, we had a lot of locals asking us to do the same. I think people were generally pretty happy with how it worked over there.”
In other Solitude-related news, the resort is auctioning off chairs from its Eagle Express lift, which retired last season. Built in 1989, it was the first-ever high-speed detachable lift in Utah.
“It’s been such a kind of classic chair at Solitude,” Holland said. “A lot of people that grew up skiing here remember when it went in 30 years ago, there’s just a lot of cool memories and stories behind that chair.”
75 chairs will be up for auction starting Aug. 1. More information can be found here.
The resort is working on the replacement for Eagle Express, which served terrain such as Sunshine Bowl, Serenity, and Challenger.
“It’s going to be a high-speed six-person detachable chairlift by Doppelmayr, that’ll be up and running by mid-December this year,” Holland said. “That side of the parking lot is where a lot of our locals kind of hang out, they hop on that chair first while the rest of the mountain is opening up in the morning. So it’ll be a much better experience kind of getting people around the mountain.”
Other additions for next winter include new Wyssen towers.
“They are remote avalanche control systems," he said. "They’re gonna be going into the Fantasy Ridge area of Honeycomb Canyon, we’re gonna be installing three of those. We installed one last year in Honeycomb Canyon, and it was super helpful getting that terrain open earlier in the morning.”
Holland said Solitude is also finishing up new mountain bike trails off Moonbeam Express. Those are expected to be ready for riding later this summer.
