Uphill access at the Utah Olympic Park was supposed to start this week. But park general manager Jamie Kimball said skiers will have to wait a little longer for the West Peak hill.
“Jan. 1 is kind of our predicted date on a normal year, and we've kind of been tracking along with that. Hopefully this weekend we see a little precipitation,” he said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Wednesday. “As that snow builds up in those areas, we will continue to communicate out to our pass holders and the community to be able to come up when that's open.”
Kimball said uphill passes are still available. They sold out in its inaugural season so the UOP is offering twice as many this time.
He said crews have improved the trail and thinned trees in some uphill areas.
“We also changed the access road that most people were familiar with from last year to make that a little bit wider and a little bit more of a consistent grade getting up there,” he said. “There was some feedback from the community on that kind of bottleneck area right at the bottom.”
There are three uphill trails for skiers and splitboard riders and three runs down. Once open, season passholders can access West Peak daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Despite the slow start to the ski season, athletes have been out on UOP’s hills.
Kimball said Alpine athletes were able to get on snow before Christmas. He said crews got creative when it came to the other sports.
“We had enough time where we actually took the nets and cables back off some of our development hills so the Nordic kids could continue to jump, even when we didn't have snow,” he said. “And we were able to build a mogul jump on the aerial site, which we couldn't run the aerial site, but the Mogul kids were able to train a little bit. So we've really been moving around and trying to get creative, to keep the programs training."
Park City Mountain, which offers uphill traffic on Homerun after hours, has not yet announced an uphill travel opening date this season.
