Will change come at The Canyons?

Yesterday was the last day at The Canyons, near Park City, Utah. Alongside with Deer Valley that's were we ski during the winter season. While Deer Valley is super-sophisticated and has been ranked number one by the readers of Ski Magazine season after season, we like the mountain at The Canyons; it's huge, varied and still has a significant potential for improvement. It was purchased a year or so ago in a bitter, competitive bid against Vail Resorts by Talisker, a real-estate development firm from Canada, who owns a lot of developable land around town; unfortunately for that company, their specialty, “luxury real-estate” is dead at the moment and may take between 5 and 10 years to recover.

It seems that right now, The Canyons and its parent company are totally out of cash and it shows in their lack of attention around the resort and the “blah” atmosphere that prevailed yesterday. There are myriad of little things to improve in that place that would make an instant difference on users, but nothing gets done. There's either a lack of cash, a lack of imagination or a desire to sell the place as quickly as possible; perhaps it's all of these factors combined...

This Sunday, the weather was mild, the skies gray and there was almost no one in sight. Yet, the snow was groomed to perfection and remained excellent until noon, the time we chose to quit. We had a whole morning of skiing fun and racked up more than 26,000 feet vertical in 3 hours. Too bad the atmosphere wasn't more festive. This was a huge (missed) opportunity for The Canyons to promote their product and reward their season pass holders with a themed day perhaps, barbecue, music, clowns and drawings free passes and swag! We'll stay tuned to see what develops...