How reliable and relevant are Ski magazine rankings?

A few days ago I received the SKI magazine’s annual resort guide, that ranks the best 50 resorts across North America based on its 2020 reader survey. The results are split among 30 resorts in the West and 20 in the East. 

This time, Sun Valley, Idaho, grabbed the West’s top spot, while Smugglers’ Notch, Vermont, was number one in the East. My hometown of Park City, Utah, which is one ski town that is proud to have two ski companies operating on its land, got 2nd place for Deer Valley Resort and 11th place for Park City Mountain. 

Both benefit of course of the ease of access, the excellent infrastructure and the old town charm of Park City. Remove this and Deer Valley has much less to offer, but a rather thin entertainment and shopping infrastructure, no place next door for its snowboarder visitors to ride. 

Likewise Park City Mountain, our town’s namesake, also get synergy from having Deer Valley as an added option to its visitors. This is simply to make a point that Park City is the destination and its three resorts (if we include the new Woodward center at Gorgoza) are part of its amenities. 

This is in fact how resorts that have a core town (i.e. Aspen) should be ranked. Vail and Beaver Creek are more clearly delineated by the mountain ranges separating them and Tahoe would be too spread out to qualify. 

Under these criteria, a Park City destination should be number one with more than 9,000 square acre of skiable terrain. This of course doesn’t answer two very important questions I have about these rankings. 

The first one is what methodology has been used by SKI in compiling its survey, and can it be audited or be made public? It’s also pretty obvious that resorts that advertised in that issue got a pretty good rankings which says a lot about the credibility of that survey! 

The second has to do with the circulation of the magazine, its paid vs. free circulation, and who is the typical reader of that publication? Magazines like this one are a dying breed, as exemplified by the soon-to-be extinct Powder, and their relevance has become highly questionable. 

So, with this in mind, I won’t lose much sleep over Park City 11th and Vail 14th spots!