This past weekend, Cameron and I flew to Park City, Utah to go skiing and we had an awesome time. It’s such a gorgeous place, which is why I wanted to share some photos from our trip!
The reason behind our trip was actually for an alumni ski weekend that had been organized through the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. Cam (who got both his Bachelor’s and Master’s from the College of Engineering at Michigan) attended this ski weekend last year when they held it in Tahoe, and so when I we heard they were doing it in Park City, I told Cam we had to go, ha. And although I was one of the only people that attended this weekend who was not an engineer, I did still go to Michigan and so it was fun for me to be a part of it too. Our 20+ person group stayed in two townhomes right near Deer Valley for the weekend; they had beautiful views of the mountain, along with hot tubs that were perfect for after skiing! The weekend wasn’t all just fun and games though, as a big focus outside of skiing was to have intellectual discussions on the topic of the future of the university system because the current situation (paying a huge sum of money for a four year degree that often doesn’t even end up applying to the job you end up in) is really not the most sustainable model. We had some pretty intense discussions both nights that involved breaking out into focus groups and coming up with action items for improvement – it was super nerdy, but also fun and thought-provoking too…Michigan people don’t mess around, ha!
It actually snowed the night we got into Park City and then continued to snow while we were there, and so both the views from our townhome and the views from the ski resort were absolutely stunning! There are quite a few different options when it comes to skiing in Park City – even though we were really close to Deer Valley, we ended up going to ski at The Canyons both days (which was only about 15 minutes from where we were staying) mainly because we had a mixed group of skiiers and snowboarders and Deer Valley is a skiiers only mountain. The Canyons is part of Vail Resorts, which also owns Heavenly (where we skiied in Tahoe), and it was a really fantastic place to ski. It’s such a huge mountain with so many different lifts and runs that we had plenty of different terrain to keep us busy for two days! I tried to snap as many photos as possible with my cell phone, but these pictures really don’t do justice to how beautiful it was!
Riding the gondola up to the lifts…Cam was clearly eager to get out there, ha 🙂
Even though I really enjoy skiing, I’m honestly just OK at it and I typically stick to blue runs. Cam, on the other hand, tends to spend most of his time skiing in the trees and taking on black diamond runs…and then we just meet back at the chairlift 🙂
The Canyons had photographers on the mountain like they used to at Heavenly!
I loved seeing all the aspen stands while skiing down…definitely different than Oregon!
For the second day of skiing, we had maize & blue armbands to wear which was fun!
The Canyons had a really cute village/resort area and it would be an awesome place to stay!
On Sunday, Cam and I had some time to overselves to explore Park City before heading to the airport. The downtown area is so charming and reminds me of a mix of Truckee, CA and Breckenridge, CO. We had a great time walking around, I’d love to come back for Sundance someday!
Overall, I loved Park City! The snow was great, the ski resort was fun, and the town is adorable. And seeing as it’s only an hour and a half flight from Portland, I’d definitely love to go back again sometime for another weekend getaway!
