Deer Valley — Here, too, steps were taken to deliver more skiers to the slopes faster. The Sterling lift on Bald Mountain was bumped up from a regular-speed triple chair to a four-passenger high-speed lift.

New gladed skiing terrain, i.e. tree skiing, will be opened in an area off the Sultan lift.

Park City Mountain Resort — A new triple-chair lift was added to the mountain. Along with new service, the lift will offer access to three new intermediate runs. The resort also went to the expense of retrofitting all of the gearboxes on its detachable lifts in order to avoid any downtime, which happened on a couple of occasions last season.

The resort also took a chunk out of its energy costs by added 14 new, economical snowguns to its snowmaking system.

According to resort officials, "The snowmaking guns will reduce the resort's energy output this season by more than 1.2 million kilowatt hours, which is equal to not driving 2.5 million miles or planting 275,000 trees."

The new guns will also help the resort offer quality skiing earlier in the season.

Famous for its terrain parks, the resort will add more to its parks this coming season in the way of new trails, funboxes and jumps. Helping in the redesign was Olympic gold medalist Shaun White. Park City has been given the "Terrain Park of the Year" award for three consecutive years.

Powder Mountain—After 30 years of service, the resort's old double at Hidden Lake has been replaced by a new high-speed detachable quad. It follows the same route, but time on the lift will be half what it was, or roughly eight minutes to ride from bottom to top on the 6,000-foot long lift. It also doubled carrying capacity up to 2,400 passengers per hour.

Solitude — The resort expanded its grooming service with the addition of a new snowcat and will introduce more gladed skiing in the Queen Bess area for skiers looking for powder. This will be the resort's sixth new cat in six years, all directed at expanding its on-slope grooming.

The resort will also open a new "brown bag" eating area as part of the renovation of its Moonbeam base lodge.

Snowbasin — Skiers will find a new ticketing system in operation this season that will, among other things, allow for direct-lift access.

Utah ski areas are working hard to gear up for the upcoming season, which isn't that far off.