Recreation paradise

People travel great distances to come to Utah to pitch a tent, cast a lure, climb a mountain or set tracks in waist-deep powder — activities many locals consider routine along the Wasatch Front.

Take skiing. Visitors may spend days planning and traveling to experience Utah's famed snow. Meanwhile, for most local skiers it takes longer to eat breakfast than it does to dress and drive to a ski resort.

The same is true for other activities, such as hiking, camping, fishing, hunting or even Sunday drives to see deer graze, hawks soar or, at certain times of the year, Rocky Mountain goats scamper about the cliffs of Little Cottonwood Canyon.

A good share of the recreational opportunities locals take for granted and many outsiders can only dream about can be had along the Wasatch Front, which stretches north to the Utah border and south to Nephi.

Skiing

The north-south mountain range is probably best known for skiing. Eleven of the state's 13 resorts are located within the mountain range, starting with Powder Mountain, which is northeast of Ogden, and running to Sundance, which is due east of Provo.

Not only does the mountain terrain offer some of the best skiing in the world — ask any of the visiting Olympic skiers who skied in Utah in 2002 — it also offers some of the most convenient access.

"There is nowhere in the world," Ski Utah president Kip Pitou said, "where people have the access to skiing they do here in Utah. Within 30 minutes, out-of-state skiers can be off the plane and skiing at any one of seven world-class resorts. Locals have an even easier time."

The seven closest resorts to Salt Lake City are Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, Brighton, The Canyons, Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort. Sundance, Powder Mountain, Nordic Valley and Snowbasin are about an hour's drive from the Salt Lake City International Airport and even closer to other Wasatch Front cities.

Among the 11 resorts within the Wasatch Range, skiers have access to two trams, four gondolas, four six-passenger lifts, 33 high-speed quads, 27 triple chairlifts, 30 doubles and five surface lifts.

They have access to 24,185 acres of skiable terrain and can ski 26,452 vertical feet of mountain slopes, ranging from gently sloping hills for beginners to near-vertical terrain for experts. And included in those numbers are acres of slopes holding Utah's trademark snow — deep, light, fluffy powder.

Last year, Utah logged about 3.1 million skier days. About 42 percent of those skiers were locals. Skiing brings in about $750 million to Utah's economy.

That includes those areas open to cross country skiing in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons, Sundance, Mountain Dell Golf Course in Parleys Canyon and Park City.