Salt Lake County bursting with fun opportunities

Of all the counties in Utah — 29 in all — none has the range of recreational opportunities as does Salt Lake County — many of them spectator sports and many more active sports.

What you know:

At the top of the list is the Utah Jazz, of course. Forty-eight times a season the best basketball players in the country will go basket-for-basket on the court at the Delta Center between November and April.

Not to be forgotten is the minor-league hockey played by the Grizzlies at the E Center. Action on the ice begins in October.

Up on the hill, at the University of Utah, there is a full range of spectator sports being played, ranging from football to gymnastics to basketball, and include a range of minor sports such as swimming, tennis and volleyball.

A popular activity during the summer is to hit the old ballpark to watch the Salt Lake Stingers — now the Bees — at Franklin Covey Field.

In April, profession soccer picks up when Real Salt Lake takes the field at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

New to the sporting world is the Utah Blaze, one of the latest additions to the Arena Football League, which plays their games in the Delta Center.

Away from the city center are four of Utah's 13 world-class ski resorts — Alta, Snowbird, Solitude and Brighton.

Among the four, they offer nearly 10,000 vertical feet of skiing on some of the world's best ski terrain and access to 33 lifts, not to mention some of the finest amenities in the way of lodges and restaurants.

Alta and Snowbird have, in fact, teamed up with a single pass and connecting lifts to create what the readers of Skiing Magazine voted as No. 1 ski area in the country for three consecutive years.

The four resorts also play key roles in the six-resorts-in-a-day Interconnect program put on by Ski Utah. The tour starts at Deer Valley, then heads to Park City Mountain Resort and over the mountain top into Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons.

Along with alpine skiing, Solitude also opens its Nordic Center each winter for cross-country skiing with more than 20 kilometers of groomed track for classic and freestyle skiing.

Hiking Mount Olympus has long been a popular activity among Utahns. There are, in fact, higher peaks along the Wasatch Front, but none seem to offer the incredible views as seen from the 9,026-foot summit of Mount Olympus.