Park City Mountain Resort Blog

Be a Part of "Thriller" Snow Dance History

Do you want to be in the Guinness Book of World Records? Then join us in celebrating snow, the recent winter temperatures, Michael Jackson and Halloween in a traditional "Thriller" Snow Dance performance. We will teach participants the dance steps in an attempt to break the world "Thriller" dance record.

We will meet at the Town Lift Plaza, located on Park City's lower Main Street, on Friday, October 30th from 3:00 - 5:15 p.m.. Tanya Taylor, Performing Arts Director at Park City Academy, will teach the dance from 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. Filming will begin at 5:00 p.m. Season passes and PCMR day tickets will be raffled off after the performance. Halloween costumes or ski and snowboard attire along with ski or snowboard BOOTS are also encouraged.

The current "Thriller" Dance record (not on snow) is held by a group of 242. Let's "Beat It" Friday. Make sure you sign in with a PCMR team member upon arrival to be counted in the record breaking attempt.

Video footage will be produced and sent to The Guinness Book of World Records, media outlets including CNN and The Weather Channel and distributed among social networks.

Hope to see you Friday!

Landfill or Recycle?

I wanted to show you an alternative to throwing old lumber in the landfill.  This would a perfect method for recycling waste lumber from construction.

Snowmaking Fires Up at Park City Mountain Resort

We fired up our snowmaking for the first time this morning, a sure sign that the 2009-2010 winter season is just around the corner. Temperatures dropped into the 20's early this morning and we were able to start making snow on the majority of the lower mountain including Homerun (from the top of PayDay down), PayDay run, First Time and Pick 'N Shovel. 

Looking at the current forecast, there is a cold front moving in to the Park City area tomorrow night bringing cold temperatures and SNOW. It should be a wintry week! 

We are still scheduled to open for the 2009-2010 on Saturday, November 21. If things change, you will be the first to know (so keep checking back!). 

Guest Post: Long Range Forecast

Brian McInerney, a hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, has been kind enough to share his insights into the coming winter with us, here are his thoughts:

The 2010 winter season is closing in fast, and the question on everyone's mind is what type of winter will we experience this year?  If you look at the winter of 2009, the weather was ed off.  There was very little average conditions.  We started late with snowfall only starting around mid-December, with copious snowfall through early January.  This followed a dry spell for some time with heavy snows in February.  Once we got comfortable with an adequate snowpack, it started melting off in early March, only to be followed by record setting snowfall in late March.  Spring conditions were somewhat normal, only to be followed by record June rainfall near 400 - 500% of normal.  If anyone could have predicted that type of weather pattern accurately, they would be wealthy by now.

As far as the conditions setting up 2010, we are currently in a Moderate El Nino phase. El Nino looks at the sea surface temperature of the Equatorial Pacific Region.  Typically, when this area of the globe produces warmer than average sea surface temperatures, the Desert southwest becomes cooler and wetter, and the Pacific northwest b  For Utah, Southern Utah has a better than average chance of becoming cooler and wetter with the warmer sea surface temps.  Unfortunately, as Northern Utah lies in between these two areas, the long range forecast skill is very weak.  In reality, any forecast that goes out beyond 5 - 7 days has very little science to back it up.  In essence, we'll have to look out 5 - 7 days ahead, and hope for the best.  It would be nice to have a long range forecast that has skill, but that's life.  Let's hope the switch stays on lots longer than it's turned off.

Let's hope that switch stays on and thanks for your time Brian!

Job Fair This Thursday

Looking for a great winter job?

Want to work for one of the top winter resorts in the country?

Then, be sure to stop by our Job Fair this Thursday from 3pm-6pm at the Legacy Lodge.

See www.parkcitymountain.com/jobs for more details or to apply online if you are not able to make it to our Job Fair!

It's coming...

Winter has reared it's head a few times here in the Park City area and I got a great look at it in this photo that Dodd, one of our lift mechanics, shot and sent to me yesterday morning. He took this at the top of our Jupiter Lift and said that it looks like this snow will most likely stick through spring...we'll be skiing and riding this soon.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but, if you haven't picked up your 2009-2010 Park City Mountain Resort season pass, you've got until this Thursday to buy or renew! Our season pass sales office is open daily from 10am - 5pm, stop by and visit them, they're located in the plaza level in the main base area or call them at 1-800-222-PARK (7275).

Season Pass Deadline Just a Week Away

Just a friendly reminder that there's just one more week left to purchase your Park City Mountain Resort season pass at the early season rates. Our winter season is fast approaching and we've already seen a couple of snow storms blow through. There's no snow sticking down here at the base, we are scheduled to open for the season in just over a month, on November 21, 2009 with our closing date is set for April 11, 2010.

Actually, it's a bit odd to be writing about winter as we're planning to run our summer operations for another 10 days - our summer operations closing date is Sunday, October 18th. So come come on by this weekend, pick up your winter season pass and then ride the alpine coaster or alpine slide!

Save our Snow II

I attended the Save our Snow II meeting this past Wednesday (in a snowstorm) and came away with a great sense of community and vision. Dr Gallo's presentation on climate change and the oceans was an entertaining and enlightening piece, the Stratus Consulting Park City study was very interesting and I'm going to sign up on www.parkcitygreen.org this weekend.

If you weren't able to make the meeting, you can download the study from Saveoursnow.net and I've embedded three of the videos that were produced for the meeting below: