Ski Las Vegas: incredible 1-2 week ski vacation.

This review is now very outdated. See the review "Christmas Ski Week and Las Vegas" for current info.

With the closure of Elk Meadows ski resort, this isn’t quite the trip it used to be, although most skiers from Las Vegas prefer Brian Head to Elk Meadows, so maybe I’m misjudging it, but here is how Ski Las Vegas works today.

Day 1: Fly to Las Vegas. Enjoy yourself.

Day 2: Going skiing, we would fuel up at one of the casino buffet breakfasts, usually at Circus Circus. Then we headed north on I-15. At Parowan, we left I-15 to take the road some 4,000 ft up the mountains to Brian Head Ski Resort. This drive takes 3-4 hours. We plan to arrive about 1pm, when the reduced price half day lift tickets go into effect. Skiing a half day on the first day of ski week will tire you out, and is a good start on ski week.

After an afternoon of skiing, we drove back down the mountain to I-15 North another 3-4 hours. This is decision time. Sometimes we would stop for the night in the Provo-Orem area. Usually we continued another hour to Heber City or Park City by Orem Exit 800 North(stay in the left lane until 800 N deposits you on US 189) or continue on I-15 to Salt Lake City.

Staying in Heber City put us within 40 minute drive from four of northern Utah’s famed ski resorts: Sundance, Deer Valley, Park City, and The Canyons. By the time we started skiing Las Vegas, we had settled on Deer Valley as our favorite ski resort, so we usually stayed in Heber City (see journal).

Staying in Park City put you within a 20 minute drive of all these but Sundance, which is about 50 minutes.

Staying on I-15 north to Salt Lake City puts all the above ski areas plus Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, and Brighton within a hour drive and Snowbasin and Powder Mtn. are about 90 minutes away.

Days 3-?: Skiing the Greatest Snow on Earth in Northern Utah. Climatic conditions in northern Utah produce the best recreational skiing conditions in the world, until global warming ruins it in 20-30 years.

Last day -1: After skiing, drive back to Parowan for the night.

Last day: Ski Brian Head. Then drive back to Vegas and take the midnight red-eye home or whatever stays in Vegas.

Quick Tips:

Do you think we would be living in Utah for the last 10 years if could find skiing as good anywhere else? This is a great ski trip.

Flying through Las Vegas saves a lot of money, on both the flight and rental car. Staying in Heber City or Salt Lake City also saves a lot over staying at one of the resorts or in Park City town. All this skiing and Las Vegas makes for a great vacation, but it can get even better. I-15 passes within a couple hours drive of two of the country’s best National Parks, Bryce Canyon and Zion. Both parks are open year round and at their most spectacular when there is snow on the red rock ledges. Snow is common at Bryce in winter, rare in Zion. To do both, exit I-15 at UT Rt 20 about 20 miles north of Parowan to Bryce. From Bryce, take UT Rt 12 east, US 89 south, and then UT Rt 9 into Zion. Rt 9 then connects Zion to I-15 at St George. Although this is the most scenic way to go, it can be done in reverse direction.

I know you want to go skiing, but if you have never seen Bryce and Zion, you will find it well worth forgoing a couple ski days. If you have seen them before, it is still the thing to do to see Bryce with snow.

Best Way To Get Around:

You need a car to do this. If you stay in Park City, you can use the free bus to get around town and to the ski areas (Deer Valley, Park City, The Canyons).

If you stay in Salt Lake City, you can take the city ski bus, about rt, to Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude, all of which are technically within Salt Lake City’s city limits because the winter snows provide summer water.

I-15 runs across the desert, and weather is usually good. However, a big storm can put snow on the road. If bad weather hits, the problem spots on the road are the hill between St George and Cedar City (it goes up 3,000 ft.) and between Beaver and Fillmore (named after Pres. Milard Fillmore). Snow fall decreases as you move away from the mountains. The mountains are to the right driving north, and several times we have seen the snow cover the land between the mountains and I-15 but have a clear road and no snow in sight on the left side of the highway.

We did hit a bad storm on one trip. They closed I-15 between Cedar City and St George 20 minutes after we made it up the hill, but we encountered only minor problems after that. We never worried about the weather, and never regretted it, except once after we moved to Utah when we couldn’t make it up our driveway after returning from Las Vegas in early November.

If you are staying in Heber City or Park City and want to ski Snowbasin or Powder Mtn., go east on I-80 to I-84 west bound to UT Rt 132. Figure about 90 minutes. If you are staying in Heber City or Park City and want to ski Snowbird, Alto, Brighton, or Solitude, you must take I-80 west to Salt Lake City, then I-215 south to the market ski resort exit. Allow 60-65 minutes. A decent snow storm usually closes the road to Alta/Snowbird for a few hours. A big one can
close it for a couple days.

Elk Meadows resort is now closed to the public to turn it into a private gated ski/golf community. You can't ski or sleep here anymore, but you can in a few years for about $2,000,000 and up.

So forget the rest of these comments. They no longer apply to anything you can do today.

Mid-week rates for a condo just steps from the lift are an incredible bargain. On-the-mountain dinning is limited to one reasonably priced restaurant.

Fine Quality Inn. Very nice rooms. Exceptional winter rates. Nice pool/jacuzzi accessible without going outside.

Far back from the highway with an A&W Rootbeer across the street.

Older-style motel with large, comfortable rooms. Low winter rates. Large pool and a jacuzzi across the parking lot. A bargain. Small gym. Restaurant across the proking lot, which was never open when we were there. Several fast food joints across the street. Cafes not far.

Old-style, early motel in pleasant brick buildings. Some rooms are very small. Very comfortable rooms. Good winter rates. Close to restaurants, but in Beaver, nothing is ever far away.

Our faverite place on The Strip. Nice, large, and quiet rooms. Nice pool area and gardens in back. Small casino doesn't overwhelm. Easy acess to the street (some Strip hotels require two blocks of walking from the elevator to the front door). But if you are pinching pennies, stay off the Strip.

Halfway between the airport and the Strip, this smaller casino/motel has nice large rooms that are surprisingly quiet considering how close it is the airport. Airplane noise is almost nonexistant.

In a city where all hotels have good rates, this one stands out for value and for low cost.

I was not as favorably impressed on our second visit to the LV Hilton as I was the first time. I think the key difference was that when we stayed here in 2005, the room had a double set of drapes which did a top rate job keeping light out of the room. In 2006, there was only one pair of drapes—which leaked a lot of light at the top of the window. Had they fit tightly, the room would have been very dark.

 

Aside from that, the Hilton is a fine hotel, although very large. Rooms are quiet, and by Vegas standards, on the spacious side. The furniture, including the bed, is remarkably comfortable. A nice touch, especially if you ever saw one of those TV shows on how dirty hotel rooms are, is that the blanket on the beds is encased in a sheet. The bed has three sheets instead of the usual two, so that, once you toss the bed spread(the dirtiest item in a hotel/motel room) in a corner, you never come into direct contact with bedding previously used by others without being cleaned.

 

Check in was fast, efficient, and friendly, and the clerk actually asked if we had a room location preference. We did, and we got it.

 

The casino is almost tasteful—as far as these things go—and there is also a large sports book room (although a structure big enough to hold the Goodyear blimp is hardly room sized, what else do you call it?). An historical note: The LV Hilton was the original MGM Grand Hotel, and, with 3,000 rooms, was for a time the largest hotel in the world. The parking garages are well away from the hotel. First time visitors will at first think they are in the wrong place.

 

Getting There: From the airport, go north on Paradise, the main road out of the airport. From other places,
Exit I-15 on Sahara toward the strip. Turn right one block beyond Paradise Rd. There are three buildings
on the right, Hilton Vacation Villages, one of the parking garages, and the hotel. Turn right between the
garage and the hotel to get into the garage.

The Hilton is next door to the LV Convention Center and a long, long block off The Strip near the new
Wynn and the old Sahara. The new (as of 2005) monorail stops right beside the Hilton, and the path
through the hotel from your room to the monorail is by far the easiest to follow and shortest walk of any of
the monorail stops. Like everything else in Vegas, the monorail’s $5 a ride one-way tariff is exorbitant, but
you came here to part with your money didn’t you? The 24 hrs of unlimited rides for $15 is, by comparison,
the way to go. Just two round trips puts you money ahead.

Despite the monorail’s high cost, it is the way to travel. Cabs are even more expensive and slower.

Under the orignal owners, this was one of the west's classic cafes. Spotty recond under subsequent owners, but the last time we ate there (owener #4), it was pretty good.

It's clean. Food is decent. It doesn't excite.

This is typical western cafe cuisine-- fried meat, potatoes, and lots of gravy. Hits the spot after skiing, but haute cuisine it ain't.

The Buffet at the LV Hilton might be worth $8, but at $19, it is a bummer. There were a couple good
dishes—baked ham, deep fried shrimp which were surprisingly crisp for any buffet, and the peel it yourself
shrimp. On the other hand, the accompanying cocktail sauce was bland. Fried wontons weren’t great, but
they weren’t bad either. As for the rest, it was bland across the board. Things that should have had
variations in texture were a uniform degree of mush. Flavors were almost absent from dish after dish. By
all means, stay away from the tough, tasteless so-called "Prime Rib"—a bad cut of beef badly cooked in by
any book.

Beer or wine was included in the price. Small glasses of wine was cheap California jug wine that tasted
just like cheap California jug wine. Miller lite beer on tap was a highlight of the meal.

Among desserts, only the sugar free chocolate cake and a strange glossy green concoction that teased of
Kiwi fruit was worth the effort.

Service was better than average for a Vegas buffet, but of the 10-12 casino buffets we have sampled, The
Buffet’s food is at the bottom. Better food at the same or even much less cost is easy to find just about
anywhere else.

Brian Head’s 50 ski runs and six lifts are on two mountains. Navajo is mostly beginner, with
two short intermediate stretches. Brian Head has short two beginner runs. A free shuttle bus
connects the two mountains. There are two terrain parks. Although the base can accommodate
2,000 people, Brian Head is primarily a weekend playground for Las Vegas. During the week, it
is empty and cheap, with $40 lift tickets.
Because the resort sits high up in the mountains, at 9,600 to 11,307 feet, ski conditions are superb
during a long ski season. Brian Head averages 400 inches of snow a year.
Note that winter access by road is on UT Route 143 only from north of the resort via Parowan, the
highway crossing Cedar Breaks National Monument being closed in the winter (last winter, the
snow was 33 feet deep at the Cedar Breaks visitor center).
The Cedar Breaks Lodge and dinning room at Brian Head get very good reviews, but we haven’t
stayed there. There are also couple places to stay in Parowan.
Although Brian Head is an attractive place to ski, I did not find it to be one of my favorites,
because the pitch of the runs is too variable for my tastes. If you can handle intermediate runs,
be sure to go to the top of the Giant Steps lift on a clear day for the view into the bowl of Cedar
Breaks National Monument.