This tool does not know how much snow fell last night, and it will never tell you. Every row links to the resort's own conditions page, because that is the only page that is right at seven in the morning. What the picker does know is the stuff that does not change overnight: how far each mountain is from your side of the valley, which pass gets you on the lift, which ones have a beginner mountain rather than beginner terrain, which two run lifts after dark, and which ones now want a parking reservation before you leave the house.
An evening only returns mountains that run lifts after dark and are close enough to be worth it. Half a day caps the drive at an hour each way.
How the picker decides
Drive time is a range, not a number, and that is deliberate. Our own guides disagree with each other. The skiing near Provo guide puts Sundance at about twenty minutes; the pass-math guide says twenty-five to thirty-five; the lessons guide says thirty-five. Brighton is fifty-five minutes on one page and seventy-five on another. Rather than quietly pick a winner, the tool shows the spread our pages actually contain. Plan on the top of the range and you will not be the person who books a lesson they cannot reach.
Everything our guides publish is measured from Provo, so the north-county and south-county adjustments are our own estimate from position on I-15, and the tool says so on screen rather than passing them off as measured. The adjustment flips for Sundance: from Lehi or American Fork you come back down to Orem to enter Provo Canyon, so Utah County's own resort is further away from the north end of the county than the Cottonwoods are.
The pass filter is the one that saves real money. Sundance is on no multi-resort pass except Ski Utah's own products — not Ikon, not Epic, not Indy, not Mountain Collective — and that single fact decides most Utah Valley pass purchases. On the Ikon side the detail that catches people is that the seven Little Cottonwood days are shared across Alta and Snowbird rather than seven at each, and that the cheaper Ikon Base drops Alta, Deer Valley and Snowbasin altogether. The pass-math guide runs the arithmetic for four real family shapes and carries the current menu with prices; this tool deliberately does not restate a dollar figure, because pass prices move in tiers through the autumn and a stale one quoted back is worse than none.
Night skiing is the whole argument for living here. Two mountains on this list run lifts after dark, and only one of them is twenty minutes away. Over a season, the mountain you can ski in two hours delivers more days than the mountain you love in eight — which is why the evening setting exists and why it returns so little. A Salt Lake skier lives closer to better mountains and still has to commit most of a day to them.
Parking is now a reservation problem, and it is the newest change. Alta wants a reservation on Fridays, weekends and holiday mornings — free to its own passholders, paid for everyone else, Ikon holders included. Brighton requires paid reservations along the canyon road. Snowbird runs a hybrid, and gives free parking to a car carrying three or more people. Where a resort's rule is not shown on a card, our guides do not state one; that is not the same as there being none, so check before you drive. Sort it out days ahead from Provo, not at six in the morning at the bottom of the canyon.
Two things this tool will not do. It will not tell you whether the road is open — the Cottonwoods are single-road canyons that queue and close for avalanche control, and our canyon conditions page routes you to the authorities who actually know. And it will not price a lift ticket. If you are getting there without a car, the ski bus and shuttle guide is the one to read, and the fare is waived entirely for Ikon holders and for season passholders at Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude.
If none of this is quite the question — if the honest answer is that nobody in the house has skied before — start with the learning guide instead, or the cross-country options, which are how a lot of Utah Valley adults get on snow without ever buying a lift ticket. The winter hub holds the rest.
Resort conditions links were each fetched and confirmed live on 3 September 2026. Pass access, drive times and beginner notes are drawn from this site's own ski guides. If a link has moved or a resort has changed its parking rule, tell us and we will fix it.