Brighton Crest 6 Lift and Snake Creek Lodge: All Sizzle and No Steak?
For the 2023-24 season, Utah’s Brighton ski resort completed its biggest suite of capital investments in over a decade.
First off, the resort replaced its workhorse Crest Express quad with the brand-new, state-of-the-art Crest 6 six-pack. The new lift comes with a loading carpet and uses contemporary Doppelmayr D-Line technology to allow for a faster travel speed than traditional detachable lifts.
In addition, Brighton added the Snake Creek Lodge—its first mid-mountain lodge ever. This facility brought on-mountain seating without forcing guests to ski or ride all the way down to one of its bases for the first time in the resort’s history.
On the surface, both of these projects bring significant experience changes that look to make Brighton more competitive with other Utah destinations. However, both projects have come with a few caveats that limit their overall effectiveness—and do not directly map to a better overall mountain experience.
Experience Changes
Crest 6 Lift Upgrade
Brighton’s new Crest lift might be the most advanced chairlift in the Cottonwoods, with a smooth ride, contoured seats, and a 20% faster ride time than even the old high-speed quad, which was no slouch itself. In addition, the six-place seating and wider chair spacing makes for more efficient chairlift operations than the old setup, with fewer misloads.
However, the new Crest 6’s loading setup isn’t perfect. Rather than the old quad setup where guests could line up on both sides of the lift, the Crest 6 only loads from the skiers’ right side of the lift, creating more congestion on that side of the hill and making it more of a slog to load the lift if one is coming from the skiers’ left Milly zone. Guests who instinctively ski or ride down to the skiers’ left side of the lift will be forced to hike uphill to the loading area on the other side, which can be fairly annoying.
In addition, while the Crest 6 may see fewer misloads than the old quad, its on-paper capacity isn’t actually any higher due to wider chair spacing. On top of that, Brighton’s lifties still haven’t figured out how to efficiently manage a six-person queue, so at least as of the 2023-24 season, the resort has not consistently loaded chairs to capacity. Due to these circumstances, the upgraded chair’s impact on lift lines hasn’t been all that noticeable.
Finally, while this is really just a minor nitpick, the Crest 6’s massive LED bottom terminal screen does look a bit out of place at this otherwise local-feeling resort.
Snake Creek Mid-Mountain Lodge
Brighton’s first ever mid-mountain facility should theoretically have made it a lot easier to stop in for a break. However, the lodge has a number of design flaws that significantly limit its practicality.
First off, the Snake Creek Lodge is located on a hill several feet above the main trail junction it serves, so it’s a pain to get up there unless you really know what you’re doing. In addition, the lodge is just a lot smaller than the demand entails—even on off-peak weekdays, it can be tough to find a seat. Even more frustrating is the bathroom situation—there are only six stalls in the entire facility, and on busy days, you might be waiting longer to use them than for the actual chairlifts.
Finally, Brighton has paired its new mid-mountain lodge with the conversion of its Milly cafeteria into a full service restaurant. While there’s still an outdoor shack at the base of Milly, you can’t sit inside and warm up anymore unless you do a sit-down lunch, which can be really frustrating if you’re spending time in this isolated area on a cold day.
The food at the Snake Creek Lodge is really good—and seating capacity opens up a bit when it’s nice enough to sit outside—but overall, it doesn’t feel like Brighton’s on-mountain facility setup has improved all that much.
Final Thoughts
While Brighton’s Crest 6 and Snake Creek Lodge projects may look flashy, they ultimately fall short when it comes to addressing the resort’s biggest issues: crowd management and a lousy on-mountain facility setup. Don’t get us wrong, these enhancements do have some very tangible benefits—but it feels like they’ve come paired with numerous flaws that are out of place for such substantial capital investments. Coupled with the weekend and holiday paid parking policy that the resort launched this past winter, those hoping for a much-improved experience at Brighton this past winter may have ended up a bit disappointed.
Considering a ski trip to Brighton this year? Check out our full Utah rankings, as well as our comprehensive Brighton review. You can also check out our analysis of the major 2022-23 ski resort upgrade projects in video form below.