Powder Mountain Mandating Paid Parking for 2024-25 Season
A relatively empty parking lot at Powder Mountain's Sundown base area. This season, all of the resort's lots will charge to park before 1pm on weekends and holidays.
Earlier this week, Utah’s Powder Mountain put out a press release mentioning a slate of changes for the upcoming season. In addition to the already-announced move to a semi-private footprint, installation of three new public chairlifts, and debut of new interactive art installations, the resort is introducing its first ever paid parking policy.
In an effort to “mitigate crowding and to incentivize carpooling”, Powder Mountain is charging $12 per vehicle before 1pm on weekends and holidays. Carpools of 3 or more will be exempt from the policy, but all lots will require payment. The resort is coupling this change with “additional parking” on premise.
Powder Mountain is also adding two new terrain parks this upcoming season—its first since 2020. The smaller Sundown Park will feature small and medium boxes, rails, and jumps, while the larger Hidden Lake Park will include a reinstated natural halfpipe and boardercross.
Finally, Powder Mountain unveiled its new trail map, which shows the new chairlifts and homeowner-only terrain for next year. The new map, which officially confirms which specific trails are no longer accessible to the public, can be found below.
Powder Mountain’s full announcement can be found here: https://powdermountain.com/blog/whats-new-202425-season
Our Take
On the surface, Powder Mountain’s new paid parking policy makes very little sense. Historically, the resort has controlled parking congestion through limited lift ticket sales, so introducing weekend and holiday paid parking raises two possibilities: (1) either the resort is attempting to capitalize on a growing trend seen at many Utah ski destinations, or (2) they anticipate significantly higher visitor numbers next season, which would suggest an increase in lift ticket sales.
Since PowMow is planning to expand its parking capacity this season, it seems more likely that this change is a revenue-driven move rather than a response to anticipated crowding. However, this shift also raises concerns about whether the resort will dramatically increases its ticket sales. Powder Mountain might be the only ski resort we’ve visited in North America where lift lines are truly non-existent outside of mechanical issues, and it’s poignant to think that might change this winter.
This paid parking move raises questions about whether Powder Mountain's famously-crowd-capped slopes will see more visitors next year.
On the other hand, terrain parks are a welcome return to Powder. The resort has never been especially known for its freestyle terrain, but it’s one of the few destination resorts that currently has literally nothing (although ironically, the two other terrain-park-less resorts that come to mind, Alta and Deer Valley, are quite close in proximity — though since these resorts ban snowboarders, they have an “excuse”). We’re not expecting a world-class freestyle setup, but we’re excited to check out the two new parks.
We’ve already covered the other topics in today’s announcement in our recent powder mountain review and video. You can check out the Powder Mountain written review here, or you can check out our video review below.
