Score Change: Snowbasin’s New Middle Bowl Express is the Year’s Most Useful Lift Redundancy
A ride up the Middle Bowl Express in March 2022.
This past season, we had the chance to stop by Snowbasin to check out a highly-anticipated lift improvement. The new Middle Bowl Express six-pack was installed for 2021-22, replacing a fixed-grip triple chair in a very similar alignment.
Mountain Experience Changes
While it hasn’t technically added high-speed lift service to any new terrain, upgrading Middle Bowl from a fixed-trip triple to a high-speed six-pack has turned Snowbasin into a much more competitive mountain.
The new lift setup makes it much easier to spend time on very solid mid- and upper-mountain intermediate and advanced terrain. Previously, lapping the Middle Bowl zone meant having to bear through an agonizing nine-minute lift ride—or making the trek all the way down to the base to ride the Needles Gondola. The new six-pack boasts a ride time of less than five minutes, effectively removing these access deterrents and providing a strong foundation for repeat laps.
Perhaps resultantly, the Middle Bowl upgrade has provided considerable crowd flow relief for the Needles zone. On busy days, the Middle Bowl lift has siphoned a solid proportion of the crowds from the Needles Gondola, cutting the line for that lift by about half. The new lift also means that Snowbasin offers two high-speed lift routes from the base to the Needles summit, with the gondola providing one option, and the Wildcat/Middle Bowl chairlift combination providing the other.
We’ve noticed a couple of drawbacks about the new setup—but they are minor. The terrain under the Middle Bowl lift now tends to get tracked out more quickly than it did when it was served by the triple chair. In addition, the new lift adds a confusing set of circumstances for beginners; the resort has technically added one small green trail off the top of Middle Bowl, but it only extends to the nearby Needles Lodge, and beginners who aren’t comfortable with blues must then download the gondola to get down the mountain.
Beginners beware! The Middle Bowl Express now services a green trail, but it only extends down a small fraction of the mountain. Downloading the Needles Gondola is required to reach other green terrain.
Mountain Score Impacts
Snowbasin’s Middle Bowl six-pack has been quite an effective investment, and we’ve decided to increase both the mountain’s lift and crowd flow scores from 6 to 7. The upgrade has eliminated a painfully long lift ride (although a few others, namely Porcupine and Becker, still exist at the resort), redistributed crowds in a more practical manner, and democratized access to some of the resort’s best terrain.
Snowbasin retains its ranking as 3rd in Utah, but is now 7th overall. You may notice that our rankings pages still contain Snowbasin’s old score and rank—this is by virtue of several other adjustments that will be released in the coming days affecting every resort in our rankings. We will fully update these views once the changes are out in entirety.
For more on Snowbasin, check out our full mountain review and Utah resort rankings. The resort will be leaving Epic and joining the full Ikon and Base Plus passes next season; for more information, check out our analysis on this change.
Snowbasin Score Change
6
Previous Lifts Score
7
New Lifts Score
6
Previous Crowd Flow Score
7
New Crowd Flow Score
75
Previous Overall Score
77
New Overall Score
