Last Chair: The Ski Utah Podcast

With two world class resorts boasting nearly 10,000 lift-served skiable acres, all nestled around an historic old mining town, Utah’s ski town of Park City truly is unlike anything in North America. Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain will open this season with new captains at the helm. Deer Valley’s Todd Bennett and Park City’s Deirdra Walsh represent a new generation of resort leaders who bring fresh enthusiasm to their respective mountains, and a keen sense of the uniqueness that has made the Park City community America’s Ski Town. They sat down with Last Chair at the Nelson Cottage at High West Distillery, in the heart of Park City’s Old Town.

As a community, Park City dates back to the late 19th century when silver mining made it a boom town. Throughout the early to mid 20th century, miners used skis to get around, often crossing the ridgeline into Big Cottonwood Canyon and back. The present-day Park City Mountain came alive in 1963 with the opening of a full resort, complete with a gondola. Known previously as Snow Park and Frog Hollow, Deer Valley sprang to life in 1981.

Park City’s historic Main Street, nestled between the two resorts, still boasts a 19th century mining town feel with hundreds of restaurants and shops, all within minutes to the two resorts.

Deer Valley’s new leader Todd Bennett grew up in Saranac Lake, N.Y. outside of Lake Placid, learning to ski at tiny Mount Pisgah. He worked a ski job in Colorado for three seasons before heading to an 18-year career with Walt Disney in southern California, looking for any opportunity he could to take ski trips with his family and friends. When the opportunity came up to move to Utah, he took advantage, settling into his new mountain home last summer.

Walsh is a native of St. Louis who came to Park City 18 years ago, learned to snowboard and rose up to a senior leadership role at Park City Mountain overseeing on-mountain dining. She left to run a California resort for a few years but returned home last spring. She brings pride in her company and a great depth of experience on the mountain.

Bennett and Walsh talk about the uniqueness of their resorts, and also that of the community. There are really no other similar models of two separate but adjoining resorts based around a central community core.

Here’s a sample of Last Chair’s episode 4 of season 4 with Park City’s Deirdra Walsh and Deer Valley’s Todd Bennett.

Todd, what was your pathway into skiing as a young boy?

We had a town run hill called Mount Pisgah – one run to the left of a tee bar and one run to the right of a tee bar and 500 vertical feet. That's where I learned to ski, I think at age four. I've always loved skiing. It was just one of those things that honestly was probably a little bit cooler than I was as a kid, and I just loved being around it.

Deirdra, your story is a bit different, right?

Yes. I grew up in the Midwest – I'm from Saint Louis. Our family vacation time was spent camping and always outside so I grew up with this love of the outdoors. In the summers I think my mom would literally send us out the door, lock it behind us, and we couldn't come home until she rang a bell.

Deirdra, what was your first introduction to skiing?

My husband had grown up skiing Stevens Pass, and he said, ‘let's move to Park City together.’ So I had almost no skiing experience until I came out here. He was a snowboarder, so I thought I'd be a cool girlfriend and learn to snowboard as well. My very first lesson was actually right at Park City Mountain in my mid-20s. I fell in love with the sport itself a little bit later in life. And it's been amazing to be a part of the community here and now have my kids grow up with skiing and riding as part of their every day.

Todd, what motivated you to get back into the ski industry? .

It was just kind of fortuitous. I saw the opening for Deer Valley come up and I immediately reached out to a number of folks that I knew in the industry. Park City had always been on our list, and I've just always been a passionate skier. So it was something that I wanted. And when that opportunity came up, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to come work at Deer Valley.

Deirdra, how important is the community’s historic mining heritage?

When I think about Park City and that history, the word that always comes to mind is just how authentic this community is around the history that we have, the storytelling, the feeling that when you're on Main Street that these buildings and these neighborhoods and you look up the hill and you see all of these homes, you can't miss the history of this community. And it's really something that I think makes Park City so unique and so special.

Todd, how does Deer Valley Resort see its role in the community?<...

“I'm so thankful for the people in town who founded the Youth Sports Alliance after the 2002 games,” said Fisher. “It was a community effort to get all of the youth from Summit and Wasatch counties out using these amazing Olympic venues and getting as many kids out and active in our community playground. The legacy absolutely still lives on.”

And it has worked. Some, like nordic combined skier Jared Shumate and cross country skier Rosie Brennan grew up in [service name="park-city-mountain"]Park City Mountain[/service]. Others, like freeskiers Izzy and Zoe Atkin, moved to Park City because of the great sport opportunities. Some, like Olympic gold medalist aerials skiers Ashley Caldwell, Chris Lillis and Justin Schonenfeld, were brought together by the world-acclaimed freestyle training facility at the [service name="utah-olympic-park"]Utah Olympic Park[/service] that opened in 1993.

But while Utah takes great pride in its Olympians in Beijing, Fisher is quick to point out the broader value of sport.

These athletes are phenomenal PR stories for us, she said. “But for me, it's really about the 1,500 kids that we get out and get active every year. It's really important for every kid. A lot of their parents work in the service industry and they don't have the opportunity to use these amazing Olympic venues, to get out, to learn how to ski, learn how to snowboard. The most important legacy of our program is that these kids can grow up and feel part of the community because they participate in things that are so important to the community.”

Jared Shumate

Now a nordic combined Olympian, Jared Shumate grew up in Park City and tried a myriad sports through the Youth Sports Alliance’s Get Out and Play program.

“Growing up in Park City, every day on my way to school, just looking out the windows, I could see the Utah Olympic Park not knowing when I was three years old that I'd be going to the Olympics for that sport. So who knows, maybe it's been in me since I was a little kid.”

Rosie Brennan

Rosie Brennan did just about every outdoor winter sport before her mom made her choose. They had had a great time watching cross country skiing during the Olympics at Soldier Hollow during the 2002 Olympics, so that’s what she chose. Today, she’s one of the top-ranked skiers in the world and competing at her second Olympics.

“Sport has brought me, honestly, just about everything. I am so thankful for the opportunities that I've had. It's putting a challenge out there and working hard towards it. Oftentimes you come up short and have to learn how to take that shortcoming, process it, figure out what went well, what didn't go well and then work up the courage to take what you learned and apply it again.”

Brendan Newby

Halfpipe skier Brendan Newby was born in Ireland but grew up in Orem. When he was four, his father took him to Brighton. Young Bubba, as he is known to friends today, was hooked. He made his first Olympic team for Ireland in 2018 and is back again, along with countryman and fellow Irish snowboarder Seamus O’Connor, another Utah transplant.

“Utah is probably one of the most fun places to grow up. I'm a mountain biker and dirt biker as well, and I can basically go 20 minutes in any direction and have insanely good stuff to ride. If you want to be a winter sport Olympian, Utah is kind of the place to do it for literally any sport because of the 2002 Games and because the [service name="utah-olympic-legacy-foundation"]Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation[/service] has kept up all of the facilities so well.”

Izzy and Zoe Atkin

The young Atkin sisters, Izzy and Zoe, were passionate about winter sport. So a family move to Park City when they were young gave a dream playground and a strong club program to build their skills. Skiing for their mother’s homeland of Great Britain, in 2018 Izzy won Olympic bronze in slopestyle skiing. This time, she’s bring along younger sister Zoe who competes in halfpipe skiing.

“It's just a really great place to be because everyone loves just to be outside and to do what they love to do like skiing and snowboarding, being outdoors. A lot of people have that athlete mindset. I went to the Winter Sports School - a whole school of winter sports athletes. It was great to be in that community. We all pushed each other. Everyone just kind of has that drive to be outside and have fun, but also to push themselves in sport.” - Zoe Atkin

“Yeah, (PyeongChang 2018) was incredible. It was the first experience I'd ever had like that - to have all those incredibly driven athletic people in one bubble and getting to know other people's stories, how they got to where they are today. That mindset in the village is super motivating. It was just an amazing experience for me to even go there.” - Izzy Atkin

Nick Page

Still...

Head to any Woodward Mountain Center and you’ll immediately be drawn to the kids in the Jib Park and Peace Park pushing themselves to new heights. Since Woodward’s humble beginning over 50 years ago as a gymnastics camp in Pennsylvania, progression has been central to its mission. Today, Woodward centers span the globe including Utah’s Woodward Park City. In this episode of Last Chair, we catch up with a legend in action sports, Chris “Gunny” Gunnarson. Now the president of Woodward globally, Gunny’s three decades in action sports has paralleled the dramatic growth from surf to skateboard to snowboard to ski.

Beginning at Snow Summit and Big Bear in southern California, Gunnarson quickly became a leader in the sport from building snow terrain for the X-Games beginning in year one, to crafting private training venues that sent athletes like Shaun White on to olympic gold. Along the way, he built a reputation as a leader in progression with his company Snow Park Technologies and a capable partner with resorts, ultimately helping the world’s greatest athletes achieve pinnacles of success in their career.

And while his career has been marked by relationships with the greatest athletes, Gunnarson is quick to point out that what’s central to his own mission is to bring that experience to enthusiasts of all ages and ability levels. Today, he leads Woodward on a global journey to provide fun and progression for all.

As a boy growing up in SoCal in the ‘60s and ‘70s, he was immersed in the cultural revolution of action sports. His life was centered around skateboarding and a little surfing. But when he discovered snowboarding at 13, he used every angle to get up to the mountains and ride on snow.

Here’s teaser of Gunny’s Last Chair interview, which takes you back into the origin years of the culture of snowboarding and tracks you through the impact Woodward is making with people of all ages.

Let’s go back to the beginning – YOUR beginning!

Oh man, how I got involved in sport. I mean, I think I was around five when I got on a surfboard. I know I was seven when I got on a skateboard and I had a bike like every other kid in the neighborhood. And I heard about snowboarding when I was 13. In fact, for my 13th birthday, my dad took us up. I lived in San Diego, so I grew up in the southern California hotbed of board sports. And it was funny. My mom and dad were like, oh, snowboarding? You know, we used to ski before you were born and I didn't even know what skiing was, really. And so we get up to the local mountain and they were like, ‘no snowboarding allowed.’ We had rented some boards from the local surf shop. I rented a Chuck Barfoot board and they were like, ‘no snowboards allowed.’ My dad got so angry and he's like, ‘I used to ski here all the time. What do you mean no snowboards allowed?’ And so we ended up just ... we had rented a cabin with a couple of my buddies for my 13th birthday to go snowboarding, trying to figure it out, you know, falling a lot just on this back hill. And I knew right then and there, like, I have got to figure out a way to do this for the rest of my life. And somehow I lucked out.

So you must have had some good skateboarding roots in SoCal?

Well, it was kind of all I knew. And, you know, sort of in my high school teen years, I was living up in the outskirts of LA, so I was skating swimming pools. There was a big earthquake in Northridge, and there were lots of empty swimming pools. We had maps of pools from condemned buildings and houses. And so we'd show up with buckets, mops, and we would skate all these different pools. I think we skated Tom Petty's pool at one point. It was like a condemned house that he'd owned or something like that. But that was my whole life and culture was skating and a little bit of surfing, but mostly skateboarding and trying to find as many pathways to get up to the mountains as possible.

Were your business wheels turning yet in your mind?

Honestly, not even a little bit. At that point, it was just living life, having fun and trying to skate as much as possible.

What was your first job in the industry?

I've had a lot of jobs in my lifetime, but my first job in the industry was at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake. I was fresh out of high school, and I was going to try and make it as a pro snowboarder, get whatever job I could on the mountain, and, funny enough, I got a job with the patrol at Snow Summit at the time. Being based right in Southern California obviously was right in the middle of what I'll call boardsport Mecca, except they weren't quite there yet. And so I get this job as a snowboarder, but on patrol, thinking, ‘oh, I'm just going to, you know, snowboard a lot.’ But I actually ended up really loving patrol and really loving resort operations – becoming a sponge and learning everything I coul...

Visitors to Sundance Mountain Resort this winter have found a wonderful new experience at one of Utah’s great hidden gems. Working with the experienced Sundance team, legendary ski industry leader Bill Jensen has helped them transform the resort with new lifts, terrain, snowmaking and much more. Jensen, a longtime visionary who has led some of North America’s most notable resorts, talked to Ski Utah’s Last Chair about his storied career and the fun he’s having coaching the team at Sundance.

After stewarding Sundance for over a half-century, film legend Robert Redford sold his interest in December 2020 after carefully curating potential buyers to ensure his legacy would remain. The new investors included Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners. But what was most important for skiers and riders was the inclusion of Jensen as a partner.

While he didn’t discover skiing until he was 19 in southern California, Jensen quickly grew passionate about the sport, starting his career at Mammoth Mountain as a liftie. In the decades since then he’s hopscotched around in leadership roles from Vail to Whistler to Telluride and Intrawest. In 2019, he was inducted into the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.

In his new role, he fell in love with Sundance the day he hiked up to the top of Ray’s Lift and then up to Mandan Summit. His vision came clear in an instant when he soaked in the view of Mt. Timpanogos from Mandan.

This winter skiers were treated to a host of positive upgrades:

• The new high-speed Outlaw Express taking skiers from base to Mandan Summit in just seven minutes.
• New beginner and intermediate terrain off Mandan offering stunning new views and options. Check out Broadway!
• A new beginner area with three magic carpets.
• A new return lift, Stairway, from the back mountain along with a new run allowing Bear Claw to base skiing or riding.
• The new Lookout restaurant with stunning views of Timp from the base.
• New snow guns as part of an upgraded snowmaking system, including a water holding pond.

While he’s been the top executive of the biggest ski resort companies in North America, he remains a true mountain guy always anxious to take visitors up on the mountain. Here are a few teasers from the interview. Check out the full conversation on Last Chair, available through all podcast platforms.

Bill, you had a bit of a non-traditional introduction to skiing.

Unfortunately, later than most people I know. Born in Hawaii and grew up in Southern California. When I was 19, for some reason I walked into a Sports Ltd. store in Woodland hills. They were showing the K2 Performers video. I saw skiing for the first time and was fascinated. I just went, ‘wow, this is incredible.’ So I went skiing that winter one day, and that was it.

I’ll bet you were pretty excited to get a job as a liftie?

It just connects you to people, and, candidly, it was fun! So that's where it all started. It was all happenstance. I had no idea that a ski area was even a business. I just saw it as some great recreational fun pursuit. And I just - I fell in love. You know, I always say, I love skiing, but I became passionate about the ski industry and the business and that's where things unfolded.

You’ve lived in some great ski towns: Mammoth, Sun Valley, Whistler, Vail, Breckenridge. What has attracted you to those towns?

In small towns, you get to know a lot of people. And I also like the fact that people depend on each other, whether it was helping them split their firewood or snow removal or whatever. You built relationships and,in ski towns, there's a common denominator that everybody loves snow and they love sliding on snow, whether they snowboard or ski now. But, you know, I just felt very comfortable in that environment. Living in a ski town, to me, just fit my ... who I was and my persona. I really like small mountain communities.

What did it mean to be honored in the Hall of Fame?

It's touching. It's gratifying. It wasn't something that you aspire to. I really believe in the sport. I believe that the skier is important and I've worked hard over my career to mentor people and bring new people into the business and see their careers grow. And that has been the most fulfilling part of my career.

When you visited Sundance in 2020, what stood out to you?

You know the word, and I don't want it to be overused, but just the sense of arrival and walking through the base - there's something magical about this resort and part of it is the environment it sits in, Mount Timp and the views. It is truly one of very few unique ski areas that have this setting. And because it was Robert Redford's business, it really was a family business, is what I would call it. And you can sense that in the culture, the staff a...

Utah’s 15 resorts paint a majestic portrait amidst the winter landscape. So what if someone painted them all, with watercolors based in snow melt from each resort. That’s what passionate Utah skier Lexi Dowdall has set out to do with her Paint by Powder Project!

Dowdall is a snow-loving outdoor enthusiast who actively seeks out the Greatest Snow on Earth in every corner of the state. But her skiing career got off to a rocky start. At her first lesson as a little girl, she became frightened of a yeti-like skier with a snow-encrusted beard. So she watched Sleeping Beauty in the lodge at Solitude instead. Not so today as she crushes the powder every chance she can - all with a big smile on her face.

The artist in her came from her grandmother, a sculptor and painter in Sedona. She says today, “Art is in my nature. But I spent a long time ignoring that fact.” Her grandmother focused her art on her surroundings, the towering vermillion monoliths in Sedona. So Lexi looked around herself at the Utah ski resorts she loved and decided to make that her palette.

In 2019, she took a rudimentary watercolor kit along on a rafting trip through the Gates of Lodore. A year later, she used the platform of COVID to start focusing on painting Utah’s ski areas. Looking out to the street one day, she saw her boyfriend’s pickup truck bed filled with fresh Alta snowfall he had trucked down to the valley after a huge snowstorm. And the idea struck her - why not blend her watercolor paints using snowmelt from each resort.

And the Paint by Powder Project was launched!

This episode of Last Chair is a really fun podcast with an exuberant powder-loving artist, Lexi Dowdall. She’ll win your heart with her stories of her continual discovery of the outdoor world around her, and how she’s sharing it with others.

She also personifies the ‘support a cause’ energy that is ingrained in all of us as skiers and snowboarders. And, she’s doing something about it. She is a passionate volunteer with Wasatch Adaptive Sports at Snowbird, and she’s donating proceeds of the Paint by Powder Project to Protect Our Winters.

In her day job, she’s the director of freeride for the International Freeskiers and Snowboarders Association (IFSA), helping young freeride skiers overseeing event series’.

Here’s a little teaser of the Last Chair episode with Lexi Dowdall.

<<ADD LINKS TO PODCAST WHEN LINK AVAILABLE>>

Lexi, how did skiing get in your blood?

I'm a fourth or fifth generation Utahn. I grew up here. My parents were big skiers. My dad was a ski bum who came here after college and never really left. So my mom always says we never had a choice and being skiers, it was that worked out so well.

What has inspired you growing up in Utah?

I come from a very creative family and we're always doing stuff yet scrapbooking or making terrariums, or we were just crafting all the time. And I may be biased, but I think Utah is the most beautiful state. We have just such an amazing diversity of landscapes and vistas and state parks and national parks. It's hard not to be inspired by the vistas that we're surrounded by out here.

Why watercolors?

It's an enigma. It's very simple, but it's difficult to master. And I would say I'm very much a type A kind of control freak kind of person. So watercolor has helped me to be a lot more open to outcome. You literally have to go with the flow. So that's a neat thing about watercolor is you can have an idea of what you want to accomplish. But in the end, the water and the paint are going to force your destiny and you don't have as much control over it as the acrylic or oil.

And why mountains?

I just knew I wanted to paint mountains - that's where I'm happiest, that's where my soul is alive. So it's funny. I still feel like I don't really know how to paint mountains or snow, but you know, I'm practicing as much as I can, and it's just going to be a work in progress.

And why snow?

Snow is water. I thought I could incorporate snow from each mountain into my watercolor painting, and you know, I'm really working on my technique with painting mountains. I thought, ‘oh, maybe this snow will make the painting a little bit better, and I can channel the energy of the mountain as I paint with its snow.’ So that was kind of how it got started.

When you collect snow in milk jugs at resorts, do people look at you strangely?

I had this very awkward interaction with a Powder Mountain patroller. I tried to explain what I was doing, and he was just very confused. But I will say the fastest response time was Deer Valley. They were on the scene in probably 34 seconds. ‘Ma'am, are you OK? Do you need assistance?’ ...