Utah ski area’s parking lot plan under fire over concerns about watershed, traffic

It was hot enough to wear shorts on the ski lifts at Solitude Mountain Resort, and it hadn’t snowed in a week. Yet, by 10 a.m. on a Wednesday in mid-March, skiers and snowboarders hoping to park in one of the resort’s lots to catch a few quick turns over their lunch breaks were rerouted back onto Big Cottonwood Canyon Road. Many would make a U-turn to park along the shoulder of State Route 190 and hike half a mile along the road to the lifts.

A surge in visitation in recent winters has put pressure on the ski area’s parking infrastructure. Yet Solitude’s proposal to build a 593-space parking lot across the street from Solitude Village, in the midst of a grove of quaking aspen and Salt Lake City’s watershed, has been met with skepticism by public officials, landowners and activists.

They argue the lot will only compound problems already present in the canyon.

Ross McIntyre is one of the critics. If Solitude builds the lot, a retaining wall at least 40 feet tall will replace the wall of thin, white aspen trunks that separate his log home from SR-190. Yet he won’t be the only one affected. He said the creation of the lot could further snarl ski traffic as well as increase erosion and fire risk in the canyon.

Plus, he said, the hillside — visible from just above the traffic light at Cardiff Fork all the way up to the ski area — will likely go from idyllic to eyesore.

“This will, I think,” McIntyre, 64, said, “end up looking sort of like the gravel pit at the mouth of the canyon, only much smaller.”

The Town of Brighton’s Planning Commission will consider the proposal perhaps as soon as at its May 21 meeting. Any decision made by the commission can be appealed to a land use hearing officer.

Solitude has been quietly putting the pieces for the new lot in place over the past year. According to Jeff Carroll, the resort’s vice president of marketing and guest experience, it’s part of an effort to get away from roadside parking, which can be both unsafe and an impediment to traffic flow in the canyon.

If Solitude wants to alter its parking, it has little choice but to seek options on private land. A 2002 decision by the United States Forest Service bars the resort from adding parking on federal land, upon which most of the resort sits.

“We believe there are private and public assets that should be coordinated to help improve current traffic and parking conditions to better serve guests, employees, and the community,” Carroll wrote in a statement emailed to The Salt Lake Tribune. “We are looking forward to continuing these discussions.”

Solitude seeks year-round, ‘community’ lot

The Alterra Mountain Company-owned ski area purchased the site for the lot, advertised as a 12.58-acre parcel across SR-190 from the Solitude Village, just east of Old Stage Road, for an undisclosed sum in early 2024. McIntyre, who tried to buy the land, which has no water rights and disputed access, said it was listed for $1.5 million.

In January, Solitude’s lawyers submitted a conditional use permit application to build a 720-stall lot on the parcel. In February, the Greater Salt Lake Municipal Services District — which oversees planning, zoning and development issues for the Town of Brighton as well as a handful of other towns and unincorporated Salt Lake County — deemed the application deficient on a few fronts. In particular, the agency requested more information on the resort’s plan to access the lot through city-owned land. It also questioned the lot boundaries and the number of stalls.

Solitude responded last month with a letter addressing the deficiencies. It commissioned a survey of the land, which revealed the lot to be closer to 11.4 acres. It also reduced the lot size to 593 spaces — more than twice the approximately 240 roadside parking spots available in the upper canyon.

“This parking area,” Solitude lawyer Wayne R. Budge, a partner at Snell & Wilmer, wrote in the revision letter, “will benefit the greater Big Cottonwood Canyon community to support year-round uses in the area in addition to the resort’s year-round needs.”

Brighton’s planning commission has little wiggle room in its upcoming decision. Per state law, it must approve Solitude’s application unless it determines the detrimental effects of the project cannot be “reasonably mitigated.”

But the nonprofit conservation group Save Our Canyons contends the potential detrimental effects to the watershed and the canyon’s character are not only numerous but irreparable.

Will the lot eliminate roadside parking?

Doug Tolman, a senior policy associate for Save Our Canyons, said the project would disturb 14.5 acres, including clear-cutting a quaking aspen grove. It would create a four-way intersection that he said will further slow traffic in the canyon, especially when pedestrian crossings are factored in. Plus, while likely benefitting Solitude’s visitor numbers, Tolman said the brunt of the changes will be borne by skiers going to and returning from Brighton Resort, which sits at the top of the canyon.

“Instead of investing in sustainable year-round transit or placing reasonable caps on daily skier volume,” an alert emailed by Save Our Canyons said, “Solitude is proposing to bulldoze a healthy, resilient stand of Quaking Aspen [sic], degrade a critical watershed, fragment wildlife habitat, and pave a new road across land they do not own — all to build a 593-space parking lot. This is not a traffic solution; it’s an expansion plan.”

In a statement to The Tribune, Brighton Resort said it values its relationship with all its neighbors and believes “in community development that considers multiple perspectives.”

Tolman pointed out that nowhere in its application does the resort promise to deter roadside parking. It may not even have the jurisdiction to do so.

The roughly 240 parking spots along the upper stretch of SR-190 are regulated by the Town of Brighton. For the past two ski seasons, the town has required $10 reservations to park in designated zones along the road on weekends and holidays. Brighton Mayor Dan Knopp said in 2023 that the policy was intended to complement reservation systems at both Brighton and Solitude and “cool the chaos” in the winter on Big Cottonwood Canyon Road.

Knopp said the town does not profit from the program. Still, any decision to end roadside parking would require the Town of Brighton’s cooperation. And if it did agree, would backcountry travelers then be required to pay to use Solitude’s lot?

Budge, the Solitude lawyer, wrote in his letter that Solitude does not intend for the lot to be a means of getting more skiers and snowboarders onto its slopes.

“This parking is being provided, not as an expansion of capacity for the use or [sic] resort,” he wrote, “but rather it will relocate the on-street parking on Big Cottonwood Canyon Rd. that Solitude customers utilize and which support the resort.”

Even if the lot is approved by the planning commission, how Solitude will get cars there remains unclear.

Unclear access

Old Stage Road closes in the winter and used by backcountry travelers to access USA Bowl and Willow Fork. An old Jeep trail branches off of the road and passes through a 108-acre parcel of land that has been in the hands of the Salt Lake City Public Utilities since it established a watershed in the canyon in 1989. In its response to the municipal services district, Solitude said the previous owners of the parcel will vouch that the trail had been in use since the 1960s, purportedly giving the resort a prescriptive easement across it.

However, Solitude’s plans call for more than just following the old trail for 150 feet. It has proposed paving a winding, two-lane driveway that would, by Save Our Canyons’ estimates, cut through a thousand feet of the city’s watershed land.

Even before Solitude purchased the parcel, public utilities director Laura Briefer said she told resort operators that they would not be allowed to cross the city’s land to build or access a parking lot.

“We have not given permission to Solitude,” she said. “Nor are we obligated to.”

Briefer said rather than benefit the watershed, parking lots tend to be a source of water pollution. They also accelerate runoff and reduce groundwater recharge. Briefer said several Brighton community members she spoke with also had reservations about the project’s impact on canyon conservation.

She said Solitude has been a valued partner in protecting the watershed. Yet before she could consider supporting the construction of the parking lot, she wants to see the results of a Utah Department of Transportation environmental study aimed at reducing congestion in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Halfway through the two-year study, the agency appears to be focusing on tolling and increasing bus service.

“There may be,” Briefer said, “some other ways to achieve the same goals in terms of transit.”

But according to its response to the municipal services district, Solitude doesn’t consider the matter settled.

“We intent [sic] to engage them again,” Budge, the lawyer, wrote in the letter, “to explain that working together will limit impacts and will address the significant environmental and safety concerns associated with roadside parking.”

Instead, like the skiers seeking a mid-March respite from the heat, McIntyre suggested Solitude might want to take a second look at its roadside parking.

“If you look at their options, does it make sense to bulldoze 14-and-a-half acres on a fairly steep hillside?” he asked. “Or could they work with UDOT and the Forest Service and widen the side of the road a bit to make roadside parking safer?”

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