I live in Park City and, personally, I don't care for the Canyons. The main reason is their terraine and how hard it is to get from lift to lift. They brag about how many acres they have of skiing, but the problem is, most of their runs are narrow, icy and over skied. Just my opinon.

Deer Valley and Park City are both fun mountains. Food is great a Deer Valley.

More serious skiing is at Snowbird and Alta.

There are some old condos near the Canyons, but their Grand Summit Lodge, and the Sundial Lodge are new and very high end.

I would recommend Beaver Creek Ski Resort. We have skied at most resorts throughout the west and consider Beaver Creek skiing the most enjoyable.

Ok, this might be a little late but I've got to agree with the reply mentioning Heavenly Valley. I can't imagine a resort with better views from the slopes... the views are so amazing it is almost dangerous because you don't want to watch where you are going, you just want to stare at the lake and the mountains. Plus, the place is huge with long, winding runs and there are lots of places to stay. It can be crowded at some of the main lifts but if you can go mid-week you won't have that problem. If you thought Squaw was pretty, Heavenly makes it look plain... Squaw has great skiing but isn't nearly as picturesque.

Thanks for all the help (it's never too late--I can use it for the next trip). We've settled on Steamboat Springs at the end of January for this trip. We've never been there (as opposed to Lake Tahoe) and we were able to get airfare all the way there for <$300 as opposed to Montana which was higher. We know we want to go back to Montana--we went to Yellowstone for the first time in June 2002 and Glacier in August 2003 and loved them both. Delta just refuses to put the direct SLC flights on sale and if we are changing planes we might as use the time and effort to get to a more out of the way place. I'm thinking we'll go to Utah sometime when a weekend or last minute special comes up--we've done that several times to Denver and Winter Park for a Saturday-Tuesday.

Now I just have to settle on lodging, ski rentals, etc. I'll probably wait until after the first of the year as I don't see any outstanding offers at the moment. I'm surprised at how many ads I'm seeing for condos still available for holiday skiing.

Thanks as always for your help. I always come to the Fodor's board with my travel questions. You guys are the best.

We are back from Steamboat and sharing our experience:

The resort did have long winding trails, often with few people and short lines (it was off season).

We got lots of powder, so I had to practice skiing "baby bumps" that remained soft well into the afternoon, but became harder and more challenging late in the day. I stuck to the blues and found quite a range of easy (Tomahawk) to difficult. My husband did a couple of blacks and thought they were no more difficult than the blues except Rolex, which he liked. No double black diamonds for us :-).
In 3 days we covered most all the blues.

I wouldn't want to be a beginner at Steamboat. After learning at the bottom, there weren't alot of green options--seemed half were roads down the mountain. I remember a narrow road being rather scary when trying to make large turns with more advanced boarders cruising past when learning. We helped one fellow find his way down the greens, but he was doing a lot of snowplowing and was probably exhausted by the time he made it to the base. Of course, he could have taken the gondola down, but he said he was there to ski, not ride.

We stayed in Storm Meadows condo. We had to walk down at least 3 staircases and cross a road to reach the snow and ski to Christie lift. Return was ski down the easy way and head down a narrow lane of snow to just below the condo--only one flight of stairs back up. Again, a beginner would wipe out with the dip into the lane to ski-in. We never used the gondola as the base would require more walking or poling to reach from our condo. The condos right on the slopes are definitely worth a little extra over the ones on the other side of the road. But it was OK for us. The condo had very thin walls and we could hear conversations, television, dogs, etc. from the sides and above.

We thought the food in the restaurants in town rather expensive, similar to on the mountain. We hit the grocery for most of our needs.

We rented a car through Hotwire for a good price. The airport shuttle looked fine. I'd check how close the bus stopped to my condo if I were going that route for grocery shopping and getting to the slopes.

Everyone was friendly and helpful. We answered a host's visitor survey and received a Steamboat pin in appreciation.

The scenery was pretty, but I didn't think it was as dramatic as Winter Park and Lake Tahoe.

We didn't have any extra time. If we did, we would have considered the dog sleds--someone told us they enjoyed them because you get to drive? as well as ride.