Utah best places to ski: The secrets to skiing in the state

At Powder Mountain – the largest ski resort by skiable area in the USA – I'm riding untouched calf-deep powder snow six days after it last snowed. "People don't know this place is up here, even people from Utah - and we're an hour's drive from the city [Salt Lake City]," the septuagenarian bus driver with long grey hair tied with a bandanna tells me as he takes me back to the top of the resort (there are 2000 skiable hectares of mountain beyond the ski runs, where you can be picked up by an old school bus). At Powder Mountain, there's one skier per hectare – how's that for social distancing?

Even closer than Powder Mountain – but in the other direction from Salt Lake City (Powder Mountain is north) - there's a rule at Sundance, the resort Robert Redford owned for 52 years, that once the car park's full, no-one else is allowed on the mountain, even though it's a tiny car park, that's said to never happen. One of Hollywood's iconic leading men might own his own ski resort (which comes complete with the bar Butch Cassidy's Hole-In-The Wall gang frequented in the 1890s as seen in the movie, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid – it's a hell of a place for apres drinks), but there are so many great ski resorts in Utah that even Robert Redford's resort goes mostly unridden (there's also a Forbes 4-star restaurant on-site).

For all its ski resort offerings, Utah still flies under the radar of many Australian skiers. Yet there are seven ski regions and 10 world-class ski resorts in Utah within a one hour radius of Salt Lake City's international airport (which is less than two hours flight time from Los Angeles). What's more, unlike many ski area airports, you'll never be snowed in, or out. Utah's best-known resorts - like Park City, Deer Valley, Snowbird and Alta – are amongst the most awarded resorts in North America, yet they're still not the household names to Australians that Colorado's Vail and Aspen are (it's Deer Valley, however, that's won Best Ski Resort in the USA in the World Ski Awards for eight consecutive years). There are very few Australians to share the slopes with… so you'll always be an attraction to locals (ask for a beer and they'll think you want a bear, every… single… time).

It takes little effort to find a ski resort in Utah with few skiers on it that none of your ski friends have heard of. You don't even have to go as far as Powder Mountain or Sundance resort. Solitude ski resort is barely 30 minutes drive from Salt Lake's airport. Aptly named, it's lonely out here across over 100 runs, including one slope which hosted the prestigious downhill event in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Ideal for families, it's reasonably priced and offers ski-in, ski-out accommodation, plus it's connected to Utah's first ski resort, Brighton, where you'll find some of North America's best quality powder snow.

Or there's Snowbasin, just a few kilometres beyond the outskirts of Salt Lake City's northern suburbs (40 minutes from the airport), where few international skiers go, but where you can enjoy apres drinks in a day lodge that looks like it belongs in Vail or Aspen (minus the $20 champagnes). Or keep driving 20 minutes north to Nordic Valley (formerly Wolf Mountain), a petite resort where only locals go, that's only 20 minutes south of Powder Mountain and where you're guaranteed powder runs on fresh snow days, even on the last run of the afternoon.

It's easy to weave between these little-known resorts on a road trip, though the distances between them can be less than 20 minutes. For those seeking even more solitude and fewer crowds, Southern Utah offers guaranteed crowd-free resorts, like Brian Head and Eagle Point, four hours drive south of Salt Lake City, where skiers can incorporate visits to Utah's famous national parks nearby (Zion and Bryce Canyon).

FIVE MORE SECRETS OF UTAH