A trip across the US Rockies: Four ski resorts across four states

Four states and four ski resorts? Yes, please, says Alf Alderson, as he heads off on a US Rockies trip with a difference

The craggy "Back Side" of Mount Timpanogos, the second highest mountain in the Wasatch Range

Sat, 10 Oct, 2026 - 01:00

Alf Alderson

My choice of in-flight movie on my journey from London to Salt Lake City couldn’t have been more appropriate — Downhill Racer, a classic from 1969 featuring Robert Redford as member of the US ski team.

Why? Well, a few hours later I’m skiing at Sundance Mountain Resort, in Utah, owned by Redford until 2020 and home until his death in 2025. The Hollywood star was a keen and accomplished skier, and the resort he once owned offers everything from challenging black diamond and off-piste runs to easy beginner and intermediate cruisers, all located beneath the huge, craggy wall of Mount Timpanogos, at 11,752ft the second-highest mountain in the Wasatch Range.

Sundance is the first stop on a 12-day, four state/four resort road trip through the US Rockies that I’m undertaking with my ski buddy Graham. We take a couple of chair lifts to the resort’s high point, 8,250ft Red’s Summit, from where we can see way down to the flats that lead north to the Great Salt Lake, whilst in the opposite direction are the wild mountains and forests of the Wasatch Mountain State Park.

The interior of the Sundance Mountain Resort

Some of the lands we gaze across were locations for Redford’s acclaimed 1972 movie Jeremiah Johnson, and perhaps not surprisingly other Redford movies are referenced around the resort (eg, the double black run “The Sting”; the blue “Cassidy’s Traverse”; and, new this winter, the “Electric Horseman” chairlift).

We enjoy the soft, slushy snow on a mix of blue and black pistes before returning to our slopeside accommodation in the opulent Inn at Sundance, which also makes a nod to Redford’s legacy with stills of the improbably handsome movie icon in Hollywood classics such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and, yes, Downhill Racer.

Two days at Sundance is plenty enough to explore the skiing that’s on offer, after which we head north in our rented SUV on a five-hour drive to Sun Valley in Idaho. Much of the drive is across classic American west landscapes, with long, straight highways stretching off to a distant vanishing point on the Snake River Plain, and beyond, hazy blue mountains; it seems only right and proper that I whack on some Springsteen and Tom Petty to provide the soundtrack to the journey.

Sun Valley was developed in the 1930s and had the world’s first chairlift (based, improbably, on a banana boat hoist); it’s been attracting movie stars since it opened, and at our base in the glitzy Sun Valley Lodge photos of glamorous visitors from Marilyn Monroe to Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger (who has a ski run here named in his honour) adorn the walls.

Snow capped mountains at Sun Valley Ski Resort in Ketchum, Idaho

The resort’s main ski hill, 9,150ft Bald Mountain (aka “Baldy”) is an absolute hoot to ski if your idea of fun is long, wide, and consistently steep pistes; Graham and I are shown around during our two days here by various locals from Jake Moe, the founder of the iconic ski magazine Powder to Riley Berman, who designed the race courses for the FIS World Cup Finals held on Baldy in 2025.

Riley quickly shows us that designing a ski racing course is a great deal more involved than simply sticking a few marker poles on a very steep slope then letting the likes of [US downhill Olympian] Lindsey Vonn get on with it; it took nine months of non-stop work to construct the course, which gained universal praise from the world class ski racers who competed on it.

Early morning runs in glittering sunshine, with few skiers on the slopes and over 3000ft of non-stop vertical on some of the best-groomed pistes on the planet have us grinning from ear to ear, and a late lunch in Apple’s Bar & Grill (voted one of the 10 best ski bars in North America by Powder magazine) at the bottom of the World Cup run on our second day is the perfect way to round off our brief stay in Sun Valley.

Our onward journey the next day initially takes us through the bizarre volcanic terrain of the Craters of the Moon National Monument — so other worldly are the lava cones, tubes, craters, and caves that make up this region that it was used for more than 50 years by Nasa as an astronaut training site.

From here we enjoy a 180-mile drive first across more arid flatlands where tumbleweed bounces across the highway in the chill breeze until, as we approach Wyoming and our destination of Jackson Hole, the landscape buckles and heaves until we see the majestic peaks of the Teton Range rising up like — well, let’s just say the mountains were named by French fur trappers who thought their shape resembled that of breasts. It’s probably fair to say they’d been away from civilisation and “women folk” for quite a while at the time, but you get the picture ...

We’re staying in the Teton Mountain Lodge, adjacent to the bottom station of the famous Jackson Hole “tram” (aka cable car) which provides access to the equally famous — some would say infamous — Corbet’s Couloir.

The intimidating Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Obviously, we pay a visit to the couloir, as many a confident skier before us has, convinced that the 10ft-wide entrance (with rock faces on three sides) and 10-20ft drop required to get into the couloir is something we could, possibly, just about manage.

And as many a confident skier before us has also done, we take one look down the 500ft-long, 50-degree slope and make our excuses … No matter, there’s more than enough challenging skiing to be had at Jackson Hole — highlights include playing in the trees off the side of the Thunder Quad Chair and the challenging black runs Wallyworld, Bivouac and Bird in the Hand, accessed from the Sublette Quad Chair. And did I mention the mother moose and her calf ambling across the piste in Teton Village at the base of the ski hill? The locals take such encounters in their stride; Graham and I just stand and gape.

We also stand and gape when we venture into the town of Jackson Hole and the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar where there are more Stetson hats and snakeskin boots than you can shake a Colt 45 at, and very few of them worn by cowboys — most adorn tourists who look downright ridiculous.

We may have only two days in Jackson Hole, but its eclectic mix of intense skiing, spectacular scenery, unexpected wildlife and bizarre “cowboys” and “cowgirls” ensure it’s not the kind of place you forget in a hurry.

The last leg of the trip is a 200-mile drive to Big Sky, which takes us through perhaps the loveliest scenery of the journey yet as we skirt the western boundary of the world’s oldest national park, Yellowstone, passing into Montana through deep green forests and beside the sparkling waters of the Gallatin River before taking a sharp left off US-191 up to the USA’s fourth biggest ski resort, Big Sky, and its signature peak, 11,166ft Lone Mountain.

The following day we’re standing atop Lone Mountain with local ski instructor Jill Chumbley. After initially zooming around on the huge array of long, wide cruisers lower down the mountain with Jill we’re warmed up enough to take on the challenge of the peak also known locally as “the American Alp”.

After enjoying a magnificent summit panorama that encompasses three states (Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming) we have a choice of descents, all steep and all graded either double or triple black diamond. Ooh, er …

But Jill knows the best routes down, the snow is soft and grippy and it’s so exhilarating we go back for more, again and again. By day’s end we’re glad that our accommodation in the Summit Hotel is ski in/ski out — it makes accessing the hot pool and the bar (purely for recovery purposes, you understand) so much quicker.

As with the other resorts we’ve visited, we have but two days at Big Sky and it’s definitely not enough to ski all that it has to offer — we could easily have spent a week or more here and just skied our hearts out, and with Yellowstone National Park an hour to the south and the bohemian university town of Bozeman an hour to the north there’s plenty to keep you occupied if you fancy a day away from the slopes.

Big Sky has coined a name that could apply equally to everywhere we’ve been over the last 12 days, for this corner of the US Rockies really is Big Sky country, where the horizons seem to stretch away for ever as, to quote Tom Petty, you drive and ski your way “ … into the great wide open”.

Escape Notes