Park City

Concierge.com's insider take:

Park City Mountain Resort is the mountain for Everyman—the food comes on paper plates, snowboarders rocket down every run, and at the base area, the lift lines are a bit long. But the sheer size of the place, with 15 lifts and some 3,300 skiable acres, means that with a little exploring, you can have a corner of the resort to yourself for much of the day. Head for 10th Mountain, a black-diamond that runs through a dense birch forest: It's fast and feels secret. Zealous boarders love the Eagle Superpipe and its 22-foot walls, the largest in North America. For some après-ski thrills, there's the new Alpine Coaster, a toboggan ride down the mountain on an elevated steel track. Ski season usually runs from mid-November through mid-April (1314 Lowell Ave; 800-222-7275; www.parkcitymountain.com).

The posh option around these parts is Deer Valley, which only lets 6,500 people on its mountain each day—and not a one of them is a snowboarder. With 21 lifts on 1,825 acres of skiable terrain and china plates at the eateries, the air-kissing crowd here is well-pampered. The service is almost frighteningly attentive; it's not unusual to wipe out and have a polite, athletic employee ski up and check if you're okay. Though the majority of the runs are groomed intermediates, there are a few barely used expert runs such as Daly Chutes, with 40-degree pitches and massive cornices. The ski season runs from December to mid-April (2250 Deer Valley Dr. South; 800-424-3337; www.deervalley.com).

The most underrated resort in the area, The Canyons was a secret for years—your lift-mate will be a lean, sunburned ski bum who can't believe the word is out. Once you're through the traffic jam at the base area's gondola, you'll never run into another one—Canyons has the most skiable acres served by lifts of any resort in Utah. The resort has every conceivable variety of terrain, from wide-open boulevards to rocket chutes like Nnety Nine 90 and Super Condor. In the past, poor layout kept the number of visitors low—getting from one side of the mountain to the other could take a good chunk of your morning. But DreamCatcher, a new quad lift servicing over 200 acres of new terrain, and increased capacity on the heavily trafficked Tombstone Express and Cabriolet lifts should do the trick, and make the regulars even more miserable. The season usually runs from mid-November through early April (4000 The Canyons Resort Dr.; 435-649-5400; www.thecanyons.com).

Two other (interconnected) resorts are a one-hour drive west of Park City: Alta is a ski-only resort with a good mix of difficult and intermediate terrain and 2,200 acres of skiable slopes (801-359-1078; www.alta.com), and Snowbird, a mile from Alta, is a ski and snowboard mountain with 2,500 acres. (Highway 210, Little Cottonwood Canyon; 800-232-9542; www.snowbird.com). The ski season at both Alta and Snowbird runs from mid-November through mid-April.

If you don't own skis—or if you just don't want to lug them on the plane—Ski Butlers will make a "house call" to your hotel room or condo to outfit you with equipment. The service also swaps it for different gear where and when you want, and picks it all up when you leave town (www.skibutlers.com).