25-05-2025
Major changes coming at this small Utah ski resort with a big name
As the Sundance Film Festival bolts Utah, Sundance Mountain Resort — both named after Robert Redford's character in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' — unveiled its most ambitious expansion plans in decades.
And one of the projects has a nod to another Redford movie, 'The Electric Horseman.'
For 50 years, Redford owned the resort nestled on the backside of Mount Timpanogos in Provo Canyon that caters to mostly local skiers and snowboarders. In 2020, he sold the 2,600-acre ski area to Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners.
Relying on rustic charm for years amid bigger and snowier destination resorts like Park City and Deer Valley, Sundance has somewhat resisted modernization and expanding its terrain. But that's changing.
Sundance Resort president and general manager Chad Linebaugh told The Storm that the new investment will help Sundance 'capture our fair share of the destination market, while staying very committed to our local market. This is going to change the way people see Sundance in more ways than one.'
The centerpiece of the plan is a new high-speed quad lift on the backside of the mountain to be constructed over the next two years. Dubbed the Electric Horseman Express, the lift will open 105 acres of skiing and snowboarding with a six-minute ride ascending 1,850 vertical feet. It's scheduled to open for the 2026-27 season.
For the 2025-26 season, Sundance plans to open 60 acres of new terrain on the Far East ridge, with nine new trails, including a mix of tree runs, challenging chutes and two intermediate runs and 360-degree views from Utah Valley to Heber Valley and three mountain lakes.
Sundance has six lifts, including one high-speed quad. Electric Horseman will be its seventh and make the entire mountain accessible via high-speed lift, according to the resort.
Sundance officials hope the new lift and terrain will make the resort an alternative to bigger and busier Utah ski areas.
'People are getting disenfranchised with the high volume, and there's definitely a quest and a search right now for the type of experience that Sundance is delivering,' Sundance's chief operating officer, Czar Johnson, told The Storm.
'So we think by making ourselves a little bit more attractive on paper and based on stats, we can draw in people who are done with that high-volume experience and are still looking for a high-quality experience, with interesting dynamic terrain and good infrastructure and fast-moving lifts, but on a scaled-down version of what they're seeing in those other areas.'
Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners have invested more than $40 million at the resort since acquiring it five years ago, officials say.
In January, Sundance opened the Mountain Camp Day Lodge at the base of Jake's Lift in the upper parking lot, which also has 200 new parking spaces. The lodge includes ticketing, rentals, ski school, retail and ski patrol along with the Mountain Camp Cafe.
Last year, Sundance started construction of a 63-room hotel at the resort base. It's scheduled to open next winter.
'I think one of the ongoing charms of Sundance is that beyond this, nothing else is going to be developed up in this canyon,' Johnson said, per The Storm. 'Sundance is going to very much remain looking like it is today, and you can't say that about so many ski areas, and that's going to become even more special as time goes on.'
