Powder Mountain still doesn’t have an approved master plan. But by next winter, it will have a new lift and maintenance shack plus the go-ahead for 9.2 miles of fresh hiking and biking trails that are expected to be completed by summer 2026.
The Cache County Planning Commission voted Thursday night to approve those piecemeal developments while the master plan for the massive Ogden Valley resort remains under review.
Powder Mountain submitted its master plan to the Cache County Planning Commission in October. Before the commission could consider the plan, however, the county council had to make a decision on the resort’s request to rezone 1,600 acres to allow for more concentrated development. The council approved that rezone on a 4-3 vote on Feb. 25.
The county’s planning department is currently evaluating the master plan, though Powder Mountain has also asked to make some revisions, county planning manager Angie Zetterquist said Thursday. Zetterquist told the commission that the completion of the plan review is “still a few months away.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Few people are seen near Mary’s Lift on the residential only side of Powder Mountain on Friday, March 21, 2025. The Powder Mountain ski area wraps up its first season under Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings's experiment of taking some lifts private while leaving other public.
This is the second year in a row that Cache County legislators have allowed Powder Mountain to fast-track projects in the absence of a master plan. Last June, the Cache County Council bucked its own zoning laws by approving the construction of two new lifts. The ski area had requested the exemptions so that the lifts — the Raintree lift in the newly private section of the resort and the Lightning Ridge lift on the public side — could be ready in time for this ski season.
“What we are trying to do,” Brooke Hontz, Powder Mountain’s chief development officer, said during the resort’s 2024 presentation, “is isolate this season.”
Nearly a year later, however, the resort and the county found themselves in a similar situation.
This time, Powder Mountain sought approval for just one lift. The private lift would access an area known as Davenport, which is located on the far northeast side of the 12,000-acre resort. When it acquired that parcel last year, Powder Mountain became the largest ski area in North America in terms of skiable acreage.
Powder Mountain also requested a maintenance shack to replace one that Hontz said was permitted by the county in 1998. Additionally, it sought to develop more than nine miles of public hiking and biking trails and an “art park.” Two bells and a rainbow tunnel Magic Carpet lift have already been installed as part of the vision Reed Hastings — the former Netflix CEO who now owns the majority of Powder Mountain — had to create an outdoor museum at the resort.
“Some people call them art,” Hontz said of the bells. “Kids call them fun.”
When Hastings took over in 2023, turning ski slopes into galleries wasn’t his most avant-garde idea. He also unveiled an innovative plan to take part of the resort private and use those membership funds to keep the majority of it public.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) A skier rings a bell at Powder Mountain on Friday, March 21, 2025.
That plan took hold in earnest during the 2024-25 season, when the formerly-public Mary’s and Village lifts, as well as Raintree, became available only to residents of the Powder Haven community and their guests. The terrain around those lifts remains open to the public, though it is now more difficult to access.
On Thursday, the substance of the changes being sought by Powder Mountain drew less discussion than the procedure. County Councilman Nolan Gunnell, who sits on the planning commission as a nonvoting member, took issue with the immediacy of the three development requests.
“Any private citizen who came in here and wanted a subdivision, we’d say no way until everything is there and going,” Gunnell said. “I have a hard time saying, ‘OK, but in this instance we’re going to let this go and this go because of time constraints.‘”
Close to 30 emailed comments regarding Powder Mountain’s proposals were submitted to the commission prior to the start of the meeting. During public comment, only one person spoke. Lee Atwood, the manager of the town of Paradise, which is located just north of the Davenport area, expressed trepidation about the commission approving more development without first settling on a master plan.
“The county wouldn’t do that on any other portions of their code,” Atwood said. “If it takes time, it takes time, but then we end up getting it right.”
Correction, April 4, 7 p.m. • This article has been changed to reflect that Powder Mountain formally submitted its master plan in October. It is still under review by the county planning department. In addition, one person spoke twice during the public comment period, and the resort sought permission to build 9.2 miles of trails.
