In my humble and partially biased opinion, two of the greatest places on earth to snowboard are the French Alps and Utah. I say the French Alps because, after 13 years of annual trips, I have yet to find better food and better après parties. And I say Utah because it's, like, pretty hard to beat the greatest snow on earth.
Well today, both of these places were announced as future hosts of the Winter Olympics. France will host the games in 2030 (once it has successfully met certain conditions) and Utah will host the games in 2034. This is exciting.
But it was also entirely expected.
France was the preferred choice since June. And Utah was the only choice for 2034. To host the Winter Games, you generally need to have at least two things: money and snow. And right now, fewer places want to spend the former on something that may or may not generate an ROI, and fewer places are getting the latter.
Remember this post looking at the impact of climate change on the Winter Olympics?
Because of these challenges, there is talk of the IOC adopting a permanent rotation of Winter Olympic cities. And Utah has been eagerly positioning itself to be one of the places. Biases aside, this feels like an obvious choice. Salt Lake City has some of the best and most accessible snowboarding in the world (SLC is a great airport) and -- most importantly -- it still snows there.
Photo by Alex Moliski on Unsplash
For those of you who are long-time readers of this blog, you might remember that I do an annual ski and snowboard trip with a group of close friends from both Canada and the US. This year should technically be the 14th annual, but we took two years off during the pandemic (though some of us did meet up to ski), and so we're referring to this as the official 12th annual. The last one was in February 2020 in Fernie, BC, and this weekend we're off to Park City, Utah.
This annual trip is something that I look forward to all year. And it has really cemented my love of snowboarding and the mountains. For me, it's this wonderful combination of outdoor activity, beautiful landscapes, unplugging, and catching up with friends that I have known, in many cases, for over 20 years. In fact, I know that this trip is the reason that a few of us decided to get together to build Parkview Mountain House (our upcoming "creative mountain retreat" in Park City).
A big part of what we want to do with the house (when it's hopefully ready next winter) is share our love of the mountains with others. We want others to experience what we experience when we go on these trips. At the same time, we felt like there was a huge gap in the market. Park City is a world-renowned ski and snowboard destination, and yet it still feels hard to find modern and design-focused places to stay. So we decided to create our own.
There is, however, one small problem: my right knee. It has been bothering me for the last few years whenever I snowboard, and usually only when I snowboard, to the point where I have to get off the mountain. This obviously pisses me off. So I decided to spend the last 2 months training my tender knees with Noah Mandel. We'll see if that did anything this weekend. But I'm so committed to the mountains that, if it helps, I'm even prepared to switch to skiing!