Utah Business Magazine — Alta has been recognized as one of the Overall Best in Snow, Beginner Friendly, Most Challenging, Family Friendly, Best Snow Quality and Best Value ski areas in the High West, winning a 2016-17 Best in Snow Award, Powered by Liftopia.

“We are ecstatic!” said Connie Marshall, Alta’s marketing and public relations director. “What an honor to have won in the categories we did. It underscores that we are recognized for our challenging terrain and snow quality, but also that our skiers appreciate what we have to offer for beginners and families.”

The 2016-17 Best in Snow Awards, Powered by Liftopia, and hosted in San Francisco, are the pre-eminent rankings of the best and most beloved ski areas in North America. Unlike other rankings, this list the only one that incorporates the largest dataset in the industry combined with feedback from thousands of skiers and snowboarders to determine ski areas they are most passionate about.

To compile the awards, Liftopia surveyed their customers to measure their enthusiasm on specific aspects of their favorite resorts such as family friendliness, challenging terrain, crowds, and snow consistency and quality. More than 10,000 responses were then weighted with a proprietary algorithm based on Liftopia’s exclusive dataset that includes resorts’ total visits per season, acreage and average lift ticket prices to surface the best ski areas overall, across seven categories and five regions, based on what matters most to skiers and snowboarders.

“For years consumers, have told us they wanted a ranking system that wasn’t based simply on which resorts were the biggest, relied on a handful of “expert” opinions or even pay-to-play advertising dollars. They wanted to know which ski areas that other customers loved the most,” said Evan Reece, co-founder and CEO of Liftopia. “We crafted the Best in Snow Awards using details from a consumer survey and our proprietary data to uncover the ski areas people are most passionate about, all over North America.”