Opinion: Power plants threaten Utah’s ski industry
By Angel Collinson, Outside
My younger brother John and I grew up in Snowbird Ski Resort’s employee housing, high in Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon, 30 minutes drive from downtown Salt Lake City and home to Snowbird and Alta, two of Utah’s premier ski resorts. My dad was a ski patroller at Snowbird. We were lucky: Our childhood was filled with fresh air and, in winter, fresh snow. But that’s been changing for the worse.
From kindergarten through high school, my mom homeschooled us, along with four other canyon kids. We rarely left the canyon in winter, we just skied.
It was a child’s utopia, except for the fact that, most days, the border between our life in the canyon heights and the Salt Lake Valley below was clearly demarcated by a thick layer of brown-gray haze.