Things are looking good at Park City Mountain Resort. First of all, many of the 2002 Utah Winter Olympic events were staged there. Secondly, mother nature drops huge amounts of snow on the place every winter and third, visitors only have to trek 64km (40 miles) from the international airport at Salt Lake City to get to it.

Park City's snow is particularly legendary, 'it's 'fluffed and dried' in the clouds as they come over the desert before being dumped on the resort. The desert wind that blows them over has a second bonus for skiers - it keeps the air temperature warmer than the North American norm.

Partly because of the Olympics, long established Park City Mountain Resort is expanding fast. For many years the biggest and most would agree the best resort in Utah, Park City's skiable terrain has recently increased to 3,300 acres.

Given its increasing competition Park City is happy to emphasise one way in particular in which is differs from other Utah resorts - its 'real' ski town status, developing, like Aspen, from an old nineteenth-century silver mining town (actually one of the silver mines is still fully operational and open for tours), Park City is also the base for neighbouring Deer Valley and The Canyons.

More than 300 historic buildings are located in the 'Old town' amongst them a saloon owned by Robert Redford and, ironically, once robbed by the real Sundance Kid that Redford famously portrayed on film.

Winter sports are not so long established however, with the resort growing out of Treasure Mountain Ski Area which opened with a gondola, a double chair and two surface tows on December 21st, 1963.