Every spring, SKI Magazine asks its readers to grade the ski resorts they've actually skied, across 18 categories covering everything from grooming and lift speed to dining, nightlife and lodging. The 2027 results are now out, and they carry an asterisk: last winter was a lean one for snow across much of the American West, which shook up the rankings and caught even big-name resorts on the wrong foot.
The survey results double as a practical buying guide. A rough snow year tends to expose which resorts can compensate with snowmaking, grooming and off-slope appeal, and which ones depend on fresh powder to shine. Some familiar names dropped sharply; others climbed because they handled the tough season better than their neighbours.
A few useful takeaways from the featured write-ups:
Park City, Utah, lands at No. 30 despite real strengths. Readers love its scale (more than 7,300 lift-served acres), varied terrain and historic Main Street, plus the short hop from Salt Lake City International Airport that lets you ski within hours of landing. The gripes: crowds, parking and thin value for money. Coming changes include a new 10-passenger enclosed Skyway Gondola at Canyons Village, a five-storey garage opening in early December (USD 29 per day, free after noon or in carpools of four-plus), and Shaun White's Snow League competition on 21-23 January 2027 using a rebuilt Eagle Superpipe that opens to the public afterwards.
Heavenly, straddling the California-Nevada line above Lake Tahoe, scores for nightlife, lodging and those famous lake views across 5,000 acres of terrain. Crowded lifts and dated base-area facilities are the main complaints. Keystone, Colorado, just 90 minutes from Denver, earns family-friendly marks for free parking, grooming, Bergman Bowl and the snow fort on Dercum Mountain, and debuts Kindred Resort, its first luxury ski-in/ski-out hotel, at River Run this season. Steamboat, an Ikon resort, slips slightly but holds up for dining and Western town character.
Note that most of these flagged resorts sit on the Epic Pass, while Steamboat rides the Ikon Pass, which matters if you're planning multiple days across the West. SKI has also launched a booking partnership with Outside Travel, with Outside+ members getting up to 10% off lodging at many top resorts.
Why care? These are crowd-sourced vacation-experience rankings, not snowfall stats, so they're a decent proxy for how a resort treats guests when conditions aren't perfect, which is arguably when it matters most. Survey sceptics get their own shot: the next reader survey goes out in spring 2027.
Credit: SKI Magazine
