home mountain

Every local Utahn has a resort they call home.

Skiing is a big part of who I am. I quite literally grew up on skis and even skied competitively for 5 years. Growing up in a ski town is one of my greatest blessings. It taught me to be outside, work hard, and love the people around me. I spent winters exactly how you see in the photos below. This passion project aims to pay homage to the Utah ski community that raised me. I am its product.

Ski culture is already a fairly niche group of people, but I realized that my heavy exposure to the ski community allowed me to recognize subcultures within it. I decided to design a pair of skis representing these distinct groups of people.

There are 4 main ski resorts in Salt Lake: Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, and Solitude. 

Locals identify with one particular resort and remain deeply loyal to it, creating a distinct culture for each resort. 

I researched, talked with Salt Lake locals, and wrote a specific “persona” for each of the 4 resorts.

And then for the ski design —

representing the 4 individual subcultures of the Salt Lake ski resorts. I wanted to do the project to give locals a visualization of their love to ski that they could identify with. I chose specific elements unique to the resorts, and incorporated them in the design. Growing up in the Wasatch makes you fall in love with them, but it looks a little different for everyone. I wanted to connect with my own skiing roots in this project and allow space for people to connect with theirs too.

I talked with locals of the 4 different resorts and identified key elements that needed to be included in the design. Here are the top 3 quintessential components for each resort: (from top left)