Photos by Boone Speed, courtesy of Cascade Joinery
Tucked in among the towering peaks of Utah’s Wasatch mountains, Powder Mountain ski resort boasts some of the most skiable terrain in the U.S. (more than 8,000 acres) — and yet has none of the crowds associated with many other iconic slopes. A private ski community, Powder Mountain provides unparalleled access to Utah’s winter wonderland.
To take it all in, skiers and snowboarders can unbuckle their boots at Skylodge, a 5,500-square-foot structure of design magnificence to match its environs. As part of an on-mountain, 650-family, private residential community called Powder Haven, the lodge is an exclusive, on-trail facility for members that, as the name suggests, provides respite among the clouds. Sitting at an elevation of 8,900 feet, the lodge offers views across Utah’s Wasatch Mountain Range and down to the Salt Lake Basin. Inside, Scandi-inspired interiors are housed under grand Douglas fir timbers, put together with precision by Cascade Joinery.
The hybrid timber frame structure was designed to be a rarefied event space offering ski-in and ski-out access. The standout features are two yurt-like rotundas designed by Skylab Architecture. The yurts house a campfire-inspired sunken living space, an interconnecting cafe bar and a large restaurant. Their minimalist design allows the panoramic views to take center stage.
John Miller, managing partner of Cascade Joinery, explains that the out-of-the-ordinary project wasn’t without its challenges.
To start, such a high-altitude location meant that working construction needed to be completed within a tight five-month window. “I believe there was still snow on the ground up there when site work started,” John says.
Each rustic-yet-refined dodecahedral (12-sided) yurt features a lot of irregular angles and a 30-foot span. The roof’s impressive snow load is 250 pounds per square foot.
“There were no continuous sheer walls in the yurt, so the timber structure had to carry a fair amount of lateral loading,” John says. “Using traditional mortise-and-tenon joinery really limits the tension capacity.” He explains that the team produced a plethora of drawings to integrate supportive steel into the timber framing, and each connection has six to eight bolts to support it.
The Cascade Joinery team pre-fitted everything in their shop to ensure the knife plate steel connections would go together smoothly on site. This was necessary in light of the tight time frame and sheer volume of parts and connections: the design features around 300 hidden custom steel shapes, more than 2,000 bolt sets and 145 exposed kiln-dried Douglas fir timbers from Washington.
“Our niche is unusual, complicated, out-of- the box projects, so this was fun to do, and it was out of the ordinary for sure,” John says. “Usually everything you do is square, so it was nice to work on a building with different angles.”
The team successfully wrapped up the project in Mother Nature’s allotted five months, just in time for the snowpack to begin building again.
While the lodge is a part of the private community, a luxuriously uncrowded zip down many of the resort’s slopes doesn’t require real estate. Learn more at powdermountain.com.
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