America's Latest Utopian Experiment

said braka 10:30 PM
On my final night on Powder Mountain

in Eden, Utah, I joined a yoga class in a window-walled lodge with dream catchers dangling from the rafters. The class’s attendees were blissed out from spending several days in late February skiing. As we stretched, a man wearing gray athleisure gave us all high fives before unfurling his own mat. It was unclear what we were being congratulated for—perhaps our luck. Whatever our stories, we’d landed here, in the snow globe that is the Wasatch Mountain Range.
Lying on my back, I could see the area’s surrounding mountains and the lights inside a dense thicket of town house–style condos—all that seemed to stand between the lodge and Paradise. Literally, Eden is a 58-mile drive south of the town of Paradise, Utah, making Powder Mountain some kind of mecca.
Since the 1970s, the mountain’s pilgrims have been skiers, drawn to its unpretentiousness and unbeatable conditions. Today, it’s also a Zion for a different kind of seeker. Construction began this summer on a public mountain town that will straddle a 10,000-acre site between three skiing bowls. In 2013, Powder Mountain was purchased by Summit, a company—or, perhaps more accurately, a collective—founded in 2008 by five 20-something friends who want to “catalyze entrepreneurship” and “create global change.”