Brian Head, Utah

Snow tubing is the single best reason to drive up to Brian Head if nobody in your group skis. It is a groomed hill with its own lanes and its own ticket, at the Giant Steps base area, and the tube comes with the ticket.

• Where: the Giant Steps base area, separate from the ski runs
• Session length: tickets are sold in 1.5-hour blocks
• Tube rental: included in the ticket price
• Minimum age: 4 years old
• Under 50 pounds: the child rides alone in their own tube and a ticketed adult must be alongside them in a separate lane
• Tickets: buy online in advance or at the ticket office

In a normal week the tubing hill has been running Sunday through Thursday from 10:00am to 4:00pm, and Friday and Saturday from 10:00am to 7:00pm, with extended hours seven days a week across the holiday periods. Those are the resort's published operating patterns rather than a promise: tubing is snow dependent, and the hill needs deeper coverage than the first ski runs do, so it typically opens later in the season than the lifts.

Tickets for the 2026-27 season are already on sale, but the resort has not yet posted the tubing hill's opening date or its holiday-week calendar for that season. Check current season dates, hours, and pricing on brianhead.com before you commit a family afternoon to it — and if you are coming on a weekend or over a holiday, buy the session online rather than hoping for a walk-up slot.

Two practical notes from the elevation. First, dress for standing around in the cold, not for a car ride: waterproof gloves, snow boots, and a hat matter more here than a heavy coat. Second, a 1.5-hour session is genuinely enough for most young kids at 9,800 feet.

Summer at Brian Head is lift-served rather than snow-covered. The Giant Steps Express keeps running for downhill mountain biking on more than 100 miles of single track, and the same lift sells scenic rides for people who just want the view — Cedar Breaks is visible from the top. The Vista Trail is the hiking version: ride the lift up, then walk three miles back down through aspen.

The base area fills in around that with an 18-hole disc golf course and an Adventure Zone that runs Thursday through Sunday: a climbing wall, a 300-foot mini zip line, a bungee trampoline, and Avalanche Tubing, a summer tubing hill with a conveyor lift back to the top. Avalanche Tubing has both an age and a weight minimum, so check the requirements if you are bringing small kids.

In 2026 the resort ran Friday through Sunday from June 12, went daily from June 29 through August 30, then dropped back to Friday through Sunday from September 4 to September 20 with Labor Day added. Summer lift hours have been 9:30am to 5:00pm. Those dates shift year to year, so confirm the current calendar before planning around it.

Above the resort, a Dixie National Forest spur road climbs from Highway 143 toward the Brian Head Peak observation site, where a stone shelter built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1934-35 still stands — built, as it happens, by Camp F-16, which was stationed at Duck Creek. On a clear day the view reaches Nevada's Wheeler Peak, Arizona's Mount Trumbull and Navajo Mountain, and the Tushar Range. The road is unpaved and only snow-free for part of the year, so check Dixie National Forest alerts first.

Winter is the headline season, with a 2026-27 opening day scheduled for Friday, November 6, 2026 and a typical run from early November into May. Summer operations restart in mid-June for biking, scenic lift rides, and the Adventure Zone, then taper to weekends in September. Late spring and late fall are the dead zones: the snow is gone or going, and the summer lifts are not turning yet.