Last updated: October 2026
I arrived in Utah on 8 December 2019 with two hundred dollars, a suitcase without wheels and a winter jacket from Misiones. This is what happened in my first ski season, told the way I wish someone had told it to me.
Paula and one more friend had explained how to get from Salt Lake City to Park City: one bus, another bus, a taxi. Or an Uber, which was expensive, and I had two hundred dollars. But that very day, by pure chance, they were in Salt Lake City renting their skis for the whole season, because it is far cheaper there than in Park City. They said: come to the city centre, we have to go back by car anyway because of the boots and skis, and we will go together.
We met at City Creek, the downtown mall. The last time we had seen each other was in Posadas. Paula is from Resistencia, in Chaco; I am from Posadas. And there we were, the three of us, standing in a mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, saying "this is crazy, this is crazy" and unable to stop. We called a Lyft, which I discovered there, and went to Park City.
Deer Valley had three staff housing sites: one out of town, on the road to Provo, and two in Park City itself, one in the Prospector neighbourhood and one at 1450 Empire Avenue, the Snowshoe Inn, with the bus stop right outside. Paula and our friend had been placed at the Snowshoe Inn, together. Selva, who arrived two days later, got Prospector with people she did not know. I got the Snowshoe Inn too: rooms are men with men and women with women, so I slept in a different room from them but in the same building. I was placed with two Peruvians and an American.
We left my suitcase at their place and I took the bus to Human Resources for onboarding: keys, who my manager would be, where I would work. From that moment I had a home, a job and three friends four blocks away. The rest was my problem.
In Posadas I had not thought of one thing: I had no snow boots and no snow jacket. I had an ordinary winter coat, the kind that works for a Misiones winter. We went to a Skechers and there was a two-pairs-for-about-140-dollars deal: Paula wanted to replace hers, I needed a pair, and we split it. Seventy dollars. Then a snow jacket, the cheapest I could find, about ninety. It lasted me four years, and in 2023 I sold it to my friend Rodrigo, who was coming for his first Work and Travel. Good jacket.
That left me about fifty dollars to eat until the first paycheck. And here comes the thing that saved me, which nobody had told me about.
Deer Valley has a staff cafeteria. Breakfast is free. Lunch and dinner are paid with your employee card, and whatever you spend is deducted from your pay when you are paid, the same as housing. The staff meal cost three dollars fifty. I had breakfast there when I clocked in, lunch there because I was at work, and at four in the afternoon, when I finished, I bought something and took it home for the evening.
In other words: I arrived with fifty dollars for two weeks of food and did not need them. Everything I ate and every night I slept those weeks paid for itself, out of the first paycheck. If you are about to do a Work and Travel at a big resort, ask this before you fly: is there a staff cafeteria, and how is it paid for. It completely changes how much money you need to bring.
The same employee card was the ski pass for the Deer Valley mountain, and on top of that it gave us one day a month at four other mountains in the area, under an arrangement between the big companies. One detail: snowboarding is banned at Deer Valley. Skis only.
I rented skis in Salt Lake City for the whole season, like the girls. Paula already skied well and had taught our friend the year before. Selva learned with them on the first outings. And I was taught by Selva, who was two or three runs ahead of me, on the Magic Carpet, the conveyor on the children's slope. Two runs without falling and we went to a green run.
Ski runs in the United States are graded by colour: green is easy, blue intermediate, black hard and double black for experts. Some mountains owned by Vail also split light blue from dark blue. Deer Valley does not: green, blue, black, double black.
The green went fine. I fell, got up, carried on. And on a slightly harder green I fell spinning: one ski released and the other did not, and my leg ended up bent backwards with the ski pointing at my back. My helmet came off — I had not fastened it properly — and my nose was bleeding, from the altitude rather than the fall, though from the outside you could not tell the difference. By sheer luck a ski patroller was passing right there. He looked at me, put me on the snowmobile, took me down, and said: "you are done skiing for today".
It was a sprain. I limped for two weeks. And I did not put the skis on again all season, even though I had them rented and the pass was free. I got scared, and I say it without shame because I think it happens to more people than admit it. Selva did carry on: she finished the season doing blues. Paula was already on blacks. Our friend did her first black that winter. I did one and a half greens.
I went out a great deal that season, and the week had a structure that anyone who has done a Work and Travel in Park City will recognise. Tuesdays were O'Shucks, a bar on Main Street where the giant beer — about half a litre — cost three dollars, with two pool tables and a few arcade games. Everyone on the programme went. That bar is no longer there: it moved further down Main Street and another restaurant took its place. Wednesdays Downstairs opened, the club at the bottom of Main Street. Thursdays were Flanagan's, though I went once or twice all winter. Sundays, Latin night at The Cabin. And on Fridays and Saturdays there was either a house party or we gathered at Selva's housing or at ours.
I did not host gatherings in my own room. The Peruvians would not have minded, but the American roommate barely spoke to us and I did not want to make him uncomfortable. Just once, when he went away, my room was the meeting point.
And when nothing was on, one more friend from the group and I had tea. Work had some excellent teas, we took teabags home and had an afternoon snack. It is one of the things I remember most.
The one big trip of the season was in a rented van, with the friends who had formed over those months: Connie from Chile, Alex and Santi from Chaco, Dayan from Tucumán, a girl from Costa Rica, another Chilean, and the four of us. We went to Bryce Canyon National Park, one of the most striking places I have seen in my life, and from there crossed into Arizona: Horseshoe Bend, the curve of the Colorado River near Page, and Upper Antelope Canyon.
Antelope Canyon is on Navajo Nation land and you cannot enter on your own: visits are only with authorised Navajo guides, and it is worth booking weeks ahead because slots sell out. We did it with them and it was one of the best parts of the trip, precisely for that reason: the people from there tell you about it.
Apart from that, Salt Lake City many times. Liberty Park. And yes, I went to East High School, where High School Musical was filmed. I am not embarrassed.
This is the thing I least expected from a season in the United States. There were so many Brazilians at Deer Valley that I ended the winter speaking far better Portuguese — the Portuguese I had learned three years earlier in Brazil — and about the same English. My English listening improved: I understood everything. But I could not hold a long conversation or a complex one. With Portuguese, on the other hand, I was constantly with Brazilians. When the season ended they took their group photo, every Brazilian at Deer Valley, and they called me over to join it: I was "the Argentine who speaks Portuguese".
Out of that photo came a friend I still have, Ana Luisa. And out of that season, Ailén, from Mar del Plata, who still lives in Park City. The people are what stays.
Keep reading: ten dollars an hour, the rest of the winter →
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