Working at the Rustler

The Town of Alta, Utah, is located at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, about 45 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City. The canyon is home to both Alta Ski Resort and Snowbird. Since its founding in 1938, Alta Ski Area has become world-renowned for being a hot spot of high-quality, steep skiing. As a result, the resort and its lodges, including the Rustler, have many guests who return year after year for both the skiing and the atmosphere. (See “10 Reasons to Stay at the Rustler“).

Alta’s Rustler Lodge is located along Highway 210 (the only road in the canyon) between the Wildcat and Albion parking lots at Alta Ski Area. The Lodge is ski-in / ski-out with access from the Alta’s Transfer Rope Tow via the Rustler’s chairlift. The Rustler hosts approximately 200 guests when at full capacity and has housing for 70 employees.

Little Cottonwood Canyon is steep and narrow, with walls extending up to 5,000 feet above the canyon bottom and is accessed by a seven-mile-long, dead-end road. The town of Alta is located at 8,500 ft elevation and receives an average of 500 inches of snow a year. The heavy snowfall combined with the steep, narrow, winding canyon road isolates the town and makes travel difficult at times during the winter. Because the road lies below steep canyon walls, it is crossed by many avalanche slide paths and often must close for avalanche mitigation work. When avalanche danger is extreme, the town of Alta restricts interlodge travel, essentially entering a lock down state where it is illegal to go outside until the restriction is lifted.

It is important for potential employees to understand and be familiar with the benefits and challenges of living up at Alta before accepting a job. While Alta offers world-class skiing, it is also a unique place to live during the winter season because of its semi-remote location. With only a few lodges and resident homes, Alta does not offer much in the way of nightlife and shopping. Instead, there is a close-knit community of canyon employees who socialize together. We hope to attract and hire employees with a strong interest in the outdoors, who enjoy skiing and/or hiking during the winter and are self-motivated to take advantage of outdoor recreational opportunities during the five-month winter season.

Get to know more about the Alta area!