My lasting impression of Sundance Mountain Resort is Mount Timpanogos. At 11,752 feet it is the second highest mountain in Utah’s Wasatch Range. The ski area lies on the flank of Timpanogos and lift-served skiing goes to about 8200 feet in elevation. There are impressive views of the peak from everywhere in the resort.
Before lift-served skiing, Mount Timpanogos became popular with the “earn-your-turns” skiers of the day. In the 1940s there was even a July slalom event that drew racers! The first lift was a rope tow installed on the lower slopes in 1944. A contest was held to name the ski area and the winner was Timp Haven.
Timp Haven was owned and operated by the Stewart brothers. As the area gained popularity, they would add T-Bars and in 1953 a single chair. In the 1960s the Stewarts created a subdivision called Timp Haven Homes selling lots. One of the takers for those lots was Robert Redford who bought a 2 acre lot for $500 and built what he called a cabin there.
In 1968 Redford would buy Timp Haven and rename it Sundance Mountain Resort, cashing in on the popularity of his role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. My most reliable trivia responder came through with the correct answer. That would be Lyndall Heyer who had Robert Redford as the founder of Sundance Mountain Resort. Walter Frey from Waterbury Center also identified Robert Redford.
Robert Redford was born and grew up in California, graduating from Van Nuys High School in 1954. While he was active in sports, that did not include snow skiing. Redford would attend the University of Colorado in Boulder. He did visit Aspen regularly, but he admitted that it was to drink at the Red Onion and not to ski! His drinking would actually get him expelled from the CU after only a year-and-a-half.
It appears that Redford’s skiing and his familiarity with Utah traces back to his first wife Lola Van Wagenen. She grew up in Provo, Utah, so was very familiar with the nearby Timp Haven ski area. By the way, Van Wagenen now has connections with Vermont! She got her bachelor’s degree from Vermont College in 1982. Then in 2002 she married George Burrill of Shelburne, Vermont. The couple has started a New American Scholarship Fund at Champlain College.
Redford in founding Sundance wanted to combine his two loves, sports and the arts. He also wanted to preserve the natural beauty that had attracted him to the Timpanogos location. He was critical of the Colorado areas that were becoming too glitzy and commercialized. He outlined the challenges he faced in a Warren Miller interview:
“Take the sport you love in an environment you love and preserve it, enhance it, and still do enough business that you can keep it!”
About the same time Redford was pursuing his vision for Sundance, he was also pursuing making a movie about ski racing. Downhill Racer was the result. I have been critical of the movie in past columns so I was glad to find an interview with Redford where he said that it wasn’t meant to be a ski movie. It turns out his intention was to highlight the frustration with our U.S. “amateur” athletes competing against “professionals” from other countries. Redford admitted that the movie didn’t have a wide target audience.
Downhill Racer did make a little money, but the question remains whether the fact that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came out at the same time helped or hurt Downhill Racer’s box office.
The frustrations that Redford had with the established movie studios in getting Downhill Racer made him want to help independent film makers. The result was the Sundance Film Festival. While it was never held at Sundance Resort, it was renamed from the US/Utah Film Festival in honor of Redford. Most recently the festival has been cohosted by Park City and Salt Lake City and is the largest film festival in the United States. This year they announced that the festival will move to Boulder Colorado in 2027.
Robert Redford died on September 16, 2025 at the age of 89. He died in his sleep at his home in Sundance and was buried on his property. He had sold Sundance Mountain Resort in 2020 to Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners. At the time he said, “I had been searching for years for the right people to take it to the next level, so that I could take that weight off my shoulders and enjoy my life”
Robert Redford left us so many memories from the movies he was in or directed. As a skier, he also left us a ski area that reflects his values.
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