Utah Olympic Park activities open Dec. 26

After the gifts are unwrapped and the Christmas hams have been consumed, the Utah Olympic Park will open its doors for winter activities to get Parkites and visitors outside and active.

On Dec. 26, the park will open several activities, including extreme tubing, extreme zip lining, a pair of adventure courses and a drop tower. The activities will be open from 1-4 p.m. and passes are available for those who want to visit more than once.

"The best way to participate if you want to do unlimited activities is the holiday pass," UOP Marketing Manager Melanie Welch said. "It’s $75 for adults, $45 for youth. It’s the same pricing you’ll see throughout the winter with our gold pass, which offers the same activities."

The biggest change this winter, Welch said, is the extreme tubing. Tubing debuted this summer on the Nordic ski jumps and will become a winter activity for the first time this year.

"Everybody is pretty excited about the winter tubing," she said. "They’ve been making quite a bit of snow to create the trail that gets you to the top of the 64 [meter hill]. When you offload at the midpoint of the lift, you’ll take that trail down in a tube. It’ll have some banked turns. They’ve been doing quite a bit of work to make it as smooth and fun to ride as possible."

Tubing on the 64-meter hill is available for guests ages 10 and older. There will also be tubing on the smaller Nordic jumps behind the Alf Engen Museum that will be available for guests ages 5 and older.

Welch said most activities will be open no matter the weather conditions this winter.

"The extreme zip is weather dependent, more so than some of our other activities," she said. "It’s hard to do it in heavy precipitation and things like that. The adventure courses, you can do those in pretty much a whiteout. Those usually run in all types of weather."

Following the holiday pass time period, Welch said the UOP will shift its hours and availability through January.

"In January, all of our activities will be available on weekends only — Saturdays and Sundays," she said. "Then we kind of go to a weekday/weekend schedule once we hit February."

The big event at the UOP this winter is the IBSF Bobsled and Skeleton World Cup. Competitions will take place Friday, Jan. 15, and Saturday, Jan. 16. Welch said the park is excited to host the world’s top athletes.

"We’re expecting a pretty good turnout for that," she said. "We’ll do something in the lower loop. I think the idea is to bring in some food trucks and some other activities for kids and live bands. It should be cool."

For more information about events or activities at the Utah Olympic Park, or to purchase holiday passes or gold passes, visit http://www.utaholympiclegacy.org .