This 12 months, Utah’s Deer Valley opened the primary part of one of many greatest multi-year ski resort enlargement initiatives in current reminiscence.
The ski-only resort, which is one in every of simply three left in North America to ban snowboarding, added three new lifts for this season. The brand new lifts embody the Keetley Categorical excessive pace six-pack, the Hoodoo Categorical high-speed quad, and the Aurora mounted grip quad. All of those lifts reside at or close to the brand new Deer Valley East base space, which is south of the present Jordanelle base on US-40. This base space will finally provide a complete base village and the nation’s largest “ski seashore”, however for this 12 months, the bottom added 500 parking areas—which at the moment require a shuttle to get to and from—and a Grand Hyatt resort.
The brand new Keetley Categorical elevate is Deer Valley’s first high-speed six-pack and first-ever bubble elevate, extending from Deer Valley East to the bottom of the Sultan Categorical. The neighboring Hoodoo Categorical straight serves the newbie slope at Deer Valley East, working parallel the primary 15% of the Keetley Categorical elevate line. The ultimate elevate, the Aurora Quad, permits skiers to get out of a drainage close to the bottom space again to the principle a part of East Village.
Complementing these new lifts is nineteen new trails and 316 acres of terrain. As of the 2024-25 season, all the new trails are rated newbie or intermediate, though a number of blue trails have been constantly left ungroomed this winter (advanced-level trails will observe in future enlargement phases). Notably, whereas nearly all of new trails sit in lower-elevation areas close to the brand new base, a handful prolong from the highest of Bald Mountain, offering a repeatedly skiable vertical descent of over 3,000 toes at Deer Valley for the primary time within the resort’s historical past.
Whereas a number of further new lifts and trails are anticipated to open as a part of Part 2 subsequent winter, we determined to take a look at the Deer Valley expertise because it existed this season. So how do the brand new investments stack up? Let’s have a look.
