Deer Valley season passholders will have the mountain to themselves beginning at 9 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 5. The general public will get its first turns of the season when the resort officially opens Saturday morning.
Deer Valley President and Chief Operating Officer Todd Bennett said the shift in weather pushed a hoped-for Nov. 29 opening day back to its traditional timing.
“We tried to get started a little bit earlier this year,” Bennett said on KPCW’s Local News Hour Wednesday. “We shifted the date up, and then we've just ended up shifting it back to where we're going to be to begin with.”
The resort will open with three chairlifts, Carpenter Express, Sterling Express and Homestake Express, and three runs: Birdseye, Silver Link and Success. All will be accessed from Snow Park Lodge.
The much-anticipated East Village expansion will come online later this winter. Snowmaking crews are still testing the new equipment.
“It'll open a little bit later this year, just because we're putting the final touches on the pipes and the pump houses and all those details,” he explained. “We did start testing the snow making system there and pressurizing the water on Monday. So, I suspect we'll be making snow over there within the week.”
Even with 100 new runs and 10 new lifts slated to open in East Village, Bennett said there’s more to come.
Park Peak Lodge, a 60,000-square-foot facility at the top of Park Peak where the new East Village gondola will unload, will not open this season. The gondola will operate, and guests will see the structure taking shape.
“You're going to see an incredible skeleton of a brand new, 60,000 square foot building up there," he said. "That'll be a beautiful lodge facing out towards Timpanogos. We've got a couple more chairlifts planned. I don't think we've announced them, so I'm going to hold on those. But yeah, we've got more.”
Skiers will be routed around construction at Park Peak Lodge and at the East Village base area. A temporary base facility will offer limited skier services, including about 100 dining seats, lift ticket sales and ski rentals. To accommodate more guests, the resort is also adding temporary dining space at Silver Lake Lodge and opening The Mariposa for daytime service.
Bennett said the resort is fully staffed for the season, with 500 more employees than last year.
Even with East Village nearing completion, Bennett said it’s too soon to shift full attention to the long-planned development of the Snow Park parking lots.
“Bringing on that much new equipment, that many new trails, that much more terrain is going to pose a number of unintended challenges,” he said. “And so, you know, I would say probably by the end of the season, [we’ll] start shifting back over that way and thinking about what the next steps are there. But as a team, we're very focused on making sure that the eastern expansion is to the Deer Valley quality that people expect.”
Deer Valley is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year and recently won the World Ski Awards for Best U.S. Resort for the 13th consecutive year.
Deer Valley is a financial supporter of KPCW.
