Skiing

Skiing — Park City, Utah — Day 4: Deer Valley, Park City, Utah

Nick Morris

Feb 4, 2015 — 7 min read

Skiing Deer Valley — the good, the bad and the ugly

February 2015

I was looking forward to the visit because the last time I skied Deer Valley was in 1996. I remembered it as one of the nicest, cleanest, most up-market ski areas I had ever visited. And since my visit, nothing else had come close.

I fondly remembered the heated driveways and pavements around the main lodge, the lovely comfortable lifts, fantastic looking food in the restaurants, polite and smartly turned out staff, and beautifully groomed trails.

Would it still be like that? Was it ever like that? Or is my memory playing tricks?

Skiing — getting your layers right

One of the challenges in skiing is getting your layers right — too many, and you overheat and feel tired with no energy. You are uncomfortable and sweaty. Too few and you are cold, and your blood moves into your core and doesn't deliver energy and oxygen to your muscles. It can be tricky. The forecast for the day did not look good.

Photo by Author — brrrr…. It’s going to be a cold one

When I set off, the temperature was -13 ºC, with a possible high of 4 ºC. How could I dress for that? Plus, on the mountain, the conditions might be different?

Morning coffee stop in Deer Valley — Empire Canyon Lodge

Mid-morning, we stopped at the Empire Valley Lodge for a snack — it had to be one of the nicest lodges I've ever used. There was a log fire and carpets on the floor. Very up-market, in fact, very, very up-market.

Photo by Author — a freshly printed trail report

They even had printed versions of the latest trail reports. How good was that?

And the coffee came in proper mugs.

Photo by Author — proper mugs — none of that paper mug rubbish

The lodge had Wi-Fi, but it didn’t work. You could connect, but you couldn’t get on the Internet.

Photo by Author — Empire Canyon Lodge — the log fire

It has to be one of the smartest lodges I have ever visited. I was surprised they let me in.

More on safety bars — this time at Deer Valley

I can confirm that skiers at Deer Valley have the same dislike of safety bars on lifts as I had seen at Park City ski area and Canyons.

Why are people not using them?

Skiing Deer Valley — the good, the bad, and the ugly

I had been looking forward to skiing Deer Valley for some time, as I have some great memories of skiing it in 1996.

Deer Valley had changed, and/or my memories are not correct.

Deer Valley was still very much Deer Valley. It was still a very swanky and swish up-market ski area that didn’t allow snowboarders. But it was not as upmarket as I remembered.

The Good

OK, if you go skiing, you want good snow, suitable terrain, and good lifts — and Deer Valley has those (with the possible exception of terrain — see below).

The lift lines were well managed (sometimes over managed — see below), and generally, the lifts were modern and fast. The lifts weren't as comfortable as I remember them (I once described them as being like sofas). But I think that is because on my first visit to Deer Valley, I had only previously skied small resorts in New England with some very uncomfortable old two-person lifts.

Snow conditions were good, and Deer Valley had more snow both on the trails and across the mountain in general than in Park City or Canyons.

The grooming and general management of the trails were very good. The skiing conditions were excellent.

Another good point was the staff. There were a lot of them on the mountain. If you had a problem or a question, you could always find someone to ask.

The mountain also appeared to be an excellent place to learn to ski. I have never seen so many ski instructors and lessons in one resort.

The Bad

Something about the people at Deer Valley rubbed me up the wrong way. They didn’t seem to be into skiing for the skiing but for the “look at me and what I am doing”. I have never seen so many nicely turned out skiers on a slope. It was all the latest gear and the latest skis. It all felt a bit false.

The terrain was boring. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but a clue was that I kept thinking I had already skied a run when I hadn’t. My ski buddy finally hit the nail on the head. All the runs are pretty much the same! Deer Valley is not so much a valley but a collection of three large hills and one small one. All the lifts go to the top of the mountain; they all converge on the top, then you ski down. The result is that all runs appear to be the same.

Another bad (and annoying) thing was the lift lines. It was great to have managed lift lines when the slopes were crowded. But the day we were there, it was not particularly busy. I didn’t need someone telling me that I could now move forward and get on the lift. I know I can do that — there was no one in front of me!

There were a lot of staff on the mountain, and this was a bad point, as there seemed to be more staff hanging around at the bottom and the top of lifts than skiers. The staff were getting in the way.

The Ugly

The mountain is quite ugly.

The views are good but dull and sometimes alarming as on some runs you appear to be skiing into nothing.

One truly ugly thing was the number of condos and houses that have sprung up since my last visit. I have no problem with people having large, expensive homes in ski areas, but at Deer Valley, they were over-the-top in terms of size, and they were shockingly visible. Most resorts (and I am thinking of Okemo in Vermont and Canyons just down the road) manage to hide their big houses away in woods or discrete valleys. But at Deer Valley, they seem to be in your face.

One thing that did appear odd on this visit was the trails low down the mountain. Deer Valley, it would seem, has to maintain trails for its residents to have “ski-in ski-out” access. Maintaining these trails resulted in long ribbons of white snow snaking across a brown landscape. It looked very odd.