Deer Valley has unveiled the names for three chairlifts that will open this winter in phase one of the Expanded Excellence expansion. The three inaugural lifts, being constructed by Doppelmayr, include a high speed six pack with bubbles, a detachable quad and a fixed grip quad. Skiers will gain access to 300 acres and 20 trails this season via a temporary gateway with 500 parking spaces, a rental shop and ticketing services. “In just a couple of months, we are looking forward to welcoming our guests to experience the beginning of Deer Valley’s Expanded Excellence vision,” said Todd Bennett, President & COO of Deer Valley Resort.
The flagship D-Line Keetley Express will load near the new Grand Hyatt Deer Valley and lift skiers to Keetley Point. This lift will feature Deer Valley’s first-ever bubble comfort chairs and provide access to the existing Sultan Express lift. Next door, the shorter Hoodoo Express quad will service beginner terrain above the East Village. This lift will be a UNI-G detachable designed to look like the D-Line next door. The third new lift for this season, called Aurora, will provide a short return route back to the East Village. This Alpenstar quad will feature a loading conveyor to maximize efficiency. Keetley Express is expected to open in December with Hoodoo Express and Aurora to follow shortly thereafter.
Concrete work is also underway for six additional lifts set to open for the 2025-26 season. These include a two stage, 10 passenger gondola and five detachable chairlifts. The final four lifts in the expansion will open in future seasons with the exact timeline yet to be determined. When the expansion is complete, Deer Valley will have added 3,700 acres of skiable terrain and 135 new ski runs, making it one of the largest resorts in North America.
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Amazing! However I noticed some things were missing since last viewing the Expanded Excellence Plan? Besides the named lifts and South Peak, what about those other lifts in the plan? Are they gonna open in 25/26 as well or at a future date?
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Plans seem to be evolving, not terribly surprising given the scope of the project. The maps released today no longer show Lifts 8, 9, 17 or the gondola from Silver Lake to Park Peak. Reference map from last year with all the lift numbers and gauges: https://liftblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2023-mayflower-master-plan-resort-ski-plan-1.jpg
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Those changes make sense to me. I never really understood the logic behind lift 9 to begin with and it feels like a late-stage infill lift rather than something you’d commit to early.
Lifts 8 and 17 will be helpful from a connectivity standpoint, but are ultimately redundant initially given the planned footprint coming out of the next wave of lifts. I could absolutely see those getting put back in the plan once traffic from the East Portal begins to put too much strain on Sultan and/or the lifts around Silver Lake.
I’m low key surprised that lift 10 to Hail Peak isn’t included in next year’s build. My guess is that’s a 26-27 season build now. A little deceiving that they include that terrain in the “opening December 2025” area when in reality less than half of it will be lift accessible.
Lift 5 would have also been nice as well – suspect that will ultimately the most popular lapping lift in this zone. Only way to access that terrain off Big Dutch Peak until it’s built is to get off at the gondola mid-station and then take a long run out to the East Base.
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I agree with everything you said. Lift 9 seems like an odd choice and not very useful. It would make more sense to spend the money to upgrade one of DV’s existing lifts.
And I’m definitely surprised that Lift 10 isn’t included in next year’s plan, particularly given that it’s the closest lift to all the day skier parking. I’m still unsure what the ultimate plan is to get skiers from day parking over to the village lifts. It sounds like there’ll be a shuttle for this winter, but once the village is built out, whats the plan? In early renderings for the East Village, there was a short connector lift, much like the Cabriolet at Park City, but I haven’t seen that in any of the recent renderings. It looks like it’ll be a fairly long walk from most of the parking to get to the village core.
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Deer Valley updated this page https://expandedexcellence.deervalley.com/major-terrain-expansion/ with the names of the 6 additional lifts opening next winter also.
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I remain surprised that we have not heard anything about upgrading the current DV Mayflower lift. sure seems like it should go detachable and extend to the top of Bald Mountain.
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From the maps that have been released so far, it seems like Deer Valley’s intention is to have skiers to use Sultan, Revelator, and the East Village Gondola to access the legacy DV terrain from the expansion terrain. If Mayflower was extended to the top of Bald Mountain, it would send a lot of skier traffic down a narrow and steep portion of Stein’s Way near the top of Bald Mountain, which is not ideal.
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Mayflower fixie is a gem. Leave it alone!
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very confused this terrain is marginal at best and hold snow very very poorly due to its aspect. But what does it matter since in Utah you got the reservoir down there and no one cares about the environment. Judging by the posts on this page it seems as if no one cares about the environment at all since people are calling for more lifts and more expansion. The experience of Deer Valley has been degraded now it’s not the same the service is not the same the food is not the same the quality is not the same. Good job on taking a very craft and Niche product and making it schwag.
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I agree, ski resorts need to care more about the environment when they expand.
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You couldn’t be more wrong about the terrain. 80% of it will be the best that DV has to offer. The other 20% of the new base area will not be great for sure, but terrain for advanced skiers will be significantly improved once it is all opened.
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Honest question, what makes you optimistic about the terrain? I’m sold that Revelator and Pinyon will be great additions, but the rest of the terrain looks to be lower elevation E-NE facing. Would the closest analogue for snow quality not be Mountaineer and Jordanelle, which are not good. Deer Valley already has the most inconsistent snow of any of the major Utah ski areas.
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The majority of the expansion is at the same elevation as Mayflower, Sultan, Bald Mtn. It’s plenty high and faces the right way.
If you search on YouTube you can see some influencers that posted video of them cat skiing that terrain and it looks absolutely phenomenal and they always were in super deep powder. The runs are steep and very long which DV really needs to round out their terrain.
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I agree that the terrain off Park Peak and South Peak will be great, especially South Peak being an isolated terrain pod probably would be great for expert skiers. However South Peak wont be developed until much later so for the foreseeable future now we’ll only have the new Revelator and Pinion terrain. There are probably be about half of pod of new advanced/expert terrain worth lapping, the rest will be low altitude or south facing.
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While the infrastructure buildout is pretty impressive, I can’t help but feel like the terrain itself isn’t. I’m sure it’ll be great for intermediates. But for experts, there’s just not very much to get excited about (like there is for areas like American Fork at Snowbird). Like the rest of Deer Valley, a good chunk of this terrain looks more like service to ski-in/ski-out condos.
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Have you ever skied here Anthony?
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I’m really intrigued to see what these new lifts do to traffic patterns on the hill. For the time being I’m a bit worried about the increased traffic on Sultan and Mayflower. I absolutely love lapping both of those lifts and think they hold some of the best terrain on the mountain. Those might end up being two of the busiest lifts on the whole mountain.
Or maybe once the new gondola is built, most skiers will use that and Sultan and Mayflower will go back to being less used than other lifts on the mountain.
Time will tell!
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What is the status of the new lifts, any opening date released yet?
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