Deer Valley March 2-4

[NewEnglandSkier]

I'm doing a short trip to Deer Valley--a long weekend really.
I flew into SLC last night (Fri) and I have never seen the SLC airport so busy with skiers. Usually when I do my annual Alta/Bird trip I fly in on Thursday night and while there are skiers of course, it has never been anything like I saw last night. Maybe the fact I am usually in Utah later in the season and usually fly on Thursday changes the amount of people . . . or maybe ski travel is just up in general. I mean it seems it would have to be if we all seem to notice that more people are over-running our resorts with the Epic and Ikon passes.

Day 1 (Saturday)
I'm staying at the Park City Marriott, so it's a shuttle ride away. The hotel runs their own shuttle to either Deer Valley or Park City. The Park City shuttle had way more people on it than the Deer Valley one.
Since I have an Ikon pass, and it is not direct to lift at Deer Valley, you have to go to a ticket window to redeem your days with a paper ticket. I had reserved my dates ahead of time online as they suggest that you do. It only took a minute to get my ticket. You can elect to get a multiway ticket if you are skiing multiple days in a row, or if you are not sure you will end up using all the days you requested you can get a new day ticket each day.
It was busy today, but actually not as busy as I envisioned it being. It snowed all day and there were a few inches of fresh snow. I surprised myself and skied fairly well given that I hate foggy days. I can't figure out why I do okay sometimes and other days it's just a disaster.
Anyway, I skied most of the different lift pods today, but didn't have time to make it over to Bald Mountain area. I hope to get over there tomorrow.
I started out staying low in the morning due to the visibility, so I spent the morning on Little Baldy Peak and the Bald Eagle Mountain area. Had lunch at the Silver Lake Lodge and then since the morning had went well despite the fog, I decided to go higher up. I spent the afternoon on Flagstaff Mountain, Empire and Lady Morgan areas.
Overall, I would say Deer Valley offers a more East Coast style of skiing than most western resorts. I say this because the runs tend to be narrower, they groom a lot and despite it snowing all day, I managed to find a good amount of hard pack. They also are quite generous with their trail ratings I think--the blacks might be considered blue at other places I've been.
Favorite runs of the day: Solid Muldoon before it got busy. Lady Morgan Bowl--I skied an easier section of the bowl which had a good amount of fresh snow. Peeler was nice and didn't have many people on it. White Owl had easier bumps on it, so I was able to practice.
I didn't take really any pictures because of the weather--everything just looked gray. I did take the one below. I think this was on a green run.


Some of the runs were crowded, while others saw hardly any traffic. It is busy here though, as I inquired about doing a private lesson on Sunday and they said the ski school was sold out in both private and groups until like Wednesday--and this is not a holiday week! That has never happened to me before. Typically, the only place I prebook lessons for is Steamboat and that is because I ski with a specific person. Other places I tend to wait to the last minute just to see how I'm feeling/make sure my flight gets in etc. I saw tons of ski school groups out on the mountain so I don't doubt they are busy.

Tomorrow I hope to do some of the runs I didn't have time for today.

 

[NewEnglandSkier]

Day 2 (Sunday)
Today was a powder day. It snowed all night so there was a fair bit of snow. It was boot top high in some places. I actually skied fairly well in it much to my surprise.
My first run was down Peeler, as that one hadn't been groomed and was boot top high. Everything got skied out really fast though.
Below is a picture of Peeler


This was taken from the Red Cloud chair


It snowed pretty much all day today as well. The morning the visibility was ok, but it got really foggy in the late morning and the afternoon so that was annoying.

Late morning I made my way over to Bald Mountain area, which I didn't have a chance to ski yesterday. It was really crowded and whatever had been groomed was quite skied off, so I tried to find runs that had better snow. By then the fog had rolled in so it was hard to see and not being familiar with that area, I broke for early lunch 11:15am.
After lunch I skied mostly on Flagstaff as visibility seemed best over there.
At the end of the day I took a run down Know You Don't which is one of the Olympic runs--I think slalom was held there. I use the term "took a run" loosely. It was huge moguls, which you couldn't see until you had already committed, so I mostly just traversed it and tried to practice absorption.
Since I didn't want to end my day on a weak note, I did another run down Whit Owl to end on a higher note.

Dinner tonight was at Adolph's which is a Swiss restaurant. It gets mixed reviews online, but I really enjoyed it. After dinner I went downtown to walk around.
Below is a shot from downtown


I think the snow is over for the time being, so tomorrow is supposed to be more clear.

 

[Abbi]

I was flying out Friday when you were flying in! I was no where near as adventurous but had a great time at Deer Valley! Have fun!!

 

[rhymeandreason]

There was a geneology conference in Salt Lake City last weekend which draws about 30K attendees - many of whom are also skiers! I was at PCMR and crowds were reasonable. The choke point lifts had about a 5 minute wait and the other lifts had none at all. Sunday was the busiest day - seemed like a lot of locals enjoying the powder. Canyons is so vast that I was often skiing on completely mpty slopes.

 

[NewEnglandSkier]

Day 3 (Monday)
Today started out partly sunny and it was a bit colder than the past couple days.
I started over on the Little Baldy Peak area and skied some of the groomed runs I hadn't skied over there on the first day--Silver Hill and Fairview.
Below is a view down to the Snow Park base area heading back from Little Baldy


Next I skied Bald Mountain. I skied the top of Tycoon, but it and many of the other groomers were quite firm/hard pack--I'm not sure where the 8-10 inches of snow we got over the past couple days disappeared too . . . .
So skipped the rest of Tycoon and did Reward instead which was an ungroomed black. The snow was sooo much better and nosy else was on it! After that I discovered Perseverance Bowl to Perseverance which was also an ungroomed area that was a lot of fun, so I lapped that a few times. Unfortunately, the Baldy area of the mountain was cloudy.
Perseverance Bowl below


I did another early lunch at about 11:30am. The carnitas tacos were very tasty.

After lunch I did a run over on Flagstaff on Sidewinder before heading over to the Empire lift. I decided to have an adventure on Empire Canyon. Since I'd been doing pretty well on ungroomed, I decided to ski all of Lady Morgan Bowl. Well, I psyched myself out. When I see large piles of fresh snow I tend to get nervous. I made it down sometimes making nice turns and other times just doing some traverses. Then I realized as I got toward the bottom I really didn't know where it dumped out. So I could either ski to the bottom or take a traverse through the woods. So I took the traverse even though I wasn't positive where it would end up--I had a feeling it eventually would dump onto the groomer and I turned out to be correct, but I got worried there for a minute!
I took Empire lift up again and this time went down Solace which is an other bowl but you have more options of pitch. I lapped that several times before I went back over to Flagstaff.
Below is Solace


After a few laps on the Flagstaff area, I went back over to Bald Mountain to do Perseverance again--however the light was really flat, so it was not that much fun.

I need my day my with my usual run down White Owl. I focused most of may day today on ungroomed, as the snow was just better and there were fewer people.

Tonight dinner was at Grub Steak which is a steak restaurant right down the street from my hotel. I ate there the last time I was in Park City and enjoyed it so I wanted to repeat. It was as good as I remembered. Now I have a couple hours to kill before I get picked up for my red eye flight back to Boston.

Final impressions:
If you want to stay slope side at Deer Valley you'd best be prepared to spend lots of money, which is why I stayed offsite. I could not find anything slope side there for less than $650/night. The nice thing about staying offsite is that many of the hotels have shuttle service and there is also the free town bus as well which makes it convenient to get around.

The food at Deer Valley for lunch is pretty good, but the lodges are set up in a manner in which it's sort of a pain to look for a table. They are made up of many smaller rooms full of smaller/personal size tables as opposed to one room with communal tables. So while it's nice to have your own table, it can be tedious walking through many rooms to find one.

The skiing was nice, but not the best views compared to other western areas. Put it this way, if you have never been out west before, you will be impressed by the scenery, but it you have been to other locations, it just does not compare (at least to me).

Park City itself is a cute town and while I was there was very busy. I made reservations each night for dinner and I really think they were essential. Walking around, every place was packed.

Stay tuned for my next trip report---Alta/Bird at the end of March!

 

[marzNC]

Sounds like a good introduction to DV. Glad you got a day with better visibility. You always take such good pictures.

I focused most of may day today on ungroomed, as the snow was just better and there were fewer people.

Fewer people is the main reason I think it's worth working on technique to get more comfortable on ungroomed terrain. It opens up so many more options at big mountains, especially destination resorts that are working hard to attract intermediates who end up staying on groomers.

 

[NewEnglandSkier]

Yes, totally agree that it pays to be able to ski ungroomed. The last time I skied Deer Valley (one day several years ago), I just stuck to groomers, but this time I was able to see much more of the mountain and get a better sense of it.

Another fun thing that you could see from near the top of Empire, is you could see people dropping the cornice into the Daly Chutes/bowl.