Deer Valley says its new expansion will have snow. Locals aren’t so sure.

Park City • They had Garrett Lang surrounded.

The mob, at least three deep and mostly silver-haired, had found Deer Valley Resort’s director of mountain operations in a backroom at Snow Park Lodge and encircled him. To his right, another group swarmed vice president of operations Steve Graff.

The crowd cinched tighter around each man as he pointed to the rough-hewn ski map displayed on the easel behind him. The maps showed the resort’s new East Village terrain — offering skiers their first glimpse of Deer Valley’s plans since its operators announced in 2023 their undertaking of what is likely the largest expansion into previously unskied terrain in North American history. Impatiently, those around Lang listened to him describe the heated lifts and new lodges. Then, one by one, they asked him what was really on their minds:

“Will it have snow?”

This is the season of reckoning for Deer Valley. Over the next two months, the state’s most meticulous ski area plans to debut the majority of that new terrain — some 2,300 acres and 100 runs, which will more than double the resort’s footprint. Included in that are mountains and hillsides that Park City and Heber City locals and frequent drivers of State Route 40 have, for generations, recalled more often covered in brown than white.

So, will Deer Valley’s East Village terrain have snow? It turns out the answer is yes. And no. And, it depends.

The one thing that is certain is that the Utah ski season’s slow start this year is not doing Deer Valley’s argument any favors.

Coverage concerns at low elevations

The question posed by the open house attendees has trailed Lang like a broken ski pole this season. It’s been such a popular topic that he even addressed it at the start of his presentation to passholders at a “State of Deer Valley” event earlier this month.

“Who here has heard [regarding the new terrain] that it’s low elevation, bad aspect? Anybody?” he asked. “That’s false.”

Lang said people are making conclusions based on what they can see from the highway. Much of that is dominated by the relative knolls known as Keetley Point and Big Dutch Peak, which sit at 7,770 and 8,170 feet of elevation, respectively. Beyond that, he said, lay high-elevation, mostly north- and north-east facing slopes lined primarily with advanced and expert runs.

“If you’re looking from Highway 40, I could see how you’d be, like, ‘What are you guys doing?’” he said. “But the minute you … get up into the higher elevations, and you really see the whole picture of what we’re doing, it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s how you’re doing it — we’re at 9,000 feet.’”

Evan Thayer, a meteorologist for the snow forecasting website OpenSnow.com, mostly agrees with that assessment. He said the higher elevation terrain should have no trouble holding snow.

Indeed, the probability of snow at those elevations likely played into the resort’s decision to create a beginner area off of Park Peak, which stands at an elevation of 9,350 feet, in addition to the ones it plans to run near its bases about 3,000 feet below. It’s also one of the reasons the resort opted to build the East Village Gondola with a midstation between Park Peak and the expansion area’s base. If snow isn’t holding at lower elevations, skiers will still have a way back to their cars or lodging.

“It’s about 5,500 feet at East Village to 9,000 with one gondola ride,” Lang said. “That’s going to be two different worlds.”

It’s that lower-elevation terrain, mostly near the base, that concerns Thayer.

And the East Village is low, at least for Utah. The base’s elevation, as reported by Deer Valley, is 6,350 feet. That’s nearly a thousand feet lower than Snow Park Lodge, the resort’s original base, which isn’t known among the state’s skiers for being naturally snowy. Compared to other ski areas in the state, the East Village is at most the fourth lowest. It sits just higher than the bases of Sundance Resort (6,100 feet), Cherry Peak (5,775) and Nordic Valley Resort (5,365).

“There will be a struggle in the lower elevations down at East Village for snow,” Thayer said. “And in lean years, it might not look real wintry down there. But in terms of the actual logistics, it’ll be absolutely fine — because they’re going to make snow.”

They are indeed.

Where’s the water?

To hear Lang and Graff and even Thayer talk about it, the snowmaking system at Deer Valley — and in the expanded terrain in particular — is something to behold.

Among the highlights are more than 150 new fan guns and 1,100 new stick guns in a nearly fully automated system that can be turned on with a tap on a cellphone screen. There’s a 10-million-gallon holding pond big enough to paddleboard across. Plus, four pump houses, including the high-powered Hail Peak facility, can together send 10,000 gallons — the equivalent of the average American household’s supply of water for a month — up the mountain every minute. That output doubles when combined with the snowmaking system already in place on Deer Valley’s original side.

“You really have to go to Europe to find anything close to it. It’s going to be one of the largest, if not the largest, in North America,” Lang said during the passholder presentation. “We’re going to be able to easily take advantage of temperatures and get everybody in this room, and the skiing public, on the hill.”

Well-known for its grooming, Lang said Deer Valley is aiming to dress between 60-70% of runs in corduroy every day.

Does the area have enough water to sustain that? Yes, says Jared Hansen, the director of water policy for the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, which sells the water in the Jordanelle Reservoir to municipalities and other water districts.

“It’s a lot,” he said. “But it’s not going to change life on the Wasatch Front or Back.”

The expanded terrain was originally built by Extell Development as the standalone Mayflower Resort, but it was leased by Alterra Mountain Company, Deer Valley’s parent company, before it went into operation. As Extell was piecing together the land for the ski area, it was also piecing together water rights, according to Kurt Krieg, Extell’s executive vice president of resort development.

Deer Valley has 294 million gallons available to it per year just for snowmaking in the East Village area, Krieg said. All of that will come from the Jordanelle. Yet, he said, it totals less than 1% of the reservoir’s water.

Might that drain be an issue, though, when combined with all the water used by the hotels, houses, townhomes and golf courses that have recently popped up or are planned in the East Village vicinity? Probably not, Hansen said.

He said somewhere between 50% to 80% of water used in snowmaking in the East Village will return as snowmelt to the Jordanelle or to the Provo River. That’s not as optimistic as the 90% return often quoted by resort officials, including Lang — Hansen’s brother in law — but Hansen said it’s not a bad return. He said it’s on par with agricultural use.

And while the Jordanelle is not at risk of drying up, he said it would be easy to cut back a nonessential use like snowmaking if that danger ever arose.

“It’s not anything,” Hansen said, “that I’m losing any sleep over.”

Plus, Hansen noted, Deer Valley has a strong incentive to not waste water while snowmaking. Namely, it’s expensive. The resort has to pump nearly all its water up the mountain, even to the holding pond. Hence the construction of the massive Hail Peak pump house. And, no doubt, the arrival of astronomical electrical bills.

“Every bit of water they take up there to make snow, they have to pump it up there,” Hansen said, “and at tremendous cost.”

That’s not to say, Hansen added, that Deer Valley would refrain from making snow to save money. That’s not the Deer Valley way.

The Deer Valley difference, doubled?

Deer Valley has cultivated a reputation for impeccable service, and it charges accordingly — a season pass costs more than $4,000, twice as much as at most Utah resorts. Both Hansen and Thayer said that’s the intangible that ultimately gives them confidence that the East Village expansion will, indeed, have snow.

“Deer Valley is incredibly good at doing their due diligence on all of this,” Thayer said. “I am having very little doubt that they’ve gone through this all over the years to see just how feasible this is. And I’m sure they know exactly what’s possible.”

There’s just one problem: Even the most sophisticated snowmaking system in the world has to have cold temperatures to create snow and make it stick. And that’s not always a given, as this season has shown.

Not until last week did temperatures drop low enough to allow more than slush to come out of those new snowguns, and usually only at night. As a result, Deer Valley was forced to delay its opening date for the first time in resort history.

“It’s been a funny forecast this year,” general manager Todd Bennett acknowledged in his “State of Deer Valley” address. “Every week it’s been like, ‘OK, it’s going to be colder next week.’ And then the next week comes and it hasn’t gotten any colder. So, rather than put out a specific date … and then stress that we’re going to hit that date in the way that Deer Valley wants to do it, we’re going to hold a couple more days and see what kind of cold temperatures we get early next week.”

So will Deer Valley’s East Village expansion have snow? Maybe no. Probably yes. But now may not be the best time to make that argument.

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