Deer Valley Expanded Excellence Phase 1: A Surprisingly Strong Start (With One Big Catch)

Phase 1 of Deer Valley’s Expanded Excellence brings 19 new trails across 316 skiable acres, with several overlooking the massive Jordanelle Reservoir.

This year, Utah’s Deer Valley opened the first phase of one of the biggest multi-year ski resort expansion projects in recent memory.

The ski-only resort, which is one of just three left in North America to prohibit snowboarding, added three new lifts for this season. The new lifts include the Keetley Express high speed six-pack, the Hoodoo Express high-speed quad, and the Aurora fixed grip quad. All of these lifts reside at or near the new Deer Valley East base area, which is south of the current Jordanelle base on US-40. This base area will eventually offer an entire base village and the country’s largest “ski beach”, but for this year, the base added 500 parking spaces—which currently require a shuttle to get to and from—and a Grand Hyatt hotel.

The new Keetley Express lift is Deer Valley’s first high-speed six-pack and first-ever bubble lift, extending from Deer Valley East to the base of the Sultan Express. The neighboring Hoodoo Express directly serves the beginner slope at Deer Valley East, running parallel the first 15% of the Keetley Express lift line. The final lift, the Aurora Quad, allows skiers to get out of a drainage near the base area back to the main part of East Village.

Complementing these new lifts is 19 new trails and 316 acres of terrain. As of the 2024-25 season, all of the new trails are rated beginner or intermediate, although several blue trails were consistently left ungroomed this winter (advanced-level trails will follow in future expansion phases). Notably, while the majority of new trails sit in lower-elevation areas near the new base, a handful extend from the top of Bald Mountain, providing a continuously skiable vertical descent of over 3,000 feet at Deer Valley for the first time in the resort’s history.

While multiple additional new lifts and trails are expected to open as part of Phase 2 next winter, we decided to check out the Deer Valley experience as it existed this season. So how do the new investments stack up? Let’s take a look.

The new Deer Valley Expanded Excellence terrain for the 2024-25 season, with the three new lifts highlighted in red. The nearby terrain shaded in light green is expected to open for the 2025-26 season.

Our Take

While it was explicitly designed with real estate in mind, the first phase of Deer Valley’s Expanded Excellence brings some surprising benefits. The new terrain offers a beautiful natural aesthetic, providing a welcome contrast from the built-up, artificial vibe that plagues much of the rest of Deer Valley. Views of the Jordanelle Reservoir are incredible, and the new trails feel thoughtfully designed for the topography, with some being very lightly gladed. As of the 2024-25 season, the new terrain might be the most scenic anywhere at Deer Valley—so we’re crossing our fingers that it doesn't get overwhelmed by luxury real estate in the future.

Thanks to this year’s terrain expansion, Deer Valley offers continuously skiable terrain of over 3,000 vertical feet for the first time ever.

While this year’s expansion won’t be the most exciting for thrill-seekers, the terrain itself is still a big win for the Deer Valley in a number of ways. Previously, the resort’s on-paper 3,000-foot vertical drop didn’t translate into long, continuous runs; the rolling mountains elsewhere at the resort broke things up, requiring mid-mountain lift rides to complete a full top-to-bottom descent. However, the new trails from the top of Bald Mountain to the bottom of East Village offer a full 3,050-foot vertical descent, creating some of the longest uninterrupted ski runs in all of Utah and finally making Deer Valley an enjoyably skiable mountain for those who prefer long runs. While everything in the new zone is rated for beginners and intermediates, several of the blue trails were consistently left ungroomed this winter, offering a bumpy, more advanced experience.

As for the lifts: the Keetley Express is the clear highlight. With its bubble chairs and heated seats, it’s the first enclosed chairlift at Deer Valley (and second enclosed lift in total following the Jordanelle Gondola), making for an especially comfortable ride on frigid days. The Hoodoo Express runs alongside the Keetley lift throughout beginner zone, providing access to a much more logistically practical and isolated learning environment than that of the Snow Park base. Due to the layout of the trails, the Hoodoo lift provides the only access to this learning area; it is discontiguous from the upper mountain runs, meaning guests will not need to worry about more aggressive skier traffic from elsewhere at the resort.

The Keetley Express, which provides the primary access to this year’s expansion terrain, is both Deer Valley’s first bubble chair and its first six-pack. The neighboring Hoodoo Express (pictured left) provides access to an isolated lower-mountain learning area.

Finally, it’s worth touching on the Aurora lift, which is a fixed-grip quad. But while fixed-grip chairs are known for their slow run speeds, the Aurora lift is so short that the slower speed doesn’t really detract from the experience. In fact, the entire ride takes less than two minutes.

But for all the promise, the East Village area is still very much a work in progress. Construction is ongoing, with at least three lift terminals still unfinished and the base village in a fairly rudimentary state by Deer Valley’s normally polished standards. That said, we have to give credit where it's due: the porta potties might be the nicest we’ve ever seen at a ski resort.

The unfinished lift terminal of the Galena Express at Deer Valley this February. Later on this season, quad chairs were added to the line.

There are also a few logistical quirks that will likely be resolved in future years, but created some headaches this winter. The Sultan Express area is a bottleneck right now, with all guests coming from the East Village base needing to funnel through that lift to get elsewhere on the mountain (there will be redundancies built in future seasons). And while the East Village parking is plentiful, having to take a shuttle to the base makes for a less-than-seamless experience. Thankfully, future development includes a more direct connection between the parking and the lifts. Another funny circumstance resulting from this multi-year expansion: a few signs currently point toward trails that haven’t officially debuted yet, including some black-diamond trails that are expected to be quite a bit harder than anything that debuted this winter.

As the only lift providing access out of the East Village terrain area, the Sultan Express chair was a huge chokepoint this winter. New lifts for the 2025-26 season are expected to address this bottleneck.

But perhaps the biggest issue with Deer Valley’s expansion terrain might be snow reliability. With most of the new terrain sitting below 7,500 feet and facing east, natural snow retention is quite a bit less reliable than most other parts of the resort. While strong snowmaking kept this year’s trails in reliable shape throughout the bulk of this season, it was clear that the areas just off the marked trails were hurting for cover throughout certain parts of the season. Some of the non-groomers were quite icy when we visited, but higher-elevation bump runs stayed soft.

Overall, this first phase is a strong leap forward for Deer Valley. It doesn't exactly cater to the most advanced skiers out there, and natural snow reliability could be better—but for intermediates and those seeking scenic, comfortable laps (i.e. Deer Valley’s typical clientele), it's an exciting addition. And with exponentially more terrain and infrastructure expected to come next winter (the resort claims it is opening an astounding 91 new trails across approximately 2,900 acres of terrain next winter), this year may only be a small taste of what yet to come.

Considering a ski trip to Utah next winter? Check out our comprehensive Utah ski resort rankings, as well as our Deer Valley mountain review from this past season. You can also check out our analysis on the ski patrol strike and other compounding factors facing the Utah ski scene in our video analysis below.