Skiers rejoice – Deer Valley is getting ready to double in size

Snow at Deer Valley, Utah, near Salt Lake City during ski season
The planned expansion will be one of the biggest in the country’s history (Image credit: Cavan Images)

It’s been a sizzler of a summer and if you’re counting the minutes until you can get your ski pants out of hibernation, there’s some good news out of Utah today. Alterra Mountain Co has just announced plans for a massive expansion at Deer Valley that will see the resort more than double in size.

In what will be one of the largest ever ski resort expansions in the US, the plans for the Park City resort include 16 new chairlifts, a new village and 135 new runs over 3,700 new acres of skiable terrain including one of the longest ski runs in the country measuring nearly five miles. According to the resort’s announcement, the project will create more than 2,000 additional jobs in the area.

If things go to plan, the skiers-only resort will have ballooned to 5,726 acres by the 2025/26 season, making it bigger than Vail, Palisades Tahoe and Breckenridge, and landing it in the top four ski resorts by size. 

Plans for the project, a partnership with New York City luxury real estate developer Extell Development Co., have been in the pipeline since 2014. Over that time, Extell and Alterra have secured $3.2 billion in financing and acquired nearly 7,000 acres of nearby land to the west of the resort’s existing terrain.

Deer Valley is an upscale resort located in the Wasatch Range and is consistently ranked among the top ski resorts in North America. It hosted the freestyle moguls, aerial, and alpine slalom events during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Julia Clarke

Julia Clarke is a staff writer for Advnture.com and the author of the book Restorative Yoga for Beginners. She loves to explore mountains on foot, bike, skis and belay and then recover on the the yoga mat. Julia graduated with a degree in journalism in 2004 and spent eight years working as a radio presenter in Kansas City, Vermont, Boston and New York City before discovering the joys of the Rocky Mountains. She then detoured west to Colorado and enjoyed 11 years teaching yoga in Vail before returning to her hometown of Glasgow, Scotland in 2020 to focus on family and writing.