As spring sunshine melts the final layers of winter across Park City’s resorts, a dedicated crew of snowcat operators at Deer Valley Resort is burning the midnight diesel to keep the mountain open through its final week.
The battle to maintain skiable terrain becomes a nightly sprint against nature’s inevitable thaw, with temperatures climbing into the 70s.
“We’re just trying to keep up Deer Valley standards until closing,” said Spencer McLaughlin, a third-year slope groomer. “Every day, the ski runs are stripped by skiers and our job is to put the snow back to where it was, cover dirt, fill in the edges and ditches, before the next day. And right now, it’s harder because the snow is incredibly soft. It’s melting quickly, and skiers move a lot more snow every day.”
After their “morning” meeting, around 4 p.m., the grooming team readies their equipment for departure and sets off on their shift assignments. McLaughlin’s assignment for the day was to winch Buckeye, an advanced trail off of the Empire Express lift.
Spencer’s role on a winch cat is key. The winch attaches to the heavy grooming machines to anchor the cats to steep terrain and allow them to push or pull snow up high angle slopes.
“A free cat wouldn’t be able to climb the steep terrain,” he said. “It’s a lot heavier, too, when pushing the wet, heavy snow like this.”
The spring snow is sticky, clumping on blades and dragging beneath the machine instead of flowing smoothly.
“It’s a one-and-done type of situation on this run. I only get one chance to get it right. If it’s too much snow it can overpower the tiller and make a giant berm, and that’s unsafe for skiers,” said McLaughlin. “With this type of snow, we look more for whether it is dangerous or not, rather than how it looks, because it’s just so difficult to work with.”
Spencer McLaughlin, a third-year slope groomer at Deer Valley, checks his machine before beginning his shift. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record 
Spencer McLaughlin puts out a sign that alerts other operators to not enter his area once he hooks his machine to the winch post. Winch cats are used to groom steep runs. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record
He toggles the tiller settings constantly, trying to produce that signature corduroy texture. But sometimes safety trumps aesthetics, and the small errors caused by wet snow and the collapsing snowpack beneath cannot be fixed.
While the groomers continue to work through the night on the mountain as usual, the management teams are looking at what terrain they can keep open to the highest possible standard with the remaining staff, snow and skiers in the late season.
“As a mountain ops team, we look at how many tickets are scheduled and see how much terrain we need to have open still. We have to see how much staff we have to operate enough lifts. So it comes down to staffing and maintaining what we have,” said Laura Sexton, slope grooming manager.
The view from the top of the run prior to the first run of grooming. Spencer McLaughlin, a third-year slope groomer at Deer Valley, said that the winch does most of the work on the steep runs like these to get the machine up and down the hill. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record 
Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record 
Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record
With melting snow and the daily skier count dwindling, Deer Valley closed all but two mountains on Monday, keeping six lifts spinning between Bald Eagle and Bald Mountain for the final week before closing day on Sunday. The decisions about where and which areas to close factors in everything from safety, snowpack, staffing and skiability, and areas like the newly expanded Easy Village were a struggle to keep open even through last week.
“To keep the East Village open, we are moving feet of snow each night to keep it open until Sunday but it wouldn’t last past then. When it’s 60-70 degrees like this, we lose a foot of snow a night easily. Right now, they’re overwhelmed with the project work and tasks to keep things safe out there for everybody,” said Sexton. “Chairlifts and ramps are melting out and so we have to give them piles of snow there to work on them every night, and maintain the interface between decks and lodges in areas where snow has melted, besides just grooming the runs.”
While groomers continue to rescue the remaining trails, Sexton and the rest of the operations teams are looking forward to the summer and next winter. Only about a quarter of the winter staff sticks around for the summer to help out with trail and saw crew work. The teams work through the warmer months to control erosion, along with revegetation and rebuilding. Saw crews have plenty of work ahead clearing debris in the untouched forest and tree areas before the expanded terrain opens to the public next season.
“We have a big project this summer to get all of that open. We hired 11 more to train folks up this year and we’ll hire more again next year. Right now, they spend hours and hours just trying to farm snow and put it back on those ski runs to keep it open through the season,” said Sexton.