At Deer Valley Resort, summer break looks a lot more like a construction zone — a season of transformation when grass seed flies and entire venues rise from the ground. Resort crews have already logged months of work long before guests arrive to ride fresh dirt or dance to live music under the stars.
Deer Valley’s summer lifts began running on Friday, with bike access available via Silver Lake Express and Homestake Express. Sterling Express is open for hiking and scenic rides only, as crews prepare for the major terrain expansion to debut during the upcoming winter season.
From rebuilding chairlift platforms to regrading ski runs with recycled dirt, summer operations focus on infrastructure improvements that prepare the mountain for peak seasonal use. The Silver Lake Lodge area, host to the Mountain Beer Festival and the Silver Lake Music Series in the summer, is undergoing a massive restructuring to make the space better able to support the high-traffic it sees all season.
“We tore out pretty much all of the existing layout. There are a few of the old pathways still there, but for the most part, it’s all new,” said Garrett Lang, the resort’s director of mountain operations.
The new layout includes aggregate-style rail trail paths, professional-grade lawn and irrigation systems, and space designed specifically to accommodate food trucks and trailers. A corner of the area will host a permanent stage setup for regular live music.
“It’s going to work better for employees and be a much nicer venue to host events like Beer Fest,” Lang said. “It’s going to look great up here. It’ll work better for employees and better support our summer operations.”
With these renovations comes a near-constant movement of dirt across the mountain — hauled in from off-site projects, redistributed from other zones and carefully graded to fix the contours of ski runs.
“If a run is canted left to right, we’ll end up using a lot more snow just to make the surface level. But if we can fix it with dirt, we save on snowmaking and can open sooner,” said Lang.
Each season at Deer Valley sets the stage for the next. The less snow needed to fill those slopes in winter, the faster that snow can melt come spring, allowing teams to revive the grass and reopen the space for summer events.
As crews prepare the Snow Park base area for summer concerts, mountain venue operations manager Trevor Hartshorn and his crew of eight work on irrigation systems and nurturing the grass to full health before the stage goes up.
“You can only do irrigation once, and it’s nonstop maintenance, so we really focus on getting the grass going and getting the stage built up,” said Hartshorn.
While the grass takes root, the crew manages stage construction, fence installation, and landscaping for the venue.
The stage for the summer concert series being installed at Snow Park Lodge. Credit: David Jackson/Park Record 
The stage for the summer concert series being installed at Snow Park Lodge. Credit: David Jackson/Park Record 
The stage for the summer concert series being installed at Snow Park Lodge. Credit: David Jackson/Park Record
The mountain reveals its uneven skeleton once the snow melts, showing the gaps where powder once smoothed over stairs or shortened pass scanners. Summer crews are left to bridge those gaps with wood decking and temporary platforms to help with safe pedestrian and bike access.
“We have to build these decks so people can safely load and unload from our lifts,” said Lang. “There’s a whole steel substructure that we build underneath, and then we add and repaint the modular decking in the spring.”
For bike access, lifts are retrofitted with a bike rack every fourth chair. While Sterling Express won’t require bike chairs this season, maintenance crews still faced a condensed timeline to service all three summer lifts before opening day.
“Our lift maintenance teams work a lot by experience, knowing what the annual rotation is and constantly checking if something needs third-party maintenance,” said Lang.
While the upper mountain takes a breather from biking this year, the lower slopes buzz with trail crews preparing and maintaining trails for the season.
“We’re looking for dangerous trees, dead trees that could fall on a lift line or a ski run,” said Jake Ringquist, slope grooming assistant manager.
With almost 3,000 total skiable acres accessible next winter, the 27-person saw crew prioritized areas based on timing, terrain type, and environmental conditions. Some zones are revisited on a fixed cycle, typically every three to five years, especially in areas where new growth has returned quickly. Factors like slope aspect or tree species play a key role, with some seeing faster regeneration due to increased sun exposure.
The saw crew took on 12 new members this season to keep up with terrain expansion needs and forest demands.
“We’ll run all the way through October. Then, depending on the weather, we’ll do burn zones to remove fuel from the woods,” Ringquist said.
“At the end of the day, seeing a zone that you’ve completed, whether it’s from a forest health perspective or from a skier perspective, looking back at all the work you put into it is definitely fulfilling. It’s a good, honest day’s work,” said Ringquist, who is entering his 18th year at Deer Valley.
Every project, whether graded, lifted, stacked, welded, seeded, mulched or maintained, aims to prepare the resort for the summer season ahead.
