Slope maintenance supervisor Jack Geiger oversees Deer Valley Resort’s noxious weed abatement and regrowth program, leading a crew of 11 who spend their summers pulling, clipping, spraying and replanting across the resort’s 2,200 (and soon to be over 4,000) acres.
The work has been part of the resort’s stewardship practice for more than 20 years. Geiger keeps the decades-old logbooks close at hand — thick binders filled with years of handwritten notes that track every weed pulled, the exact slope it came from and the season it was treated — to help guide each year’s priority list.
“We keep a pretty detailed log book of where we’ve treated every year, creating these priority lists from season to season,” he said.
Those pages tell the story of Deer Valley’s commitment to the land as much as the mountain itself does, documenting the behind-the-scenes work that shapes every season of skiing.
The crew spends the first couple months of summer focused almost entirely on pulling, clipping, spraying and bagging weeds across the resort, said Geiger. The plants they’re up against are invasive and aggressive, quickly outcompeting native species if left unchecked.
“In Summit County, we have 10 or more that are really active,” Geiger said, naming thistles, houndstongue, dyer’s woad and others.
These weeds don’t just crowd out wildflowers. They choke native grasses, damage the soil and disrupt the mountain’s delicate balance of plants that protect against erosion and hold water through the seasons.
“Some of them are bad enough that they will even change the soil chemistry, killing native plants and grasses around it just by being there,” said Geiger.
The scale of the work is massive, stretching across the mountain, from steep ski runs to homeowner interface zones and areas disturbed by construction or trail work where invasive plants spread quickly.
They pull and bag weeds, cut back growth along summer roads and meadows and spray targeted patches of thistle, houndstongue and other species.
“Last year, we logged over 3,500 pounds of weeds and trash removed,” Geiger said. “And it’s probably a bigger number than that. We also took on over 2,600 man-hours, give or take, on jobs and projects that we do.”
With early months of the off-season focused on weed abatement, by midsummer, the crew shifts to regrowth projects — planting native species in disturbed areas, tending to the pollinator garden and laying stone or fencing to prevent erosion.
As fall approaches, crews prepare the mountain for the return of snow, filling sinkholes, finishing wood splitting for the lodges and building burn piles that will be torched under the first snowfall.
With more than 2,500 man-hours spent on weed work in a single summer, the labor adds up to more than just sweat. Geiger said he really considers his team to be unofficial junior ecologists, given the scope of their experience and expertise with the land.
“It’s the passion that we have as a crew to handle this never-ending noxious weed issue. We get hired as laborers, but we leave here kind of like junior ecologists, and with so much experience we gather,” said Geiger.
Each summer starts with training sessions led by the nonprofit Ecology Bridge, where specialists walk the crew through weed identification and safe herbicide use. New and returning crew members complete a four-hour training session reviewing how to identify invasive plants and apply treatments according to protocol.
“It’s just as important to regrow and establish more native plants as it is to remove the weeds,” Geiger said.
Geiger explained that visible results often take years, but the difference is clear once native species take hold again. Three summers ago, the crew planted a pollinator garden near the snowmaking ponds at Snow Park.
Funded by a grant through the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food’s Utah Pollinator Habitat Program this year, and irrigated by a solar-powered drip system fed from the nearby snowmaking pond, the garden is planted with goldenrod, willows and other native flowers meant to draw bees and butterflies back to the slopes. Stones salvaged from construction sites were turned into pathways and retaining walls.
“The goal is, in a couple years, that this is just going to be filled with growth, and then people can come down and walk the trail and hang out by the ponds, just have a beautiful place to hang and enjoy our gardens,” said Geiger.
Where Geiger’s crew handles plants — removing invasive weeds and replanting native growth — the saw crew handles trees, cutting and clearing wood to keep runs safe and forests healthy. Assistant Manager of Slope Maintenance Scott Davidson runs the saw crew alongside fellow manager Jake Ringquist.
Their crew of 25 sawyers spends the summer cutting down hazard trees, hauling deadfall and burning piles to keep runs safe and forests healthy. With Deer Valley doubling its terrain ahead of this winter, the saw crew added 12 more sawyers to manage the extra acreage of newly cut ski runs.
“This all started with just kind of cleaning up bladed ski areas, spreading them out a little bit by taking down the standing dead or any deadfall that is still elevated in the air that you could hook a ski under,” Davidson said.
What started as hazard removal has grown into a broader effort in land protection, with crews working to keep skiers safe, but also to reduce wildfire risk, rejuvenate soils and strengthen the long-term health of the forest.
“It’s evolved into some of the more stewardship work now, as well as the fire abatement areas,” said Davidson.
Much of the timber they cut is hauled to safe zones, bucked into logs and then split to supply Deer Valley’s lodges. Empire, Silver Lake, Snow Park and now the new Park Peak Lodge, all rely on steady stacks of firewood to keep their fireplaces burning from open to close each day.
Trees and brush cut in the spring are sorted — what can be used for lodge firewood is set aside, while other material is piled in safe areas to burn. Those piles are burned in the fall once the first snow arrives, which not only clears out the fuel on the ground but also rejuvenates the soil by turning over nutrients.
Davidson said the goal is not just to protect homes and infrastructure, but to improve the long-term health of the mountain.
The crews also make use of material in other ways. Contractors who deconstruct homes often provide leftover rock, siding, or stone, which the slope crews repurpose to stabilize trails and fill in problem areas.
Davidson, who is heading into his 21st winter at Deer Valley, sees the stewardship as part of the resort’s legacy.
“It’s really about just trying to keep everything in good shape, as stewards of not just a resort, but the community as well,” said Davidson.
For Geiger, the payoff is visible in the return of native plants after seasons of work. The sight of pollinators buzzing through a garden once overrun with invasives, or a meadow that comes back stronger after careful pulling and reseeding, is proof that the effort is worthwhile, he said.
“It’s not a coincidence that the Deer Valley colors are green,” he said. “It really feels like there’s a primary focus on efficiency and sustainability. With weed abatement or recycling material across the resort, we always find areas where we could use things. That makes me feel good at the end of the day or the season.”