A slow 2025/26 ski season start. - 21 December 2025

Above: Succes ski run. Deer Valley, UT. 21 December 2022.
4-6-19

A picture says a thousand words. Park City is off to a poor start snow-wise this 2025/26 ski season. Up until yesterday, at Deer Valley, there have only been a couple of long, groomed ski runs available since Deer Valley opened for skiing ten days ago... Birdseye off of the Sterling Lift and Success off of the Carpenter Lift. In past low snow years at this time there have been seven or eight ski options ready which are equivalent to Success and Birdseye. I.e. Deer Valley can open ski runs using manufactured snow even in low actual snowfall periods. But there must be cold temperatures to make snow and most of December to date has been warm.

The crowd of skiers in the image is partly why I skipped skiing this run and took the Silver Lake Express lift down to Snow Park and the parking lot. The image is captured from the Silver Lake Express lift chair. I can ski crowds if I have to. I can ski cut up snow if I have to. But I don't like to ski both. And "both" was the condition of Success as I over flew the run in my lift chair. I feel badly for the tourists who have come to find only limited ski terrain.

Earlier, I got in three pretty good Sterling Lift runs before the lift was put on wind hold. Two of the runs were on Birdseye and the other was on Homeward Bound/ Ontario, opened for the first time today. Even during the December holiday period, I can usually get in seven or eight decent runs before the crowds build up, and the snow gets cut up.
Despite disappointing conditions it's better to be on the mountain savoring the views and the fresh air than at home in an armchair! Count today as a good day.

We may have to tough it out for a while longer. There are storms coming in but the jet stream is keeping them north of the Wasatch.

Over the course of the season, I'm going to make a list of ski rules based on my own experience of skiing for twenty-five years in Park City. I'll list the rules as I think of them and then aggregate them at the end of the season.

Steve's ski rules:

1. Ski as though anyone skiing in your field of sight could fall or make an unexpected maneuver.