Deer Valley’s Biggest Expansion Yet: 200+ New Runs, 1 Epic Naming Story

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Deer Valley’s Historic Expansion Adds 3,700 Acres, 16 New Lifts, a New Village, and 200+ Named Runs Across Four Peaks

The iconic Utah ski resort is more than doubling in size, adding expanded terrain, a new gondola, and the state’s longest ski run. With 135 new runs opening across 3,700 acres, plus a new base village and over 200 new names, this is the biggest expansion in Deer Valley’s history.

Deer Valley’s Naming Challenge Across Expanding Terrain

Deer Valley. It’s all in a name. 

‍It would be fun coming up with a name for a new ski lift or ski run. At Deer Valley resort’s new extension, they had to come up with two hundred.

‍Poop Shoot. Idiot’s Delight. These are just two of the many colourful names of ski runs that grace resorts in North America (Poop Shoot is in Whistler and Idiot’s Delight is in Alpine Meadows, California).

Names of ski runs and lifts can seem quite random (and sometimes silly), but they can also be determined by everything from the cut of the terrain and historical references to local legends and regional lingo.

You can make steep double-black runs sound even scarier when you give them names like Trench of Terror (Kirkwood), Body Bag (Crested Butte) or Doom and Gloom (Whistler). In Wengen, Switzerland the runs have German/Swiss German names like Schattwald and Bärhaag, but they have one steep off-piste run with an English name: Oh God.

In Australia we use fair dinkum Aussie lingo with run names like Wombat Ramble, Boomerang and Walkabout. Runs named after local legends can also have great backstories like the Drunken Frenchman run at Winter Park, Colorado. “Frenchy” worked for the logging company in charge of clearing the way for the Mary Jane area trail system and he would knock back two six-packs of beer and a bottle of wine each day as he cleared trees with a chainsaw. A few years later they cut a new access run to Drunken Frenchman and named it Sober Englishman.

How Deer Valley Named 80 New Runs and 16 Lifts

Naming a new run or three isn’t a big ask, but Deer Valley will see the biggest extension of a U.S. ski resort in history. The resort will more than double its skiable acres across four peaks adding 3,700 acres, 80 new runs, 16 lifts (including a 10-person gondola), and a new village with its own lodging, restaurants and ski school. And all those runs, lifts, restaurants and facilities need names. Over 200 new names in total.

This season saw the opening of three of the new chairlifts and 300 skiable acres. I joined Deer Valley Mountain Host Matt for a tour, and we began on one of the newly cut runs called Green Monster which, when the top section of the run opens next winter, will be the longest run in Utah at 7.8 kilometres. The terrain extension also comes with new views as we took in the expansive vistas down to the shimmering Jordanelle Reservoir and verdant Heber Valley. Matt also pointed out some of the soon-to-be new terrain for Phase two which opens next season, ranging from bowls and north-facing glades to steep, sustained groomers. 

Meet the Man Behind the Names: Michael O’Malley

It was while we were taking in the views that I asked Matt, “Why is this run called Green Monster?” It did seem odd for a cruisy easy run to have monster in the name – it sounds more like something you’d call a gnarly black run. Matt explained that it was a name of a mining claim in the area, which had a green-coloured streak of malachite that ran down the cliffside next to the mine. “Who comes up with the names of the runs?” I asked. “You need to meet Micheal O'Malley. He came up with all the names.”
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Michael sure knows the mountain. He has been a Deer Valley Mountain Host for almost thirty years – and is also Park City’s unofficial historian. “The names I presented all came from mining claims,” Micheal told me when we met at the base. “The final list topped 700 names.” The list was compiled using a 1902 and 1932 map of mining claims in the county, and Micheal also spent hours at the Utah State Archives in Salt Lake City, spinning through microfiche images of mining claims in Wasatch County (where Deer Valley’s East Village is located).

Deer Valley’s Mining History Behind the New Run Names

There would be no shortage of mine names - there was 1,600 kilometres of tunnels beneath these mountains, where silver and lead had been mined since 1868. The area had seen booms and busts over the next century, but the last producing mine was an ore mine on the slopes of Deer Valley, which stopped production in 1982.

Not all the mining claim names could be used, though. “There were a fair number of claims with the word ‘rock’ in them,” Micheal told me. “And we shy away from those given that rocks have a deleterious effect on the bottoms of skis!”

Deer Valley’s ski patrol and mountain operations personnel also had a say in what names made the final list. They are on the resort’s walkie-talkie system every day, so the name had to be easy to understand when transmitted over the airwaves.

Micheal was thrilled that Deer Valley chose some of his favourite mining claim names for the newly opened terrain. “They used Green Monster, Yaup and Lady of the Lake. ‘Yaup’ means to howl or emit long cries. It just sounds funny and probably speaks to the frustration of the miner who filed that claim. ‘Lady of the Lake’ is a poetic name for another lovely new blue run under the Keetley chair, and it has great views of Jordanelle Reservoir.” Micheal is hoping they will use another one of his favourites, a 1904 claim called “Ping Pong” for a mogul run.
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He's also trying to rehash a name that’s been put up before. When Deer Valley opened in 1981, marketing at the time had the idea to name most of the trail and lift names after mining claims. Owner Edgar Stern agreed, although he made a few changes to the final list. Word is that he eliminated the mining claim “Poor Man” from consideration, since “There’s nothing poor about Deer Valley!” I’d have to agree with that after paying AU$60 for a take-out lobster roll from a hut on the mountain. 

How Deer Valley Chose the Final Names

So, how do you whittle down 700 names to 200? I asked Susie English, the Vice President of Marketing at Deer Valley. “We filtered out names that already exist at other resorts or names that were too similar to what we already have.” From there, Susie worked with Steve Graff, the Vice President of Mountain Operations, to name the lifts first, prioritizing strong, memorable names that would be easy for guests to remember, which include Hoodoo Express and Revelator.
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The team also tried to select names that matched the character and feel of each run. For example, the run at the bottom of Revelator Express winds down the canyon, with multiple other runs feeding into it, so they named it after a mining claim called Catch All.

It's all in a name they say. The names might not be as outlandish as Throbulator (Burke Mountain, Vermont), Cleavage (Banff Sunshine Village), Spanky’s Ladder (Whistler) or Devil’s Crotch (Breckenridge), but utilizing mining claim names creates a meaningful connection between the mountain and its history.