Deer Valley opened the new base area at Mayflower/Keetley/East Village on Tuesday. I had to go try it out, and apparently everybody else did, too. Parking was easy in a huge parking lot. The shuttle drive from the parking lot to the base of the lift is longer (and colder) than expected, and the trailers seem to have been designed by personal injury lawyers. The driver politely warned us of that, and said they were already working on a retro-fit.The Keetley lift is a six-pack with heated seats that actually work and a bubble if you want to pull it down. The top of the lift is right where Stein’s Way splits to either go to the Sultan or Mayflower lifts. Approaching it from the bottom seemed strange. It took a minute to figure out where we were. It was a busy spot with everybody doing exactly what my group was doing — exploring it for the first time and doing laps down McHenry Canyon. Nobody knew where they were going, but that didn’t slow them down.  We took a lap later in the day, and the traffic had cleared. It was pretty scenic skiing.  It’s just two lifts from the parking lot to the top of Bald Mountain. It all worked smoothly. Mayflower has been on the drawing boards for 40 years. It’s fun to see it happen.The complexity of an undertaking of that size, from the big stuff like getting the lifts installed to details like putting up signs and solving the trip hazard on the shuttle — and miles of snow-making pipes, newly graded trails in complicated topography — well, it’s an enormous job. It’s open a year ahead of the announced schedule, fully staffed and ready to roll. The employees were excited to be part of it all. They pulled this off at the same time they are getting the rest of the mountain open in a year when that has been rough going. They decided to open the resort a week earlier than planned, and for the holidays, are opening the lifts an hour early. The hotel construction isn’t Deer Valley’s job, but there has to be a lot of coordination along the way. Mind bogglingly difficult.Congratulations to Todd Bennett and the whole Deer Valley team on getting the new base up and running while getting the rest of the resort open at the same time.           Meanwhile, next door, they are having a hard time keeping the Sweet Pea magic carpet running. My pass is blacked out, so I did not see it in person. But the firsthand reports are not good. Only about 20% of the terrain is open, and that’s scraped off. The lifts aren’t opening on schedule. The resort says things have been complicated by power outages, which are bad karma but not their fault. Snow safety delays factor in, too, even on days when there have been a few inches of new snow.  And there is that matter of the strike.The end result is loud complaints of long lines, limited terrain with lousy conditions on crowded runs, overwhelmed food service and guests who have spent thousands of dollars on a long-anticipated family vacation that is as disappointing as going to the beach in a hurricane. A friend who went to business school said the technical term for the situation is a “Category 5 sh*t storm.”            Looking at it from the outside, it’s impossible to know how much of the problem is the strike and how much of it is more systemic. Obviously, the strike is causing disruptions — that’s the whole point. But the opening felt sort of derailed long before the strike.Company-wide, Vail had a reduction in full-time employees last fall. I keep thinking back to the year of the $9 hotdog served cold on a bare paper plate without condiments. That was the season the place almost collapsed because they couldn’t find employees willing to work for the wages offered. Bumping pay up significantly the next year had it running smoothly again. For a season or two.The official word from management is that everything is peachy, and it’s just been a very difficult year due to the poor natural snow. They might get away with that in other markets, but they have a competitor immediately next door that ran smoothly during the holiday crowding while opening a completely new base area for the first time with exactly the same poor natural snow conditions. So it obviously can be done.I’d feel better if they blamed it all on the strike. Instead, it feels like the holiday debacle was a result of deliberate decisions to control costs, like the $9 hotdog year. It’s definitely aggravated by the strike but maybe not caused by it. My fear is that Vail is using its national market domination to redefine an acceptable ski experience, lower expectations, and cut costs. The new, reduced normal. I feel sorry for the frontline employees who are taking the brunt of it.  They can’t do anything about it.  The kid with the ticket scanner or the overwhelmed cashier at the lodge didn’t wreck your vacation.  Be kind to them.  It’s not their fault, and they aren’t having any fun, either.Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.The post More Dogs on Main: Welcome to Keetley, where the lifts are running appeared first on Park Record.