Deer Valley Resort celebrated the grand opening of the Keetley Express lift, one of the three chairlifts to debut the newly expanded East Village terrain on Thursday. Keetley Express first opened to the public on Dec. 31, helping to quell holiday crowds and improve access to the East Village base village with 500 new parking spaces available off of Route 40. Both Keetley Express, a six-pack Doppelmayr lift with heated seats and an insulated bubble, and the Aurora beginner lift opened on the last day of the year, with the third and final lift to open this season, Hoodoo Express, expected in a few weeks. Hoodoo Express will access beginner trails from the new East Village base. More than 300 skiable acres of brand new terrain are open to the public this season, with 3,400 acres still to open by the conclusion of the Expanded Excellence project.  The new six pack bubble lift Keetley Express carries skiers from the East Village base to the bottom of Sultan Express lift on Bald Mountain. Credit: David Jackson/Park Record“We’ve spent a lot of time touring out here and making sure this place skis in an authentic manner, and it does,” said Mark Brownlie, COO of Alterra Mountain Company, parent company of Deer Valley Resort. “This wouldn’t have happened without our great partnership within the community. We worked hard together to figure out how to design this ski area and get it open. Game on!” With these previewed 300 acres, folks have the opportunity to get to know the new side of Deer Valley as it flows into the existing terrain via the Sultan Express lift on Bald Mt. and the extended McHenry trail from the Silver Lake Lodge area. “This is a summary of what Polly and Edgar (Stern, Deer Valley founders) put out 44 years ago. It is so important to my team that we do it the Deer Valley way, and I’m really proud that as we open the lift today, we are doing it in the Deer Valley way,” said Todd Bennet, president and COO of Deer Valley Resort. “This is exactly what Polly and Edgar would have been so proud of had they been here to see it today.”Chief Operating Officer for Alterra, Mark Brownlie speaks to the crowd about the impact of Deer Valley East Village’s opening. Credit: David Jackson/Park RecordThe opening ceremony for the Expanded Excellence project emphasized collaboration and authenticity, acknowledging the people who made it all happen and the return to Deer Valley’s roots, said Brownlie. With the ribbon cutting at Keetley Express lift, Steve Graff, vice president of mountain operations, also rang the symbolic cowbell, ringing in the start of a new era with the lift’s homecoming. Skiers loaded the lift just before 9 a.m. on Thursday. “It represents a homecoming,” said Shawn Marquardt, vice president of sales at Doppelmayr Group, Deer Valley partners in lift technology systems. “For us it starts with the partnership, then we start with the engineering, and the real hard work starts on the mountain side. Excavating, forming and pouring concrete, building the steel and commissioning the lift which brings us to this moment. We deliver this bell to celebrate the homecoming of the new lift to fulfill guest experience for decades to come.” By the 2025-26 season, Deer Valley promises their second phase of expansion to include nine total chairlifts, including a gondola, and 110 new ski runs servicing almost 600 additional skiable acres. The third expansion phase will debut the final 2,800 acres, making for 5,726 total skiable acres across Deer Valley, accessed by 37 new chairlifts and 238 ski runs across 10 mountain peaks. The timing of this third phase opening remains to be determined.The first chair riders arrive at the top of the newly opened Keetley Express lift at Deer Valley East Village Tuesday, Dec. 31 when it opened before the grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday. Credit: Park Record file photo by David JacksonThe post Deer Valley Resort celebrates the first of new chairlifts in expanded terrain appeared first on Park Record.