February 22 & 23, 2005, Deer Valley,UT

Deer Valley is not normally on our list of "must" ski areas but free lifts tickets changed that. We have friends who work at Deer Valley and they provided us coupons for 2 days. With a daily lift ticket price of $71, $284 worth of tickets made Deer Valley a must ski area. Both days were sunny and in the mid 20's. It was a groomers paradise with high speed quads all around. The crowd is rather affluent and we noticed plenty of dead animals draped on collars. Although the lodge food is expensive, we had the best soup and cherry pie at any ski area. It was a pleasant change from all that cold powder blowing on our clothes while skiing in the recent snowstorm. Time to go touring.<br><br>Zap & Jill

Hi "retired" powder hounds,<br><br>funny how "free" changes everything! Question for you - does Deer Valley allow snowboards now or is it still Toas as the last hold-ut on good moral sense?<br><br>Keep the reports coming...although it's torture!

No snow boards at Deer Valley.......They don't go good with the Bogner one piece suits.

Snowboards are not allowed at Deer Valley, yet. I wore my randonee gear because I wanted to see how my new Atomic REX would handle groomed and crud - they were great. I got plenty of stares. I also inquired about touring from their backcountry access gates. The ski patrol informed me there are no backcountry access gates at Deer Valley, apparently the ski resort is on private property.