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Show Champagne cruise? Deer Valley Marketing Director Kuss Veenema, champagne bottles in "SPLAT!" Clark Mower of Bingham Engineering christens the new lift with a vigorous hand, heads for the bottom of the Mayflower lift. ph' by David Hampshire swing. ' Park City luminaries sneak a peek at new Deer Valley runs by David Hampshire If you were looking for someone to sell you a piece of property Friday afternoon, you probably had to look a little harder than usual. Unless you happened to be riding Deer Valley's new Mayflower lift. Many of the best-known names in Park City real estate including four members of the Park City Council-took Council-took the afternoon off Friday to take a few test runs on Deer Valley's Bald Mountain. The sneak preview, which included in-cluded the official opening of the Mayflower triple chair, came the day before Deer Valley's official opening for the 1984-85 season. Representing the resort at the opening were a number of officials including President Jim Nassikas, General Manager John Miiller and Marketing Director Russ Veenema. To reach the new lift, the group first rode the Wasatch triple chair to the top of Bald Mountain, then followed the intermediate Perseverance Persever-ance run to the top of Mayflower. Veenema said the newly-opened terrain faces in a northeasterly direction, "which makes it fantastic moming skiing." Since the bottom of the Mayflower lift is at the 7,400-foot mark (only 200 feet in elevation above Snow Park), the snow cover is expected to be thin early in the season. "We are lucky this year to have it open for opening day," Veenema said. "But it holds snow really well... At the end of the season there's a ton of snow in there." The group wound its way down "Orient Express," a well-groomed expert run, to the bottom of Mayflower, then rode the lift to the top. Below the lift to the east was a spectacular vista including Keetley, Hailstone Junction and the Heber Valley. To make it official, two bottles of champagne were smashed against the tower supporting the upper terminal of the lift. Swinging the bottles were Jim Nassikas, representing represen-ting Deer Valley, and Clark Mower of Bingham Engineering, representing represent-ing the Dutch firm which is developing the nearby Mayflower resort. Mower said installation of utilities for the 2,000-unit development on the east side of Bald Mountain could begin as early as 1985. Following the ceremony, members of the group split up to explore other runs on Bald Mountain. Of the six new runs developed in conjunction with the Mayflower lift, four are considered expert and two intermediate. Veenema said five of the six can be groomed if necessary. "It's up to the supervisor to decide whether they will be groomed every night." Veenema said one run, Narrow Gauge, which runs directly under the lift, will not be groomed. "It's going to be a 1,500-foot-of-vertical-nonstop bump run," he said. Two other runs, Paradise and Fortune Teller, m will be groomed "very infrequently," infrequent-ly," he said. Among other changes, the resort has cut two new runs west of the i Sterling lift to help relieve the congestion at the top of Bald Mountain. "This year you can get off the Sterling lift and turn immediately to your right and go to Emerald and Sunset (the new runs)," Veenema said. He described the difficulty level as "intermediate and low intermediate." Deer Valley opened its lifts to the public Saturday, Dec. 8. |