This resort now claims Utah’s longest ski run at 4.85 miles

Sorry Red Sox fans, but Park City had the Green Monster first. And, it’s bigger.

The Green Monster is, most famously, the name that Boston’s Major League Baseball team bestowed upon the giant wall looming over its outfield. The wall, still the tallest in the league and a well-known home run killer, was built in 1912. Yet it didn’t receive its iconic moniker — also the source of the name of the Red Sox’s mascot, Wally the Green Monster — until it was painted green in 1947.

Decades before that, prospectors gave the same handle to a mine in the mountains near Park City. This Green Monster derived its name from a streak of malachite — a form of copper — that ran down the cliff alongside the mine. And it was a monster, as far as mines go. Park City mining historian Michael O’Malley said it produced copper, silver, gold and iron from 1900 until 1953.

After 70 years under ground, though, the Green Monster will rise to prominence in Park City again this year. This time, it will take the form of a beginner ski run winding through Deer Valley Resort’s expanded East Village terrain. Fitting of its name, it won’t just be any old green run either. At 4.85 miles, it stands to become the longest ski run in all of Utah and among the longest on the continent.

Deer Valley expects to debut 20 new runs and three lifts in the expanded terrain this ski season, weather permitting. Included in that expansion are a 4.5-mile route that pieces together Homeward Bound with the new 2.62-mile McHenry trail and most of the monstrous Green Monster.

“I think it is a fantastic name,” said O’Malley, also a Deer Valley Resort mountain host, “for what’s going to become one of the longest beginner runs in the country.”

Park City Mountain’s Homerun previously held sway as the state’s longest run. Also a beginner trail, it stretches 3.5 miles from the top of Bonanza Express to the parking lot at the bottom of the Mountain Village base. Originally dubbed Sidewinder, Park City Mountain spokesperson Emily McDonald said the name was changed prior to the 2002 Olympics, when the ski area hosted giant slalom and halfpipe snowboarding events.

It isn’t unusual for a resort’s longest run to also be one of its mildest, said outgoing National Ski Areas Association President and CEO Kelly Pawlak.

“Longest runs tend to be the easier route down from summits,” Pawlak wrote in an email in December. “They serpentine down or follow the outer ski area boundary.”

Utah’s two next longest trails buck that trend, though. They are, according to Ski Utah, the 2.85-mile intermediate Chip’s Run at Snowbird and the 2.28-mile expert Wood Lawn run at Solitude Mountain Resort.

Though Green Monster will up the ante locally, it won’t move Utah up in the world of longest ski runs, even domestically. The 5.3-mile Longshot at Aspen-Snowmass Ski Resort still has it beat. So does the 5.5-mile Olympic Downhill at Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Actually located on the Nevada side of the resort, it is considered the longest continuous run in the United States.

Nathan Rafferty, the president and CEO of Ski Utah, the marketing arm of the Utah ski industry, said he wasn’t sure why the state doesn’t have as many extended runs as other states.

“Different ski regions have different strengths or things they pay attention to,” he said, “and I guess it’s not one for us. We’re always talking about deep snow and vertical runs.”

For even more of a leg burner, look to the north. Revelstoke’s 9.5-mile Last Spike, a beginner trail, is about four times longer than most top-to-bottom mountain runs in Utah. Canada also claims two 7-mile monsters: Whistler’s intermediate Peak to Creek and Blackcomb’s aptly named Green Line Down.

The longest continuous, lift-accessed ski run in the world, meanwhile, appears to be La Sarenne, an expert trail at Alp d’Huez in France. It measures a knee-quivering 16 kilometers, or roughly 9.95 miles.

Deer Valley guests will have to take at least two lifts to get to the top of Green Monster. Still, it probably won’t take much of a toll on skiers. Resort operators expect it will take just 20 to 30 minutes to travel down it, depending on a skier’s ability and the number of stops he or she makes.

“It’s going to be a really amazing green run,” Deer Valley communications director Susie English said, “because it’s going to go all the way from Sliver Lake down that canyon to Deer Valley East Village.”

That’s long enough for the kids to be clamoring for a cup of hot cocoa just so they can sit down after skiing it. Just don’t let them hit “the wall.”