After navigating through the Red Pine base, I was arcing turns at the top of Chicane when my snowboarding companion called out: “Hey, let’s stop here for a minute.” She was transfixed looking out to the snow-covered Uintas. “This is one of my favorite spots on this side of the mountain,” she said. “It’s one of those spots that you can just fly right by.”
Park City Mountain’s chief operating officer Deirdra Walsh and I were off on a Saturday afternoon adventure. After greeting me at the Canyons Transit Hub, we headed up the cabriolet and set off on a scenic tour to Park City’s historic Main Street.
Working through the maze at the Orange Bubble Express, you could quickly see her engagement with people – chatting with lifties and striking up conversations with guests. You also got a sense of camaraderie and pride from Walsh, a Parkite for nearly 20 years whose career straddled multiple owners at the resort.
Walsh is a St. Louis native who found Park City in 2004 working with a travel company. A few years later she made her way to a convention job at Park City Mountain and eventually into a senior food and beverage leadership role. In 2019, she was tabbed to lead Northstar California Resort, leaving Park City with hope of returning.
Sliding into a bustling Tombstone base area, she beamed talking about being part of the team that created Tombstone BBQ, where they smoke meats on site. The restaurant and nearby Over and Out lift have been transformational at one of the most important junctions on the mountain.
After a three-year stint leading Northstar, Walsh returned home last spring, jumping into a hornet’s nest of public criticism toward the resort that heightened during the 2021-22 season. While she had been 600 miles away, she kept close contact and visited her Park City home often.
At every lift, she greeted staff by name, engaged in banter and conveyed a sense of pride. The vibe was good, certainly better than a season ago. “I didn’t have to be here to know how hard it was last year,” she said. “We always had one foot still in the door here when we were in California.”
Most would say, yes, it is a better vibe this year. Many would also point to the record snowfall. “Last year there was no snow and this year there’s been so much,” she said. “But it’s more than that.”
In a period of myriad platforms for public feedback to accentuate viewpoints, Walsh brings in a leadership philosophy she is instilling across her team of thousands of employees to build pride and enhance service. “One of my attitudes around leadership is ‘what matters most is what we know to be true,’” she said. “I want to bring everybody back to ‘what’s the focus of what we can control and where do we find pride in what we do?’”
At Iron Mountain Express, Walsh was quick to lend a hand with a ski school full of kids. She helped a young skier onto our chair, a six-year-old ripper from McPolin who had been doing the cross mountain gondola adventure.
Walsh loves talking about her own two kids, who grew up in Park City, and the opportunity they have had to ski. “I give a lot of credit to the daycare here in Park City for all the things they help me to be able to do as a parent,” she said. “But the key thing is they loaded up all these kids in buses and brought them over to ski every Friday!”
It was pushing mid-afternoon when we hit the Quicksilver Gondola. It was bustling with guests who had made the journey over to the Canyons side, now making their way back. When Quicksilver opened in December 2015, joining the two resorts, it created a mountain experience unlike any other in America.
As we chatted on Quicksilver the conversation turned to lifts. Like many skiers, she’s disappointed by the two projects that were thwarted last summer. But she remains bullish on the future, especially after returning from a sister city visit to Courchevel in February and seeing first hand the positive impact of new ski lift technology in the French Alps.
As we slid off Silverlode and prepared for our final run down to Main Street, we skated over to the new This is Your Mountain sign atop the ridgeline. “Hey, let me take your picture,” she shouted out to a family from New York. The kids and the parents had big smiles on their faces as Walsh took a series of photos.
Over a slice of pizza and a beer at Davanza’s, I reflected on the afternoon. Across a 7,000 acre resort, skiing brings people together. Walsh’s focus is people – first and foremost her own team. She summed it up simply in a chairlift conversation. “What I care most about are the people in the room – what is your purpose, what inspires you and what makes you proud.”