Vail's Bet

Above: Assessment Ski Run. Park City Mountain. Park City, UT. 07 January 2025.
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I had a fabulous time skiing at Park City Mountain today. Crispy temperatures and an inch layer of fresh overnight snow melded with the sunlight to make for nirvana skiing conditions.

Image (above) of Espresso (80) and my shadow (79) on Assessment proves that geezers can still ski bumps! There is no walk back from this point as shown in the image! I told Espresso, "All you have to know is how to turn!" No other skiers in the image, as most skiers are intimidated by runs of this difficulty (heh heh).

Starting at Orange Bubble, we skied Echo down to Sun Peak. From Sun Peak we skied all the way to Timberline via Chicane. This was my best experience on Chicane in some time. It was early, not crowded and there was quite a bit of corduroy left.

Across on Timberline... up Iron Mountain and down to the Quicksilver Gondola. Over to Silverlode base and Miner's Camp for a break.

The Quicksilver gondola is an engineering marvel. As I looked over the beautiful Wasatch Mountain landscape from the gondola car, I couldn't help but appreciate the Quicksilver gondola and significant additional capital improvements Vail Corporation, owner of Park City Mountain, has made to the resort since it purchased Park City Mountain ten years ago. I've been skiing Park City Mountain on a regular basis for twenty-five years. Vail has markedly enhanced the ski experience beyond what the former ownership had accomplished, while simultaneously, with its EPIC pass, lowering the cost of an annual ski pass. And, for this contribution, as a skier and a shareholder I am much appreciative. My guess is, that Park City merchants and hotels are also grateful for the increased ski traffic Park City Mountain has brought to the resort during the ten years of its resort ownership.

This ski season, a low snowfall early period and a ski patroller strike have slowed opening the mountain to its full capacity. Lots of bad stories about resort performance emerged during the holiday period. Somebody told me this AM that for circa 230 ski patroller positions at Park City, there are 2000 applicants. If this is true, the law of supply and demand would suggest that Vail's resistance to offering more pay, despite ongoing resort struggle using scab ski patrollers unfamiliar with Park City Mountain, is a bet worth taking (?). Vail has a business to run and constituencies who benefit their contribution to Park City want to see them sustain corporate viability by effectively managing costs even as they pour even more improvements into the ski mountain.

Since knowing, 25 years ago, then PCMR ski patrol head Mitzi DeLeon, I have been impressed with the professionalism of the Park City Mountain ski patrollers. It's an elite group, especially considering how so many would be members have to be turned away from being in its employ. Park City Mountain is getting the best of the best. I hope they can resolve their labor dispute successfully.

Unions can be a good thing, but in this case, with so many people willing to replace Park City's unionized ski patrollers as scabs, the striking ski patrollers need to understand the strength - or weakness - of whatever bargaining power they have. Vail, an enormous corporation, has the capacity to bring the mountain up to snuff with nonunion ski patrollers if that's what they deem is in their best economic interest. Vail also has to deal with the Park City ski patroller union in the broad context of the many other resorts they own.

The striking air traffic controllers during the Reagan presidency learned a hard lesson about striking while outstripping their supply lines. Vail isn't the US government, but the analogy still works. As to bad PR hurting Vail? People forget. When, down the road, the resort is firing on all eight, skiers will be up there skiing... at least that is the bet that Vail is making.

I feel badly that many holiday visitors had a bad experience skiing at Park City Mountain. Speaking for myself, though, today, I had a fabulous time skiing there. I hope that Vail and Park City Mountain can successfully resolve its labor problems before the President's Day weekend. And I hope for more snow! SDT