The skiing was epic! Sorry, I mean the line to get to the skiing...
January 4, 2022 4:05 PM   Subscribe

The ski season in parts of North America is in full swing, with massive storms in the West, including a record setting December in California, with more on the way. But it's the record crowds and pressure on small ski towns from Covid, massive increases in season pass sales, an influx of remote workers causing an afforability crisis for ski town workers, and labor shortages that are causing significant problems.

One of the largest resort operators in the US, Vail Resorts, has been criticized for selling 76% more passes this season than in the 2019/2020 season (19/20 being pre-Covid sales, and 47% more than last season during Covid), while not having the staff or management to adequately deal with the result. This has led to major resorts being unprepared for the season, including at Stevens Pass, and Crotched Mountain. Pressure is also growing on Vail and other operators because of the treatment of their workers.

There is also potential strike action by the Ski Patrol at Park City Mountain, the largest ski resort in the US, after nearly 50 meetings with the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association (PCPSPA) Union have failed to result in an agreed contract.

Bonus for US East Coasters: Vail recently acquired three more resorts in Pennsylvania....
posted by inflatablekiwi (20 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Really just posted this because its just insane how much pressure this season is putting on small ski towns and the ski industry workers. Hearing so many stories of just how bad VR is being run and its impacting their staff and the towns they operate in - including VR both falling to pay staff in some locations last week while still demanding their pay rent on employee housing. And the influx of skiers is resulting in traffic chaos and real safety concerns where locals can't get to necessary services because roads are unpassable with traffic. Original title of the post was Vuck Fail (left to the reader to rearrange the letters)

Also, disclosure, I am not in the ski industry but have contributed to the PCPSPA action fund......they are good bastards who get up at 0'dark 30 in freezing conditions to carry dynamite up hills for avalanche control to protect skiers......yet still have the good temper to rescue my kids when they frequently ski down holes, and provide medical care on the mountain, and they deserve a living wage and way more than Vail is offering.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 4:07 PM on January 4, 2022 [12 favorites]


The last two years have been quite frustrating for skiers, I am sure... we are still smarting from jumping through all manner of new hoops to pre-pay for lift passes and reserve specific days at specific resorts, only to find our options for reimbursement vanish in the wind if travel plans had to change for anything but a narrow range of reasons. I'm looking at you, Epic Pass/Vail Resorts; you don't get our business anymore.
posted by skippyhacker at 4:37 PM on January 4, 2022


“Whether it's a large skiing company or a small brewery, eventually those costs really start to cut into the proprietary income,” Bailey said. “As employers start to say, ‘Hold on, I'm going to have to increase my prices,’ it becomes a vicious cycle because with prices increasing, your average household is having to spend more.”

Except the people who are most affected by the price increases are people with lots and lots of disposable income for leisure. It's not like people earning $17/hr are going out and worrying about the price of lift tickets.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:41 PM on January 4, 2022 [6 favorites]


tl;dr Fuck Vail Resorts in Particular.

Some r/skiing threads 1,2 , Park city lines 3 days ago.....
posted by lalochezia at 4:44 PM on January 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


Read this a while back: How to Save a Ski Town

In Telluride, Colorado, where the joke goes that the billionaires have pushed out the millionaires, citizens placed an initiative on the November ballot for the town’s first-ever short-term rental cap. When I speak to Telluride mayor DeLanie Young in August, she tells me that she’s received dozens of emails in response, mostly against the measure. The writers are almost all second-home owners, and some own three or four properties, she says.
posted by meowzilla at 4:46 PM on January 4, 2022 [7 favorites]


Skiing Still Innovates.....Bonus: Skuggling and Skuggling Air
posted by lalochezia at 4:47 PM on January 4, 2022


Park city lines 3 days ago.....

I hear ya. I noped out of PCMR during the break despite having a full season pass and headed to Woodward PC - which is more or less a speed bump of a hill - but with kids under 10 and maybe a 30 second wait to get the one lift even on a holiday……it’s perfect. Plus I got to hit the boxes and pretend I’m *cough* 25 years younger
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:06 PM on January 4, 2022


Oof at one point I was wishing I was closer to an Epic Pass resort, but man, now I’m happy Mt Baker is proudly independent (knock on wood). They made a lot of new prospective pass holders mad by not doing exactly this, not turning a quick buck on increasing pass sales to keep up with demand.

I’ve only been once this season, the Monday after Xmas, but they seemed to have things under control. We’ll see when I go up again on Sat.
posted by supercres at 5:23 PM on January 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


One of the linked articles within another link above is “How to save a ski town”, and it presents a very hopeful idea for using deed restrictions to compel homes to be sold to workers that reside in the home’s town. It almost sounds obvious, and it worked in Whistler, and it would work just as well in my local tourist towns of Sonoma and Napa as it would in Aspen. Reading this particular article, I feel a burst of hope about American housing in tourist cities for the first time in a very long time, and I didn’t even know that was possible. Highly recommended.
posted by Callisto Prime at 5:31 PM on January 4, 2022 [4 favorites]


We have reached a stage in the global economy where no significant human or nature driven change can occur without triggering a potentially destabilizing and destructive financial bubble of some sort.

This is the opposite of strength and resilience.
posted by jamjam at 5:40 PM on January 4, 2022 [8 favorites]


Yeah, just read a thing in the Seattle Times about Crystal and Stevens Pass, both now owned by Mega Ski Corps. How they couldn't get workers. The days of getting people to work for peanuts in remote ski towns, where every space is being rented out through AirBnB, seem to be long gone.
posted by Windopaene at 6:35 PM on January 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


…..so the mega corps will likely ramp up exploiting foreign nationals through the J1 visa program. The desperate pleas from J1 workers trying to find *any* housing has been a constant chorus locally for the last few weeks….to the point where even those who end up trying to live in vans are finding all the RV parks are full already with full time employees who have been pushed out of rental housing. It’s crazy.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:13 PM on January 4, 2022 [4 favorites]


For those who don't know, ski patrollers are like "paramedics"* on the mountain. NSP-certified patrollers take a course called Outdoor Emergency Care which is an equivalent amount of training (80 hours) to an EMT-Basic. I believe some states recognize OEC as sufficient training for EMT certification.

*There are 3 levels of "paramedics", of which EMT-Basic is the entry level and "paramedic" is the highest.

I'm a patroller in an all-volunteer nordic/backcountry patrol. Our base is across the highway from a downhill resort and we do trainings with their patrol.

I'm a doctor. I knew next to nothing about prehospital care before my OEC course. I learned a lot. Patrollers manage fractures, head injuries, heart attacks, etc etc. At the resorts in my area, an ambulance takes over an hour to get there, then 90 minutes to get to a hospital. If the highway is clear, which of course it isn't. Those first minutes of care are important.
posted by neuron at 8:43 AM on January 5, 2022 [11 favorites]


Callisto Prime, there are regional housing trusts in our area, among other options and organizations, Sonoma County has the Housing Land Trust of Sonoma County. The land trust allows "ownership" in that the price for which the home can be re-sold is indexed to the Area Median Income, and I believe there are restrictions on the professions of the new "buyers".

The problem is, of course, two-fold: The first is that the homes in these trusts are generally set-asides from large suburban subdivisions (which have their own auto-oriented problems), which means that it's people in the middle of the income spectrum who are paying for it.

The second is that it's just a stop-gap. It's great that we set these aside for our firefighters and teachers, but it isn't nearly enough to actually serve the community. Instead we continue to widen 101 so that our retail and service workers can commute in from further and further away.
posted by straw at 9:06 AM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


Vail pass refund issues were so bad they fired the company who used to handle them and hired a new company to do it.

I mean, they didn't tell anyone they were doing that. They just did it. Imagine my surprise when I called to ask why my pass refund claim was rejected only to be told "we don't handle claims for Vail any more."

(I blew out my ACL before the ski season even started. I sent them the form they requested, signed by the surgeon. They still rejected it claiming "insufficient evidence". The new company, once I got in touch with them, processed the refund very quickly.)
posted by caution live frogs at 11:48 AM on January 5, 2022


For those who don't know, ski patrollers are like "paramedics"* on the mountain.

In addition to this vital service they also mark hazards and obstacles on the mountain to help people avoid getting stuck above a cliff or hitting obscured rocks and the like.

Perhaps most importantly they also use a variety of tools and techniques including explosives to set off controlled avalanches after fresh snow fall to lessen the possibility that guests will trigger them and get entrapped.
posted by mmascolino at 1:19 PM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


Just how bad is Covid in Park City driven by ski season tourism....well, hot off the wire Sundance announced it is going all virtual with no in-person screenings, despite being only two weeks out from the planned hybrid festival. The Park City small area now has the highest Covid case rates in Utah (which already had relatively high case rates), despite Summit County/Park City being highly vaccinated and boosted.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 2:54 PM on January 5, 2022


At some point, wouldn't it make sense for these ski resorts to build their own staff housing? I mean, that's what the Park Service does for places like Yellowstone (and yeah, I know the Park Service doesn't operate the hotel concessions itself, Xanterra does, but they use the Park Service buildings).

The flip side of the cost of housing increasing, is that the value of offering your employees housing also increases.

And it's a lot easier for a company that already owns a bunch of land to build a new building on it, than to purchase land, try to get it re-zoned for multifamily, build it, sell it, etc. It seems to me that in seasonal-industry towns, the fastest path to "more housing" is by encouraging the employers to build it. I'd be a little surprised if it's not tax-deductible for them already, but if it's not... maybe it should be.

I also suspect that a lot of people would be more comfortable living in a multi-family, high-density building (especially if it's something ultra-dense like an SRO or bedsit/HMO) if they all work at the same place and are all seasonal employees or whatever. So if your goal is density (which allows stuff like carfreedom, district heating, muni wireless, etc.), corporate housing seems like it'd be worth encouraging.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:36 PM on January 5, 2022


At some point, wouldn't it make sense for these ski resorts to build their own staff housing?

Or I don't know, maybe drop the street grid and copy other famous ski towns, like Zermatt Switzerland, where the Matterhorn is? Compare Zermatt and Crested Butte CO on google maps, and the things they each have done to support the vacation/skiing industry is night and day. Crested Butte is yet another suburb without any city attached instead of a small town.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:14 AM on January 6, 2022


At some point, wouldn't it make sense for these ski resorts to build their own staff housing?


yes but building on federal forest land (out West, most ski resorts are at least partially built on federal forest land) is an arduous process with multi-year approval processes. Plus I am sure the resort companies would rather spend their capital on something more directly customer facing.

Or I don't know, maybe drop the street grid and copy other famous ski towns

It is a real big difference between places that were long cities/towns for a long time and then commercial skiing was built up nearby vs. this remote track of land would be a good place to build a ski resort. Europe in general is just so much more dense than the US even in the mountains. The towns of Aspen, Breckenridge and Telluride for that matter were all thriving mining towns long before people realized they were immediately adjacent to steep mountains that would be fun to slide down. If you read the local press from those places you'll see the same fights about zoning and affordability and pushback that see about in-demand places on the coasts.
posted by mmascolino at 11:55 AM on January 6, 2022


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