Ski Resorts are Selling an Experience, Mountain Weekly News Founder Mike Hardaker and One of His Childhood Friends Taking a Reunion Together | Photo Big Sky Mountain Resort
Show up for your 20 thousand dollar family ski trip and some red-cheeked kid greets you at the front door like a poster boy from a ski tourism ad. The waitress at dinner looks like a Swedish Olympian, makes your kid smile with a joke, enthuses over the specials and describes the beurre blanc like a CIA graduate. The sommelier picks out an exquisite merlot and swaggers like a movie star.
The next day a man carved out of granite with a face lined by endless winters dials in rentals for your whole family, precision equipment balancing comfort and safety during your most athletic and dangerous family outing of the year. A ski bum working at the chairlift gives you an authentic tingle, like the beach bros on a trip to Oahu or a rock climber hitchhiking through Yosemite.
Maybe you get a ski lesson from one of the best athletes you’ve ever met. Maybe you sprain your ankle and ski patrol needs to ski you down gingerly in a sled, or maybe you didn’t get killed in an avalanche because, you know, ski patrol was out there at 7 in the morning bombing like some mystical mountain elf.
These are the people in your neighborhood for the week. The people who make sure your ski vacation was full of the laughs, the fresh air, the epic shred moments, the pictures and video and all that stuff that make your family vacation into something you’ll talk about when you get back to the office, with your friends at the restaurant, the snaps of glory you’ll post on the gram.
Wanna know a secret? Every one of those people is living an amazing life. And most of them can hardly afford it.
This is Part 2 of our Series on the Cost of Skiing and Long Term Effects on Tourism and Local Communities. Part 1 is HERE
You Can’t Actually Afford to Ski Bum These Days
Ahh, yeah, in the old days a man or woman with some gumption and a love of the hills could wander into a ski town, get a gig paying enough to live in skid luxury and maybe even take a wife, have some kids, all on a mountain paycheck. In the days of the 10th Mountain Division, you could take a trip to Aspen and for a buck get a room, a beer and a steak at the Hotel Jerome. Now it’ll set you back a grand a night.
When Hunter S. Thompson moved to Aspen, it was a proper skid town for outcasts, outsiders, and outlaws. When he ran for sheriff, he proposed changing the name to Fat City to keep it from turning into what it became. Because these towns have changed. We’ve created outdoor amusement parks, global destinations of luxury and adventure, full of world-class dining and indelible experiences, and the unfortunate casualty has been the very people that give them the very charm you want from them.
Buy a cowboy hat in Jackson though most of the cowboys have been run out of town. Take a picture next to Billy Kidd in Steamboat though do you know how expensive it is to make your kid into a ski racer these days? There’s no fast food in Breck, beautiful, except for the people who only have time and money for fast food.
It wasn’t a purposeful disenfranchisement, and hell we all love capitalism. But right now one of the biggest names in US skiing is being taken to task for their policies and perhaps it’s just the inevitable arc of today’s trend of speaking truth to power but there are quite a few things that need some airing. Vail Corp isn’t the sole “bad player” in the industry but it’s certainly becoming the poster child for what’s wrong with the whole thing. And hell, it’s nothing personal; it’s just business. But maybe it needs a tune-up?
The People Vs Vail Corp.
China Bowl at Vail was the first big bowl I snowboarded, a massive park of paradise with a decent kicker at the bottom I spun 3s off into fresh pow. And hell, partying at Vail Village was fun, regardless whether or not it looks like a Disneyland replica of a ski town. But that was long ago. Fast forward to winter 24/25, when Vail’s reach for unprecedented profit and consolidation led to disrupted Christmas holidays for thousands of people at one of their biggest resorts and a chairlift fell at another one. Shareholders are now issuing letters of concern over current management and the biggest name in ski resorts is in enough hot water to melt all the snow in Colorado.
No doubt the history books will someday point to the Park City ski patrol strike as (hopefully) a tipping point. Because in a classic exercise of life imitating art, a line ripped from the classic ski flick “Say Anything” is ever prescient because just like that paper boy, all they wanted was 2 dollars.
Yeah, Park City (a Vail property) ski patrol wanted a pay increase for starting workers from $21 to $23 an hour, and wage increases after 5 years because their pay topped at 5 years (all you lifetime grinders, can you imagine that?). Vail Resorts refused. So they went on strike.
Are Ski Patrollers Just Like Rent-a-Cops?
Let’s run this down. Ski patrollers get up way before dawn and head to the mountain, regardless if there’s a massive blizzard, the kind of windy snow swell that leaves mortals hitting snooze and cars in the bar ditch. They then head up the mountain and set off a series of explosives so avalanches don’t rain down on all the paying customers. They ski the double blacks to make sure the resort is safe from objective hazards so guests can side slip them later without snagging a rock and plummeting.
All day long patrollers ski around helping people who get hurt; sometimes they might have to rescue a snowboarder who got cliffed out, setting up ropes to bring the poor sucker to safety. They have to be able to ski down a diamond carrying a bundle of stiff trail markers, or pulling a sled carrying an injured snow rider who might be suffering from a neck injury. Most places require they have EMT certification and OEC certs, and a lot out west require an Avy 1 cert. It’s good to have a Wilderness First Responder (WFR) too. To get all of these takes hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars.
So, a job that requires heavy, dangerous work in nasty conditions, requires almost as much education as becoming a tradesman, and involves responsibility for the life of tens of thousands of people isn’t worth more than $21 dollars an hour to the company that depends on these people to literally keep their customers alive? And then on that 21 bucks an hour, the resorts expect these people to be able to live in some of the most expensive cities in America? Wanna know when it really gets crazy? When you look at executive pay.
In 2024 Vail’s CEO made about $6.3M. Their president of Mountains (rad title) made $1.6. The average wage for a Park City ski patroller was $25/hour. So let’s do the math – $25 times 10 hours a day times 5 days a week times about a 25-week season means the average patroller was making $31,250 per season. Then sure, they can F off and get a summer job, maybe guiding rivers or climbing or some other epic outdoors gig for pennies. But the CEO makes more in 2 days than the patroller makes for a whole season. Which is all good, the great American capitalist way, absolutely, except when you fall in a tree well the CEO’s not gonna be the one who pulls you out. Or when the lift breaks down, she won’t climb along the liftline and rappel you down from your chair.
Oh yeah, and also a chair fell off the line at Attitash, another resort owned by Vail. Dude was on it. He lived. Nightmare fuel, though. Bet ski patrol is a big reason he’s still alive and hopefully functional. Ironically, as of March 4th Attitash was looking for an experience lift tech. Advertised on Vail’s website. The pay is $23-$29/hour. Is that the right compensation for the person tasked with making sure millions of people don’t randomly fall from dangerous heights? This all feels wrong, it all feels backwards. No, goddammit, this is not the way to run a business where people have to sign a waiver just to pay thousands of dollars to use your product.
A Vote of No Confidence
“In recent weeks, we’ve spoken with not only numerous Vail stakeholders, but a critical mass of MTN shareholders who, we believe, share our view that complete transformation of both the Board and C-Suite is overdue.” This was the second open letter written by a Vail Resorts shareholder group asking for a complete reshuffle at the top. It specifically requested the CEO Kristen Lynch and the CFO Angela Korch (who oversees money decisions, and made $2.1M in 2024 while the people who actually ensure the customers are happy and, you know, alive, would be lucky to make that much in 80 years). I’m just a simple writer/travel dude trying to make my way in this world so far be it from me to complain about executive pay. But these investors, who do handle the ducats, have a point.
Vail is just in hospitality, you might say, and hotel CEOs simply make a lot. Nobody complains about the pay for cleaning people, right? According to Salary.com, the CEO of Four Seasons makes between $700K and $850K. And somebody like, say, an elevator technician on average makes $35 an hour. Compare that to Vail’s $6.3M and $26/hr.
Yes part of hospitality, and capitalism is that the lower people on the totem pole don’t make much. A Disney parks princess makes around $58/hour. And maybe that’s a bit low for all the joy they bring to visitors all over the world. And no doubt they’re very good at what they do, with the acting and helping make sure everybody has a magical experience, and being fit and looking like a princess and all. But if capitalism says it’s okay to pay a young woman in Orlando almost $60 an hour to boufant her hair and rock a poofy dress, it shouldn’t be too much to demand that an EMT with a black belt in skiing tasked with saving people’s lives during what for many people is their most dangerous vacation of the year gets close to half that, right?
It would seem the money men think so, even if the companies don’t.
Dear Ski Resorts: Your People Are Your Product
As I said, it’s the era of speaking truth to power, I can feel it. Like him or not, Luigi Mangioni struck a chord. Misplaced or not, Donald Trump’s election was cast as a big rejection of the political status quo. So here it is: ski industry bigwigs, you’re not selling the snow, not the mountain, hell you’re not even selling the sport. You’re selling the experience. The snow dream. And your people are the key to that idea that you can have breathtaking mountaintop scenery without sacrificing big city luxury service and cuisine. You don’t get luxury service from disgruntled employees who are too broke to afford rent. Do you feel safe when your safety depends on people wondering if they’ll make rent?
The dream that you’re one with these beautiful, athletic, young, happy people who live in these magical towns is part of the charm. With wages that are far from commensurate with the cost of living in a ski town, it’s tough to tell ski instructors and mountain greeters not to sneer at the millionaires and billionaires who come to play
It’s beautiful that you can spend 51 weeks a year in an office and then for 1 week you can let loose, fly downhill over rocks and between trees and you won’t die. But without ski patrol, guests may just die. Facts. In fact there’s another lawsuit against Vail over just that.
The Final Call
A final drink to sip on: When Park City ski patrol went on strike around Christmas, Vail Resorts had to close a chunk of the mountain, making for long lift lines and super limited terrain. Guests joined the strikers’ chants, admonishing the resort to pay its employees. Nobody wants to pay $20K to wait in line for hours and ski half a mountain, and it’ll be interesting to see what this means for holiday travel to PC next year. I’d like to believe that the majority of the guests really cared about the workers, but my cynical side says they just wanted to have their fun and wondered what kind of half-assed hot dog stand Vail Resorts was running. Which is fair and something that even the dollar-and-cents-obsessed bigwigs need to consider.
If ski industry players can’t be motivated by noble altruism to pay its employees a living wage, let’s play capitalism: Look at the future of your business. Because nobody wants to spend 5 (or in some cases 6) digits to take the family somewhere unsafe and restricted. They don’t want to learn how to ski from somebody who isn’t a rockstar, or who can’t speak English well enough to explain how to turn properly. The rising age demographic and the growth of backcountry skiing are evidence that if the ski industry continues on its current path, I see an empty chairlift where those kids used to sit. And that should make us all sad.
Ski biz USA, it’s time to do what alcoholics call a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself. The quest for annual profits has hit a tipping point, one that points to an eventual collapse.
Your guests come for the experience. With US ski resorts charging the highest prices in the world alongside falling employee satisfaction, it’s no surprise people are starting to turn to Europe, Japan, and beyond instead of the old American standards. If you can no longer pay the front-facing workers enough to give guests the experience they want, they will go elsewhere. Or maybe all the paying customers will just quit skiing for scuba diving. Belize is beautiful this time of year.
Related Ski Industry News
I was a Vail ski bum for three seasons ended in 1970. I think I got $2.70 an hour working in kitchens owned by Vail Associates. But the job came with room, board, and a season pass. When I wasn’t working, I was the richest man on earth. Because had I in fact been the richest man on earth, I would have been exactly where I was skiing in one of the best ski resorts in the world and on the best equipment money could buy. I hope these jobs still come with a season pass. If they don’t, I have no idea how a ski bum could afford to ski. And if we couldn’t ski, we wouldn’t be there. In my day, a Vail lift ticket was eight bucks. Eight! Today, it’s $329. There has been some inflation but not that much. Vail employers can’t operate without employees and most employees are there for the skiing. So they have got to make living and skiing affordable or paying guests will have to cook and serve their own meals. If I recall, employees who did not work for Vail Associates had to buy their own lift tickets. For $8, that was doable. For $329, not so much.
I often feel like I missed the boat as to back when ski bumming was truly epic; when you could be an adventure skid and live comfortably in a town you love, working doing something cool, and the resorts prioritized their people over profits.