Avalanche mitigation booms echoed across town Thursday, Jan. 2, as Park City Mountain entered the seventh day of the ski patrol union strike.
After 4 inches of new snowfall, negotiators for the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association and Vail Resorts met with a federal mediator again Thursday afternoon. There’s still no sign of when the strike will end.
Resort officials say they’ve been able to open less terrain than planned in part because of the strike. Guests have reported long lines and safety concerns.
KPCW caught up with New Jersey skier Nathan Gillman while he was in line at Bonanza Express. He said people have been venturing into closed terrain.
“The mountain, in response, closed a run to the run, so you had to duck two ropes to get to this closed run that hundreds of people were ducking,” he said. “And it didn't really stop anybody. They had lost control of the mountain earlier this week.”
Bill Rock, Vail’s mountain division president and Park City Mountain’s former COO, is back in Utah after patrollers walked about a week ago.
The union and the company have tentative agreement on education and training packages, but not wages or benefits. The patrollers want an extra $2 in base pay.
KPCW asked Rock whether the strike has hurt Vail Resorts’ brand.
“Our focus right now is to operate as effectively as we can and deliver the guest experience for our guests who are in town,” Rock said. “After the strike is over, there'll be a lot of assessment of what happened and how we got here. I'm incredibly proud of the team that's showing up every day to deliver the experience that we can deliver safely with the team that we have.”
Park City Mountain has disabled comments on recent social media posts as users pile on complaints.
Vail Resorts’ stock dropped more than 6% Jan. 2, the same day MarketBeat reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped two thirds of its Vail shares this quarter. It now owns less than 2% of the company.
On CNBC’s Jan. 2 Fast Money Halftime Report, commentator Jim Lebenthal expressed his own frustrations after skiing Park City days before.
“If you want to be in a travel stock, if you want to run a travel and a leisure company, you darn well better give the experience that you're advertising. Because if you don't, you will get negative PR and you will get non-repeating customers,” Lebenthal said.
When it comes to ski patrol, Gillman, who has skied for more than 30 years, said his opinion has improved.
“On a normal day, I don't like patrol. You know, they're there to take your pass, or if you cut a line, or break a rule, or you seem too fast,” he said. “But this year … has really humanized patrol, made me realize just who they are and what they do and how important they are.”
Among other safety concerns, Gillman claims he waited for 20 minutes on Another World with a skier who tore their meniscus before safety personnel responded to verify the guest needed a toboggan.
Rock reiterated to KPCW that safety protocols haven’t changed as a result of the walkout, and union business manager Quinn Graves said response times vary depending on where guests are injured.
Gillman’s an Epic passholder who spent all of December skiing in Colorado and said his experience at Vail’s flagship resort was far better. He arrived in Utah on the first day of the strike and confessed a bit of “morbid curiosity.”
“I'm smart enough to know not to come here. But there's part of me that is like, I would like to see what happens when ski patrol goes on strike,” Gillman said. He doesn't plan to renew his Epic Pass.
As the strike continues, more snow is expected at Park City Mountain Saturday.
KPCW's Parker Malatesta contributed reporting.
