Outdoors/Business Reporter
Sneak Peek of the Week
Vail Resorts and the terrible, no good, horrible, very bad month
The snow is good at Vail Resorts’ ski areas. Typically that’s enough.
But this is not a typical time for North America’s largest resort operator. As the cover story of the Sunday Wall Street Journal read: Vail Resorts Has an Epic Problem.
Problems, really.
Unionized lift mechanics in Crested Butte Mountain authorized a strike this week. The company’s stock price remains near a five-year low with flat visits through the Christmas and New Year holidays while an arctic blast certainly slowed traffic during the MLK holiday. Skiers who visited Park City Mountain during the recent ski patroller strike were offered credits for next year’s passes as one of those skiers filed a class-action lawsuit over their “colossal disaster” of a vacation during the strike. Dozens of workers at Breckenridge called in sick to work this week to protest living conditions at company-owned housing.
The Wall Street Journal story revealed company CEO Kirsten Lynch sticking to her company’s mantra: “The driving force behind everything Vail does is the ‘guest experience,’ a phrase Lynch repeated 11 times in the 30-minute interview.”
And following the strike-ending settlement with about 200 Park City Mountain patrollers — that delivered an average wage increase of $4 an hour with veterans getting a $7.75 hourly bump — Vail Resorts announced significant hourly increases at six ski areas where patrollers mitigate avalanche hazards. But that immediate raise does not apply at any resorts with unionized ski patrollers, where pay changes require negotiations to amend work contracts.
“Vail Resorts is investing in a new category of skills-based pay for patrol, Mountain Terrain Complexity, which recognizes the unique skills needed by patrollers who work at our resorts with avalanche terrain,” reads a letter that Bill Rock, the president of Vail Resorts’ mountain division, sent to patrollers this week.
The new wage program delivered immediate pay increases to hourly patrollers at Vail, Beaver Creek, Whistler Blackcomb, Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood. The raise is part of the company’s Patrol Project, which began in 2019 as a way to improve pay, benefits and leadership opportunities for patrollers. A new Enterprise Patrol Advisory Team will review and shape the model that determines how mountain complexity should translate into higher wages for ski patrollers.
Depending on seniority,the pay increase amounted to a 9% to 18% raise at Vail Mountain, the company’s flagship resort.
The immediate pay increase does not apply to the unionized patrollers at Breckenridge, Crested Butte Mountain, Keystone and Stevens Pass ski areas. All those ski areas require avalanche mitigation by ski patrollers. Rock said compensation changes for union-represented patrollers are subject to contractual collective bargaining agreements and processes. Negotiations for amendments to the patroller contracts at those areas are getting started right now.
Unionized patrollers said the company could hand out pay increases without launching typically lengthy collective bargaining sessions.
“I think there’s a certain degree of frustration that they would not offer those same incentives to unionized ski patrol when they certainly have the ability to do so,” said Ryan Dineen, a longtime ski patroller at Breckenridge ski area, where union-represented patrollers will begin negotiating a new contract with Vail Resorts later this year.
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story
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In Their Words
The X Games is changing. Will Aspen be part of the new chapter?
!“I hope it fits in. I can tell you there’s work to do if it’s going to fit in.”!— X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom on how Aspen might fit into the new format for the 30-year franchise!!!
35
Number of cities that have bid to host the Summer or Winter X Games as the franchise rolls out a new league format
The 24th Aspen Winter X Games starts tonight under the lights at Buttermilk. The three-day celebration of the world’s top freeskiers and snowboarders is a slimmed down version of the all-things-snowy bacchanal and a step toward a new vision for the storied X Games. The Aspen-bred event has shepherded winter superstars from a small few to an Olympic movement. And it’s about to change.
The Loveland-raised Olympic mogul skier Jeremy Bloom — whose resume includes pro football player, entrepreneur and philanthropist — is guiding the 30-year-old X Games’ expansion into a new chapter. Soon, the new X Games League will feature sponsored teams with drafted, salaried athletes, marking a giant step for action sports.
“It’s a fun vision we are executing,” says Bloom, the new CEO of the X Games, which was taken over in 2022 by MSP Sports Capital, which owns a Formula One racing team and four European soccer clubs.
Next year, after the Milano Cortino Winter Olympics in Italy, the X Games League will launch with four winter teams and four summer teams, each owned by a private company. Those teams will host an athlete draft by the end of this year, with each team’s five men and five women earning salaries with paid travel and benefits, marking a first-ever pay model for action sports athletes. In addition to the 40 drafted athletes, there will be 60 free-agent athletes competing in the league. When the model is proven and thriving, there will be 10 winter teams and 10 summer teams, Bloom said.
The league will roam to eight locations every year, hosting four winter and four summer X Games at cities in Europe, Asia and North America.
The Sun caught up with Bloom before the X Games landed in Aspen. The conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.
The Colorado Sun: Will we see any signs of the new league model at Buttermilk this weekend? And next year will be the last version of the traditional model of the X Games?
Bloom: Not yet. There will be some format changes. We want to create a more compelling finals … we want to increase the anxiety a little bit, you know, so maybe not three chances to win, maybe two. Some people maybe won’t notice it. And, yes, next year will be the final hurrah of the old model. But I will say, even in the league model, we will be awarding individual gold medals. So like if you win Superpipe, you are still going to be an X Games champion.
ESPN, the previous majority owner of the X Games, has shopped the Winter X Games around to different potential venues over the years but they always came back to Aspen, where Aspen Skiing Co. pretty much hands over the keys to an entire ski area for a month or so. As you guys court new hosts, where does Aspen fit into this new chapter for the X Games?
Bloom: I hope it fits in. I can tell you there’s work to do if it’s going to fit in. Look, change is hard. I get that. But there’s a new model for the X Games and we’re never going back to the old one. We have 35 real bids across the world right now for winter and summer, a lot from the best cities in the world. They aren’t just inviting us to bring the X Games to their town. They’re paying for it. I mean big deals, right? So our new model is where we are not going to underwrite the entire cost of our event. We are going to find strategic partnerships. I really hope we can find a deal with Aspen because I love it. There is no Winter X Games without Aspen. When people really understand our vision, where we’re going, our capital providers, our new owners, the private equity structure, the new sponsors, the new league, our founder athletes … when people hear the whole story of where we’re going and understand and wrap their head around it, it’s not hard to sell this, and it’s not hard to find really good partners.
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story
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Breaking Trail
Summit High students design, build skis to hone business, life skills
In mountain communities, education can evolve around the unique demands of life in the high country. Colorado Mountain College teaches students how to work on chairlifts. High schools in the Roaring Fork Valley and Eagle and Summit counties teach kids how to work on bikes and skis.
And at Summit High School, students are learning how to design, build and market their own handbuilt skis and snowboards.
“They’re building more than a ski. They’re building a business,” Summit High teacher Thomas Luke told Sun freelancer Lu Snyder as 30 students tested their skis and boards at Arapahoe Basin.
The Ski Business and Manufacturing class — one of the only classes of its kind in the nation — is part of Summit High’s Career and Technical Education program, which includes teaching skills for working in the area’s many bike and ski shops.
Lutke came to the mountains of Colorado as a college dropout to pursue his love for skiing but returned to college in Denver to become a high school teacher. He calls the ski-building class a passion project.
“I’m living the dream, helping kids build skis and snowboards,” he told Lu.
It’s not necessarily about prepping students for careers in ski design and construction. “The skis and the boards are just a vessel to teach valuable business lessons,” Lutke said.
The truly one-of-a-kind skis and snowboards at Arapahoe Basin last week ranged from park and powder boards to all-mountain and racing skis, all with artistically inspired graphics. Some students experimented with untraditional shapes, length and camber. Senior Nico Novotny built a 6-foot snowboard, while another student designed skis with reverse camber.
Senior Dillon Butson designed a snowboard with a swallow tail and a swallow tip, even though Lutke warned him he’d never seen a tip designed with that shape.
“I wanted to try something new and inventive,” Butson said.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read Lu’s story
The Playground
Wolves wandering a wider swath of Colorado
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Gray wolves in Colorado
Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Thursday released a map showing the wanderings of more than 25 collared gray wolves now in Colorado. The map includes the meanderings of 15 wolves captured in British Columbia and released the week of Jan. 13 in Eagle and Pitkin counties. It also includes five wolves from the Copper Creek relocated from Grand County after some of the pack killed livestock
The Copper Creek pack was released this month south of Interstate 70 and the map — which shows movements of collared wolves in watersheds between Dec. 22, 2024, and Jan. 21, 2025 — showed wolf activity in a circle with a northern boundary along Cattle Creek north of Carbondale and a southern border near Marble and moving into Gunnison County.
The map shows the movements of one female wolf exploring the southeast region of the state. Last week CPW officials confirmed that a female wolf captured in Oregon and released in either Grand or Summit counties in December 2023 was spotted last week in Park County near Guffey. The map shows that female wolf roaming south, into drainages as far south as the Arkansas River at Cañon City.
CPW is asking anyone who thinks they’ve seen a wolf in their area to fill out an online wolf-sighting form, especially if they are able to snap a photo or take video.
Cleanse the ski palate with Shames Mountain in BC
When the family-owned Shames Mountain went up for sale in 2008, no one stepped up to buy the remote British Columbia ski hill. With nearly 500 inches of annual snow, a creaking double chair and a T-bar, the 28-run ski area outside the lumber town of Terrace, B.C. is a gem for local skiers.
So the locals bought it and turned it into Canada’s first nonprofit community-service ski cooperative. Swiss gear maker Mammut this week dropped a 9-minute video documenting the story of Shames Mountain. “Heart of the Mountain: How a Small Community Saved Their Mountain and Changed Skiing Forever” is a must-watch for skiers. It’s certainly an inspiration for Nederland, which is making a play to buy Eldora Mountain Resort.
As the resort industry endures the thrall of consolidation and corporate control, the story of Shames is a beacon for skiers who pine for dawdling double chairs dangling over powdery paths.
Check out the movie here.
— j
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