Telluride ski patrollers have overwhelmingly rejected a final contract offer from the resort owner, setting the stage for a high-profile strike for the remote ski area over the holidays.
“We are naturally disappointed that the ski patrol voted down our fair and equitable offer, and did not consider the well-being of this entire community. If the ski patrol chooses to strike, everyone here suffers,” said Telluride Ski & Golf spokesperson Nancy Clark in a statement.
On Monday night, two days after the Telluride ski area opened with skiing on five of its 149 trails, 99% of the 72-member Telluride Professional Ski Patrol Association union voted to reject the final offer from resort owner Chuck Horning. The union voted unanimously last month to authorize a strike if Horning could not reach a contract deal with the patrollers.
Horning’s “last, best and final offer” was a 9% increase in pay for first-year patrollers, separate pay bumps for patrollers with emergency medicine and avalanche training, and 5% annual cost of living increases in the second and third years of employment. That translates to a starting hourly wage of $24.06 for first-year patrollers up to $39.94 for veteran patrollers.
“Despite Telluride’s attempt to negotiate a fair wage increase, the ski patrol demanded an increase of 27% or $8.04 an hour in Year 1,” reads a statement from Clark, who called the offer “industry-leading and livable sustainable wages.” “This was not a reasonable nor equitable demand.”
The Telluride ski patrollers and Horning have spent several months negotiating a new contract. The patrollers are seeking increased wages of at least $30 an hour for new workers, paid time off, stipends for health insurance and all the gear they need. Resort representative Steve Swenson on Tuesday told a gathering of local business leaders that the financial difference between the ski patrol request and the resort offer is less than $100,000.
On Nov. 24, all six ski patrol supervisors at Telluride ski area voted unanimously to form a union, a rare unionization of resort managers.
Union president and longtime Telluride patroller Graham Hoffman said Horning and his negotiator have not listened to patroller concerns about the cost of living in Telluride.
All but one member of the ski patrol union and the newly unionized ski patrol supervisors voted to reject the resort company’s offer.
“I have a hard time believing there is not any more money in this company,” said Hoffman, adding that a strike through the holidays “is looking more likely than less likely.”
A strike last year by patrollers at Utah’s Park City Mountain Resort — the largest ski area in the country — that started Dec. 27 ended 12 days later, after a calamitous impact to the resort and its community. Park City ski area owner Vail Resorts ended up losing about $375 million in stock value during the strike as hundreds of social media posts revealed long lines, closed terrain and poor conditions at the understaffed ski area. Skiers filed a lawsuit against Vail Resorts, arguing the company failed to deliver on purchased season passes.
Striking Park City patrollers, however, collected $300,000 in support and ended the strike when the operator gave them the wages they wanted. Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch ended up losing her job, in part due to the handling of the strike and the public relations debacle that followed.
“A class struggle”
Hoffman said the offer from the Telluride resort company left several senior patrollers and supervisors with no annual pay increases. The most veteran patrollers at Telluride are getting paid the same hourly wage as third- and fourth-year patrollers at most other ski areas with patrol unions, Hoffman said.
Annual base-wage increases have been a sticking point in unionized ski patroller negotiations across the West as the cost of living and housing soars and longtime workers endure stagnant pay. Unionized patrollers argue that increased pay and incentives for better training can help retain career-track workers and reduce the number of patrollers who leave for better paying gigs.
The plan for Telluride patrollers is to wait about a week and see if maybe the resort comes with a better offer.
“It seems like they are more interested in trying to belittle us rather than talk with us and negotiate with us,” Hoffman said. “I find it utterly laughable that they talk about impacts to the community when we are a part of this community. This company has shown time and time again that it just does not care. I do not think this company has ever made a decision that benefits this community.”
Hoffman said there are no more negotiations scheduled. He said patrollers would give ample notice of a walkout over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
“We want to make sure we can give everyone advance warning so they can alter their holiday ski plans,” he said. “This is not where we wanted to be, but this company is forcing our hand.”
Ski patrollers at Jackson Mountain Resort last month filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to form a union. The Wyoming resort’s 88 ski patrollers will be voting Dec. 27-28 on whether to unionize and join the United Mountain Workers, a division of the Communications Workers of America, Local 7781.
The United Mountain Workers union represents more than 1,100 resort workers in 16 units at 14 resorts in four states. In Colorado, the union represents lift workers at Crested Butte as well as ski patrollers at Arapahoe Basin, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Eldora, Keystone, Loveland, Purgatory, Steamboat and Telluride.
Max Magill, the president of United Mountain Workers and a Park City ski patroller, said the growing number of unionized resort workers reflects the growing income disparity in mountain communities.
“This is a class struggle for workers who are really trying to make a living in mountain towns,” Magill said. “We believe everybody who works full time deserves the dignity of a decent living. We really do see this as a struggle between the working forces in ski towns and those who own everything.”
On Tuesday, Aspen Skiing Co. and the Aspen Professional Ski Patrol Association — which is not a member of the growing United Mountain Workers union — announced it had reached an agreement on a new contract with skills-based wage increases and incentives for patrollers with specialized training. The news release announcing the new contract did not include details on the pay scale for patrollers at the company’s four Roaring Fork Valley ski areas.
“Our patrollers work in a space that is critical to the safety of our guests — it’s important to acknowledge the risks they take every day in support of our mission,” read a statement from Geoff Buchheister, the CEO of Aspen Skiing Co. “We’re proud to have reached an agreement as the 2025-26 winter season begins, reflecting our mutual commitment to excellence and highlighting the need for continued skills development.”
Meanwhile, there have been several ski patrol unions filing formal complaints against resort operators with the National Labor Relation Board — including patroller unions at Arapahoe Basin, Keystone, Purgatory and Park City Mountain Resort — involving largely hiring and contractual issues.
Telluride Ski & Golf last month posted online job applications offering temporary ski patroller positions paying $24.50 to $37.50 “as a precautionary measure due to a potential labor dispute.”
Fewer skiers are flying in to Telluride
The Telluride community is organizing a revolt against Horning, who purchased the ski area in 2003. Voters in the Town of Mountain Village last month approved a lift tax on his resort as the town council there mulls a plan to triple water fees for snowmaking. Locals are starting to talk publicly about the octogenarian Horning’s antics around town as well as his lack of leadership for the ski area.
Horning has fired several of the industry’s top resort executives hired to run the ski area — like Ray Jacobi, Dave Riley and Bill Jensen — leaving the 2,000-acre ski area uncaptained for long stretches. Last year he even fired his son, Chad Horning, following a father-son fistfight in a resort-owned restaurant.
Even without a possible strike, the flow of vacationers into Telluride is ebbing.
The Colorado Flights Alliance, which spends about $5 million a year to funnel as many as 550,000 passengers a year through Montrose and Telluride airports, recently updated the Mountain Village Town Council on a slowing trend in air travelers for the region.
Alliance CEO Matt Skinner told the council the downward trend in fly-in tourists is connected to a lack of marketing and investment by Horning.
The ski area has not spent anything on resort destination marketing since Horning fired ski resort veteran Jensen in 2019, Skinner said. That leaves the Telluride Tourism Board and the flight alliance as the sole supporters of marketing spending for the tourist-reliant communities.
“We are outgunned out there in the marketplace,” Skinner told the council.
The Telluride ski area also is falling behind on capital investments, Skinner said, noting billions of dollars of investment across resorts in the West. Skinner said Telluride is no longer listed in several annual magazine surveys that as recently as five years ago listed Telluride as the country’s first or second most popular ski destination.
Colorado Flights Alliance spends about 75% of its annual budget on airline guarantee programs that pay airlines for consistent service. Those programs — created by Colorado resort communities — pay for empty seats on direct flights, making marketing campaigns especially critical to put skiers on planes. Colorado Flights Alliance is supporting direct flights from 13 major hubs on six airlines this winter.
The Colorado Flights Alliance’s annual budget is about average compared to other destination marketing organizations at Aspen Snowmass, Big Sky, Lake Tahoe, Park City, Sun Valley and Vail.
But all the other mountain destination marketing campaigns and airline programs, Skinner said, “have ski resort resources layered on top.”
“This is the worry. Where we had so much momentum in the New Yorks and the LAs and the Atlantas, we are getting outgunned and losing market share from those destinations,” Skinner said. “We are on a retractive trend and something that needs reversing for our long-term health.”
Flights into the region’s two airports are down 5% to 7% for the winter, Skinner said, asking for increased collaboration between local businesses and governments to help “the reinvention and reinvigoration of our brand … to put the shine back on Telluride.”
Town businesses on Tuesday began prepping for a holiday downshift at the largest economic engine in the region. Last ski season, the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village reported $103.1 million in taxable spending in December and January, up from $98.8 million for the same two months in the 2023-24 ski season.
Steve Swenson, a representative for the ski area, told a meeting of local business owners Tuesday that the resort company was planning to reach out to season pass holders, ticket holders and homeowners and warn them of a possible walkout by patrollers. He mentioned the class-action lawsuit filed by irked skiers at Park City Mountain Resort when he talked about the need to reach out to Telluride skiers to prepare them for possible impacts around a patroller strike.
He said the messaging will likely tell skiers “they might want to pause” planned ski vacations during a strike.
Swenson said there are only four patrol managers who are able to handle the work if patrollers strike.
“While our intent is to open the mountain as much as we can, there is an element of question of how much we actually can open up,” Swenson said, noting that it would be likely that the ski area could only open two chairlifts if patrollers did strike “and that will be a challenge in and of itself. We will have some limitations.”
Swenson called the Park City Mountain Resort patroller strike last season “very devastating” to the community, local businesses and the resort company.
“We are expecting that same situation,” Swenson said.