Aspen Skiing Co.

Coronavirus is still a worry, but now ski hill operators must wrestle with too few workers and not enough places to house the ones they’ve hired

"COVID accelerated everything,” one ski resort operator says. “We took a multiyear process and did it in like five months.”

Ski patrollers at Keystone, Breckenridge and Big Sky plan votes to join six other ski area unions as labor advocates predict a revival of collective bargaining for resort workers

David Cross, 32, died in “very hazardous terrain” in the West Willow area

The skiing itself doesn’t feel much different during the pandemic. But “the après ski scene is just gone,” one Telluride visitor said.

More than 4,100 skiers and snowboarders were transported to emergency rooms in ambulances or helicopters across 2018, 2019 and the first part of 2020, which is about 10 patients every day of the season.

Ski areas are tweaking traffic flow, adjusting lift line mazes, revisiting uphill policies and repositioning workers as they adjust operating plans in the first few weeks of the strangest ski season ever

Colorado requirement for isolation housing for ill guests challenged resort industry planning, but hotels and lodges will have rooms to quarantine people who fall ill on ski vacations

One of the stickier points in managing the spread of COVID-19 in Colorado’s resort towns involves what to do when a guest falls ill during their stay and can’t leave.

A district court ruling suspends a ban on J-1 and H-2B visa workers, opening doors for ski areas that rely on the seasonal immigrant workers. But resorts that typically have visa employees on deck by fall are seeing surging applications from locals.

Ski area operators are reporting a surge in applications from college students and locals as hiring strategies, operational plans shift in the pandemic.

Aspen Skiing Co., Alterra Mountain Co., Arapahoe Basin and others say they’re owed more than $2 million after the coronavirus ended the season early

Some critics say what is lacking is a lead from Gov. Jared Polis

The science of keeping the flora in a sewage treatment system balanced was knocked out of kilter when coronavirus shut skiing down and water use dropped 50% in two of Colorado’s most popular ski communities.

Resorts wanted one more day to close since the shutdown happened as visitors from all over the country were flocking to Colorado for spring break. Gov. Polis said waiting would have led to more infections.

“It’s not that we want to stay. We just can’t leave,” says a ski instructor from Argentina who is among hundreds of J-1 and H-2B visa workers trapped in resort towns unable to get home.

Vail Resorts put the brakes on use of its mountains for skiers seeking turns without lifts, but independent backcountry ski shops across the state are reporting record sales.

Large gatherings have been banned in Colorado ski counties to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but lift lines aren’t included so resorts are still open while mountains across Europe and Asia close for the season