OpenSnow forecasters give some clues about when and why the big snow falls at Colorado ski areas
Steamboat Ski Resort
Posted inOutdoors
Colorado ski areas open day cares to attract high country workers in child care desert
Steamboat Resort and Breckenridge Resort opened child care centers for the kids of their employees this season. In Aspen, the resort is helping pay for new child care center slots in the community.
Posted inOutdoors
Supply chain issues prevent yet another thing from spinning: new Colorado chairlifts
Supply issues for chairlift manufacturers, including Grand-Junction-based Poma, have stalled openings for new lifts across Colorado, North America
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors, Outsider
Snow may not be piling up at Colorado ski resorts this season, but anxiety sure is
It wasn’t that long ago that ski resort operators lost sleep over snowfall. Then they had to fret over once-in-a-lifetime protocols to limit the spread of contagion at their ski areas. Now, the worries are stacked even deeper, with affordable housing, dwindling numbers of workers and ever-lengthening lift lines joining the perennial fretting over snow […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors
Ski patrollers at Breckenridge vote 43-42 to unionize
Ski patrollers at Breckenridge have voted to unionize. By one vote. The 43-42 vote announced this week on the National Labor Relations Board website adds Breckenridge to a growing list of ski areas with unionized patrollers. Patrollers in Crested Butte, Steamboat, Telluride, Utah’s Park City and Washington’s Stevens Pass are part of the United Professional […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors
Ski patroller unions set to grow in Colorado’s consolidating resort industry
The letter to ski patrollers landed a few days before Vail Resorts told investors it was sitting on $1.4 billion in cash. The company was not going to include unionized ski patrollers in the end-of-season bonus program, saying the extra cash — up $1,500 — would violate federal law governing labor contract negotiations with the […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, News, Outdoors
Eager early-season crowds are helping Colorado ski resorts fine tune operations before the holiday crush
Winter Park delayed its opening a couple weeks to early December and the pent-up demand almost overwhelmed the Grand County resort on its first Saturday. Lines were long on Dec. 5 and, as skiers kicked off skis and snowboards to load up the base-area gondola, distancing faded. By midday, the resort had made changes. “We […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News, Outdoors
Masks up! Colorado ski resorts are moving ahead as state, counties and businesses restrict access
VAIL — The lift operator in the maze at Vail Village’s Gondola One tilts his head back and hollers: “Masks up please!” There are no unmasked skiers in the line, but maybe some masks have slipped below noses. It’s the second day of operations at Vail ski area — a busy Saturday — and skiers […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News
Hundreds of international workers at Colorado ski resorts are in limbo as countries close borders, airlines cancel flights
When Gov. Jared Polis ordered the state’s ski areas to close on March 14, he also launched Ana Panessi into a frantic race to get home. It was a race she did not win. “So many people, they were able to run away very quickly. We did not have the same opportunity. So we are […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Politics and Government
Colorado governor orders all ski resorts to close for at least a week in extraordinary move
Gov. Jared Polis on Saturday night issued an extraordinary executive order requiring all Colorado ski resorts to close, an announcement that came just hours after operators across the state preemptively said they were shutting down, many of them indefinitely, in response to the new coronavirus. The order is set to last one week, though the […]