Stock holders vs Stake holders

Well, I finally made it up to the Canyons this week after hearing outrageous stories of long lines an limited terrain. It is true, it is a corporate cluster up there.  With all the snow we have had, half the mountain is still closed with very little evidence of efforts to make snow, groom trails or open existing slopes.  Clearly Vail has put profits ahead of people and their product, with impunity.  They don’t care.  They sold 2 million discount Epic passes and have a billion dollars in the bank.  Now they are cutting corners at our expense.  It is the shareholders and stockholders vs the stakeholders and skiers.   Guess who is winning.

They say it is Covid, which should not be a big surprise to them after 2 years.  They say it is an employee problem, but it is more of a wage problem.  They pay less than $15 an hour for ski patrol and for all other workers who commute for hours a day in the dark, from Heber, Kamas or SLC, thru inclement weather and horrendous traffic.  Surprise, no one wants to work a crappy job for a non-living wage anymore, at every end of the economic scale.  Blame it on Unions, Covid or Biden but that is the way of the world now with over 20 million Americans quitting their jobs since this summer.  It would cost Vail 1-3% of their operating budget to offer all employees $20 and hour and they would fill all those empty spots in a heartbeat, but corporate greed triumphs over generosity, stock holders triumph over stake holders.

It has been ten years since PCMR forgot to renew their sweet land lease with UPMC followed by the hostile corporate takeover by Vail and the death of good resort skiing in North America.  We made our Faustian deal with the devil for their cheap season ski passes and found that everyone in town has one, not to mention everyone in Salt Lake City, Colorado, LA, New York, Chicago, Japan and Europe.  We don’t blame Blaise Carrig, Chip Carey, Bill Rock or Mike Gore, who are all good guys and know how to manage a ski resort, but they got their marching orders from the long management table at Vail Corporation.   They don’t want to talk to us about backcountry gates, avalanche fences, parking lots or traffic.  Vail’s gifts to our community are threatened greater development densities, crowded slopes and roads, and a ‘Je ne sais quoi’ attitude towards our local thoughts and opinions. 

We don’t want our money back, we want our mountains back.  We want our town name as well as it’s reputation for low key powder skiing.  Skiing has now become prosaic and pedantic instead of being world class like they advertise.  Weekend and holidays are off limits and powder days are now a crowded joke where if you can get on the mountain by 1100 it is all skied out by those who have better credentials.  There is no good public access to the local backcountry or our public lands and the overall skiing product has deteriorated to the point where it feels like a bait-and-switch or a breach-of-contract and public trust.

Is this the beginning of the end of this house of cards.  Does the quality of the product get so bad that people refuse to renew passes or frequent Vail resorts?  Do the employment conditions get so deplorable that no one will work there?  Would they try to raise the pass price and sell less of them to improve the product?  I doubt it.  We will all be expected to accept the current conditions as the new norm that they will blame on Covid, Climate Change or Economics.  They will take the money and run and we will be left holding the bag, again.