Understanding Telluride Ski Patrol’s Impact on Safety
The lifts at Telluride Ski Resort stopped turning on December 27, 2025. Not because of wind or avalanche danger, but because the people responsible for determining whether it’s safe to run them walked off the job.
Seventy-eight ski patrollers – 99% of the Telluride Professional Ski Patrol Association – had voted the night before to strike. Chuck Horning, the Southern California real estate investor who has owned the resort since 2005, responded by closing the mountain indefinitely.
The dispute centers on wages. The union wants starting pay raised from $21 to $28 per hour. They want patrollers with the most experience to see their pay increase from a range of $30-36 to $39-48.60. The gap between the two proposals, depending on which side is calculating, amounts to somewhere between $65,000 and $115,000 over the life of a three-year contract.
In a statement that managed to sound both aggrieved and accusatory, Horning said the patrollers had “repeatedly said publicly in town meetings that if they decide to strike, it would be their ‘nuclear option.'” He expressed concern that “any organization, particularly one that exists to help people, would do something that will have such a devastating effect on our community.”
The patrollers, for their part, point out that they’ve been asking for sustainable wages for months. Bailey Mallette, who has patrolled at Telluride for fifteen years, told CBS News that they’re not asking for “a huge amount of money,” but rather “changes to the wage structure so that people can make an actual career out of this.”
The mountain remains closed. Mayor Teddy Errico has called the situation “unprecedented.” The Telluride Tourism Board is scrambling to message around “alternate activities” for visitors who booked trips months ago. Local businesses that depend on ski season revenue are watching their busiest week evaporate. And the patrollers are on the picket line, red jackets zipped against December cold, waiting to see whether the economics of mountain towns will ever make room for the people who keep those mountains safe.
This is the second time in thirteen months that ski patrollers have shut down a major American resort. The first strike, at Park City Mountain in Utah, ended with the patrollers winning most of their demands. It also cost the resort’s corporate owner roughly $375 million in market capitalization and the CEO her job. Telluride’s patrollers are betting that Horning, who has no other properties to fall back on and no stock price to prop up, will find the math even more compelling.
The Work
To understand why patrollers are willing to walk away from their jobs during peak season, it helps to understand what those jobs actually entail.
They arrive before dawn, when the mountain is still dark. They check conditions. They review snowfall totals, wind patterns, temperature data. They make decisions about which terrain can safely open to the public and which needs to remain closed.
Some mornings, this involves hiking to high ridgelines carrying packs full of explosives. They throw charges into suspect slopes, triggering controlled avalanches to stabilize the snowpack before guests arrive. This requires federal certification to handle explosives. It also requires intimate knowledge of specific terrain – where wind deposits snow, where weak layers tend to form, how different aspects react to warming or cooling.
Katherine Devlin, vice president of the Telluride patrollers union, explained to the Mountain Village Town Council that this knowledge doesn’t come quickly. “It takes five years to feel confident and know every avalanche route on this mountain,” she said. “It’s a slow process and it takes time. Keeping patrollers here for a long time is essential for the safety of this mountain. We need people who have been here for at least 15 years to stay at this job.”
When someone gets injured – a torn ACL on an icy turn, a collision between skiers, a backcountry rider caught in a slide – patrollers respond. They stabilize the patient, often in conditions that would have most emergency medical workers calling for backup they can’t get. They execute evacuations from terrain so steep that a misstep could send rescuer and patient tumbling. They operate chairlift rescue systems when mechanical failures strand skiers in mid-air. They coordinate with helicopter services when injuries exceed what can be handled on the mountain.
The minimum certification for this work is Outdoor Emergency Care or Emergency Medical Technician. Many patrollers hold advanced certifications beyond that. All of them need to be expert skiers or snowboarders capable of navigating any terrain on the mountain while carrying rescue equipment.
At the end of each day, they’re the last ones off the mountain, sweeping runs to ensure no injured skier gets left behind as darkness falls and temperatures drop.
For this work – the technical skill, the physical demands, the literal life-and-death responsibility – starting ski patrollers in Telluride make $21 per hour.
The Arithmetic
The numbers, once you see them laid out, don’t require much interpretation.
Twenty-one dollars per hour, assuming full-time work over a six-month ski season, equals approximately $43,680 per year before taxes. The average rent in Telluride, according to recent Zillow data, is $8,342 per month. That’s $100,104 annually. For a one-bedroom apartment, the figure drops to $3,594 monthly, which is still $43,128 per year.
A starting patroller’s entire gross salary, before taxes and before any other expense, would barely cover rent on a modest apartment.
These numbers aren’t unique to Telluride. At Park City Mountain Resort in Utah, before the strike there last winter, patrollers made the same $21 starting wage. The average home price in Park City approaches $2 million. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in that community needs to earn $27.49 per hour to afford basic necessities. The starting patrol wage sat $6.49 below that threshold.
Where do patrollers actually live? Often, they don’t live in the resort towns at all. One Park City patroller, speaking after the strike ended there, was direct about it: “I live in Salt Lake. I cannot afford to live in Park City, period.” Salt Lake City sits around 32 miles from the resort. In winter driving conditions, that’s an hour each way, minimum. For a job that requires showing up before dawn.
The wage compression problem compounds the dysfunction. At Telluride, patrollers with the most experience – the ones who know every avalanche path, who’ve seen every weather pattern the San Juans can throw at them, whose institutional knowledge keeps the operation functioning – were making $30 to $36 per hour before the strike. After five years spent learning the terrain, after obtaining advanced certifications, the raise might amount to a few dollars hourly.
Meanwhile, other resorts pay more from the start. Deer Valley, just miles from Park City, starts patrollers at $23.50. Powder Mountain offers $26. Why would someone invest five years learning Telluride’s specific terrain for $21 when they could start at Powder Mountain for $26?
The national picture varies by source and methodology, but the pattern holds. PayScale puts the average ski patroller wage at $15.41 per hour. Indeed reports $22.85. ZipRecruiter estimates $20.46. No matter which number you trust, ski patrollers rank among the lowest-paid workers in America, earning less than parking lot attendants in many markets.
Underlying all of this is a peculiarity of the American ski industry: the volunteer patrol system. Of the roughly 32,000 members of the National Ski Patrol, only about 5,000 are paid professionals. The remaining 27,000 are volunteers – often doctors, nurses, or EMTs working on their days off – who patrol in exchange for season passes, equipment discounts, and the satisfaction of the work itself.
Some smaller ski areas operate entirely on volunteer patrols. Others use volunteers to supplement paid staff. The economic effect is predictable: when 27,000 people will do the job for free, paying the other 5,000 a living wage becomes difficult to justify in a corporate spreadsheet. The volunteer system, however well-intentioned and however much those volunteers contribute, functions as wage suppression for people trying to make an actual living from the profession.
What Happened at Park City
The story of what happened at Park City Mountain Resort matters because it provides the template – both the risks and the potential rewards – that Telluride’s patrollers are now following.
On December 27, 2024, exactly one year before Telluride shut down, nearly 200 ski patrollers at Park City walked off the job. They had been negotiating with Vail Resorts, the Broomfield-based corporation that owns Park City and more than 40 other ski areas worldwide, since the previous April when their contract expired. By late December, talks had stalled over familiar issues: starting wages, wage compression for veterans, benefits that might make the job sustainable as a career rather than a temporary gig for young people willing to live six to a condo.
Vail Resorts’ response was to bring in replacement patrollers – managers from the company’s Colorado resorts, some with limited experience on Park City’s specific terrain. The resort stayed open, technically. But with skeleton crews attempting to manage 7,300 acres of terrain, only about 20% of the mountain was accessible to guests. This during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the resort should have been running at full capacity and banking revenue.
The optics deteriorated quickly. Lift lines stretched through the village. Fresh snow fell – 31 inches during the strike – but most terrain remained closed because there weren’t enough qualified patrollers to open it safely. Injured skiers reported delayed responses. Some claimed they were attended to by other guests before patrollers arrived. Social media filled with videos of frustrated tourists who had paid premium prices for severely limited access. At the base areas, crowds began chanting “Pay your employees!” loud enough to be heard from management offices.
Jim Lebenthal, an anchor for CNBC who had been skiing at Park City during the strike, went on television to describe his experience. “We got two feet of new snow, that’s every skier’s dream, right?” he said. “Except the problem is, Vail Mountain, which owns Park City, didn’t let any of us know there was a ski patrol strike going on. So less than 20% of the mountain was open at the peak holiday time.”
Park City’s mayor released a public statement urging Vail Resorts to resolve the situation quickly. Local business owners, caught between supporting workers and facing economic losses of their own, watched nervously.
Vail’s stock price, meanwhile, dropped $10 per share during the strike. With approximately 37.5 million outstanding shares, that represented roughly $375 million in lost market capitalization. Investors who had previously ignored labor issues started paying attention.
The strike lasted twelve days. On January 8, 2025, the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association ratified a new contract with unanimous approval. The wins were substantial: starting wages increased from $21 to $23 per hour, the $2 raise patrollers had initially requested. The average wage increase across all union members came to $4 per hour. Veterans and specialists, including snow safety experts, saw raises averaging $7.75 per hour. The contract included enhanced parental leave policies, improved educational opportunities, and a wage parity clause ensuring that if Vail raised wages at other resorts, Park City patrollers would receive equivalent increases.
Kirsten Lynch, Vail’s CEO who had received $6.3 million in total compensation the previous fiscal year, lost her job in the aftermath. Whether the strike directly caused her departure remains unclear, but the timing was notable.
Within days of the Park City settlement, Vail reportedly offered a similar economic package to patrollers at Keystone, who had been in their own contract negotiations. The Park City strike had demonstrated both that patrollers could win and what it would cost resorts to fight them.
For context on those costs: Vail Resorts has spent $1.1 billion on stock buybacks since 2008, with $670 million of that coming in just the past two years. Stock buybacks reduce the number of outstanding shares, which increases earnings per share, which typically boosts stock price and enriches shareholders and executives. It’s legal. It also represents a choice about where money goes. The $2 per hour raise that Park City patrollers struck for – roughly $4,160 per worker annually – would have cost $832,000 per year for 200 patrollers. That’s less than the company spends on stock buybacks in a single day.
The Growing Movement
Park City’s successful strike wasn’t the beginning of ski patrol unionization – the Aspen Professional Ski Patrol Association has represented patrollers there since 1971 – but it catalyzed something. The number of unionized ski patrollers has nearly doubled since 2021. Most of these unions now operate under the umbrella of United Mountain Workers, a division of the Communications Workers of America Local 7781.
The current roster includes fourteen resorts: Park City, Crested Butte (both patrol and lift maintenance), Steamboat, Telluride, Arapahoe Basin, Big Sky, Breckenridge, Eldora, Keystone, Loveland, Stevens Pass, Solitude, Whitefish, and Purgatory. Arapahoe Basin’s patrollers voted to unionize in January 2025, just days after Park City’s strike ended.
During the Park City strike, patrollers from Eldora and Loveland demonstrated outside Vail Resorts’ headquarters in Broomfield, carrying signs in support of their Utah colleagues. Unions from Breckenridge, Crested Butte, and Keystone sent a joint letter demanding the company stop pressuring patrollers to leave their home mountains to work as replacement staff.
Max Magill, a ten-year Park City patroller and president of United Mountain Workers, believes the growth reflects both improving union contracts and broader American labor trends. “We’ve seen this explosion in growth because of the strength of our contracts,” he said. “Also, I think there’s a broader picture to be seen here, which is that we are in a growing moment in the United States for organized labor.”
The difference between now and the last significant ski patrol strike – in Aspen in 1971, which ended poorly for the workers – is partly about changed economics and partly about changed leverage. Social media amplifies labor disputes in ways that didn’t exist five decades ago. Corporate resort operators manage portfolios where unrest at one property influences negotiations at others. And investors, watching stock prices move in response to operational disruptions, apply pressure that local ski area owners in 1971 never felt.
What Remains Unsettled
As of this writing, Telluride’s lifts remain motionless. Chuck Horning has made no public indication of movement from his position. The union has shown no sign of backing down. Unlike Vail, Horning has only one property. He can’t absorb losses at Telluride knowing that his Colorado or Vermont resorts will make up the difference. Every closed day is revenue that won’t be recovered, relationships with pass holders that might not survive.
The gap between the two sides – somewhere between $65,000 and $115,000 over three years – is actually smaller than what separated Park City’s patrollers from Vail. For context, that’s less than Kirsten Lynch’s monthly salary was. But independent operators face different mathematics than corporate chains. The question of whether Horning can afford to meet the union’s demands is separate from whether he should, and both are complicated by his reputation for unconventional financial management over two decades of ownership.
The broader sustainability question, meanwhile, remains unanswered even at Park City. The patrollers there won meaningful raises, but they still can’t afford to live in Park City. Twenty-three dollars per hour is better than $21, but it still sits $4.49 below the calculated living wage for a single adult with no dependents. Housing costs in resort towns continue accelerating, driven by remote workers with urban salaries, second-home buyers, and the conversion of long-term rentals to short-term vacation properties.
Some resorts have responded by building employee housing. Winter Park invested $60 million in dormitory-style units where workers can live below market rate. Copper Mountain, Whistler Blackcomb, and others have similar developments. But these arrangements feel more like company towns than solutions to the fundamental question of whether people doing essential work should be able to afford housing in the broader communities they serve.
The volunteer patrol system shows signs of exhaustion. The average age of American ski patrollers now exceeds 50, suggesting that younger workers aren’t willing to accept the low wages paid patrollers earn or to volunteer their highly trained labor when they have student loans and rent due. As volunteer ranks thin, resorts that have depended on unpaid labor will face pressure either to convert those positions to paid roles or to reduce their operational capacity.
The unionization wave, for now, continues. Each successful contract negotiation makes the next one easier to pursue. Each strike that achieves meaningful gains demonstrates that organized labor has leverage even in an industry that has long resisted it.
Back in Telluride, fresh powder may accumulate on terrain that no one is skiing. Chairlifts hang motionless against blue sky. The base area sits quiet except for a handful of tourists trying to salvage ruined vacations.
On the picket line, patrollers in their red jackets walk back and forth, holding signs, talking to each other in the cold. They know this mountain intimately – every chute, every wind pattern, every place where the snowpack tends to form dangerous layers. They know what that knowledge is worth. They also know that $21 per hour won’t pay for an apartment in the town they help keep safe.
The dispute isn’t really about the $7 difference between $21 and $28, or even about the $65,000 that separates the two contract proposals. What it’s about is whether the people making life-and-death decisions on avalanche terrain should be able to afford to live within reasonable distance of their workplace. It’s about whether ski resorts exist as communities that support the workers who operate them, or as profit centers that extract maximum value while leaving the human costs for someone else to manage.
The patrollers are waiting. The mountain is waiting. And somewhere in the widening gap between what it costs to run a ski resort and what it costs to live near one, there’s an equation that needs better numbers than anyone has found yet.
