Three Aspen One employees with nearly a century of combined experience at the company will be retiring in the next fiscal year, according to the company that owns and manages the four world-famous Colorado ski areas of Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Snowmass and Buttermilk.

Chief Human Resources Officer Jim Laing, Senior Vice President of Mountain Operations Katie Ertl and Vice President of Communications Jeff Hanle will all be moving on at different times.

“We are a growing and evolving organization and with that comes natural change and transition,” an Aspen One spokesperson wrote in an email statement. “The recent internal transition announcement of three valued teammates has been planned for years and are part of that natural change cycle.

“We are deeply grateful for their many years of dedication and service. While they will be missed, these changes provide an opportunity for Aspen One to build upon their legacy, continue to evolve, and continue to raise the bar in serving our guests, employees, and communities.”

Laing will become a senior advisor to the company beginning Oct. 1 for an eventual retirement on June 1, 2025. He in his 30th year with this company and is the longest tenured executive officer in the company’s history. Lisa Flynn will then take over the Aspen One HR organization.  

Ertl, a native of Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley, started her tenure at Aspen Skiing Company as an 18-year-old ski pro (instructor) while attending the University of Colorado and worked her way up to senior vice president of mountain operations in 2017.

She has been with the company 37 years — 25 years in management and leadership roles.  

“Katie will continue in her current role through Dec. 1 of this year and will then transition to become a senior adviser to Aspen Skiing Company CEO Geoff Buchheister for the remainder of the upcoming winter season,” according to an internal communication. “Katie’s direct reports will report into Geoff while the team works on their longer-term evolution.”  

Ertl did not return a phone call requesting comment.

Aspen One Vice President of Communications Hanle has been with the company for more than 26 years after coming over from the radio industry. He’ll stay on through March 31, 2025, and the company is posting a job listing to find his replacement soon.  

Hanle declined to comment on his pending retirement.

Off-the-record sources emphasized that these moves were all anticipated and not part of a broader restructuring of executive leadership ahead of any major new changes.  

Rumors of a potential full acquisition of Aspen One by Alterra Mountain Company, which is partly owned by Henry Crown and Company — or some other entity — have swirled in recent months, especially since the untimely death of Jim Crown in 2023. But industry observers find that scenario unlikely.  

“First, I’d be absolutely shocked if the Crowns sold Aspen,” former Aspen Skiing Company Chief Operating Officer and now-retired member of the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame John Norton said in a phone interview last spring.

“There’s a reason Aspen’s not already part of Alterra, and that’s the Crown family. I just don’t think it’s in the cards,” Norton added. “They’ve been great owners for Aspen, and sure, Jim was the managing partner, but he’s got six or seven brothers and sisters and cousins. I think the Crowns love Aspen.”  

The four Aspen mountains can be accessed for up to seven days each on Alterra’s multi-resort Ikon Pass.

The Ikon Pass offers unlimited access to Solitude Mountain, and up to seven days each at Snowbasin, Alta, Deer Valley, Snowbird and Brighton, as well as a slew of other ski areas around the world. It’s the chief competitor with Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass.  

The post Aspen announces leadership changes amid sale rumors appeared first on Park Record.

If it seems like there have been a lot of slow-running, or worse, no-running, chairlifts at Park City Mountain Resort so far this season, chalk it up to the simple ski-industry maxim of “stuff happens.” At least according to one Park City Mountain lift mechanic and union representative.

“Unfortunately, no, they’re machines. They do break down,” Cody Madden with the Park City Lift Maintenance Union said in a phone interview Thursday after the six-passenger PayDay lift out of Park City Mountain Village was shut down most of Monday and then again Tuesday morning. Madden was asked if there have been more slowdowns and shutdowns than usual.

“Fortunately, no, there’s not really a bigger story,” Madden said. “It’s really not staffing issues at all. We are actually fully staffed on lift maintenance at the moment. We would like to add more people to that, but [Park City Mountain owner Vail Resorts] gives us a number on how many people we can have, and that’s what we go with.”

On Saturday, Jan. 27, McConkey’s Express shut down for a half hour, then creeped along for the next half hour so people could unload.

On Wednesday, Quick Silver Gondola had a delayed start later in the morning. Park City Mountain Communication Director Sara Huey did not elaborate past expressing gratitude “for the expertise and diligence of our lift maintenance employees and all of our operations teams.”

Madden said it just might seem like a lot of incidents because they’ve come one after the other.

“A lot of times it is forefront of people’s mind and, unfortunately, sometimes these things come in a snowball effect,” Madden said. “It’s not even that the lifts are related. It’s that one thing happens, and then it seems like the next thing happens.”

Madden, who works on the Canyons side of Park City Mountain, said he wasn’t entirely sure what shut PayDay down for so long Jan. 29-30, but it wasn’t power-related. He added that, overall, there have been a variety of issues this season.

“We have had a couple of [power issues] this season with the Rocky Mountain Power grid, but that’s all been resolved very fast and no significant downtime on that stuff,” Madden said, adding that mechanical issues sometimes come down to accessing parts. “It just takes time to get them in. Sometimes they have to come from out of state.”

Some skiers have at least perceived an uptick in lift ride delays, though.

“I’ve been skiing here for 20 years and living here on and off for 15. I’ve never before experienced, or even heard of, lift stoppages like this,” said Jerry Stouck of Park City.

He said he got stuck for half an hour two weeks ago when Three Kings lift stopped, in addition to getting stuck on PayDay this week.

“I am personally worried about maintenance issues based on my two recent experiences,” he said.

Richard Sherman of Park City wondered if the high speed detachable lifts were aging toward the point they should be replaced, based on a story he had read in LiftBlog.com about the average of 23.8 years of service when these lifts are replaced. He counted eight detachable lifts on Park City Mountain that age or older.

“It could certainly be a good story to find out why they’re not replacing the lifts, especially when we’re starting to see mechanical issues everywhere,” he said. “If they’re all about safety, maybe it’s time for them to spend some money replacing lifts.”  

Madden said the newly formed union is very much on the same page with Vail Resorts.

“Speaking for the union, and Vail Corporation, Park City management, we all have the same end goal: get as many people up the hill as possible and not have the lifts shut down,” Madden said. “When these things do happen — unfortunately there’s mechanical and electrical issues that do set us back — we’re not restricted in any way. … We had guys here till 3 in the morning [Tuesday] working on the thing, trying to get it going for the day. Unfortunately, sometimes you run into waiting for a part to come from someone else, or sometimes it’s a software update.”

Neither of the lifts, Silverlode and Eagle, that infamously earned national headlines in a round of litigation pitting the ski company against the Park City municipal government have been involved in the recent round of mechanical issues. Vail Resorts got initial staff approval to upgrade those lifts before the Park City Planning Commission overruled staff, Vail Resorts sued, and a judge ultimately sided with the city. The new lifts wound up at another Vail Resorts ski mountain in Canada — Whistler.

“I don’t want to speak too far out of line, but the bigger story is upgrading lifts, and when Park City doesn’t want us to upgrade lifts and then we have older lifts still running, that’s kind of a problem,” Madden said. “Like, we want to live in a ski town, but we want our cake to eat it, too, and we don’t want to put new stuff in.”

Asked if this season’s lift issues should just be chalked up to, “S___ happens,” Madden offered: “Educating the public, I’d love to put that out there in better words than that, obviously. I’ve worked for smaller companies, and a lot of people here remember the [previous owner] Talisker days when we couldn’t get parts. We’re not restricted by any means now. We can pretty much get whatever we want and or need to make [lifts] run. It’s just the time frame to get it and install it.”

The company recommends using its website or its mobile app to check lift status.

Park Record Editor Don Rogers contributed to this story.

The post Park City Mountain lift mechanic union rep on recent issues: ‘The bigger story is upgrading lifts’ appeared first on Park Record.

The six-person PayDay Express chairlift — one of the two main lifts out of Park City Mountain Village — was shut down due to an unspecified mechanical issue most of the day on Monday with resort officials promising to “resolve the issue before re-opening PayDay Express to the public.”

The lift stopped operating at 9:10 a.m., and about four minutes later operators were able to start running it again at reduced speed to unload snow riders. No injuries were reported, but the critical lift was then down the remainder of the day, with no specific timeline offered for reopening. The lift was back in operation Tuesday.

“Park City Mountain extends its apologies to the guests who were inconvenienced by this event,” Park City Senior Manager of Communications Sara Huey wrote in an email Monday afternoon. “The resort places the highest value on the safety of its guests and will resolve the issue before re-opening to the public.”

Huey encouraged guests to go to the resort website or use the My Epic app to check on the status of PayDay, listed as “on-hold” late Monday on Park City’s lift and terrain status webpage.

The PayDay shutdown comes on the heels of Saturday’s temporary shutdown of McConkey’s Express six-passenger chairlift, which stopped for approximately a half hour, ran at a slower speed for another half hour, and then returned to full service. The ski company offered discount vouchers to stranded riders on Saturday.

Park City owner Vail Resorts inked a two-year contract with the Park City Lift Maintenance Professional Union covering 45 lift mechanics and electricians in December, increasing pay and safety training.

Breckenridge Ski Patrol Union President Ryan Dineen, a union organizer and ski patroller at the Vail Resorts-owned Colorado resort, belongs to the same local as the Park City Mountain lift workers. He said in a phone interview Monday that he could not address chairlift issues in Park City but generally the goals of the union workers and the resorts are aligned.

Park City Mountain union representatives could not be reached Monday or Tuesday.

“Our success is intertwined with the success of the industry,” Dineen said. “So having lifts run on time and having them run smoothly and not break down and having people get prompt medical care and to be able to ski above tree line in avalanche-prone terrain, those are all our goals — just like it is the company’s goals.

“Obviously, we differ in some of our priorities when it comes to housing and pay and benefits and not seeing ourselves as replaceable,” Dineen added. “That’s where we need to use our leverage as labor to frankly compel our employers to change and to adapt.”

The lack of affordable housing and high cost of living in ski towns has led to shortages of experienced staff, he conceded.

“You could say that COVID kind of really exacerbated the problem and pointed it out directly, but it’s a problem that’s been happening for years and it’s still happening,” Dineen said. “Whether or not we are a hundred percent staffed or 80% staffed, a vast majority of that staff does not have any kind of tenure or institutional knowledge.”

The post Chairlift challenges continue at Park City Mountain as PayDay shuts down for most of Monday appeared first on Park Record.

If every single Powder Mountain season-pass-holder (there are only 3,000 of them) showed up to ski on the same day, and the ski area 20 miles northeast of Ogden then sold out its hard-capped 1,500 day-skier tickets, that unlikely scenario would still equal just a third of Park City Mountain’s ever-elusive Comfortable Carry Capacity, or CCC.

In this day and age of discount season-pass mania and corporately-owned conglomerate ski behemoths, that much lower CCC is turning some heads in an industry beset by bad press and even legal wrangling over crowding, parking, housing, labor and other issues.

It turns out people notice when you cap your season passes at 3,000, sell them out and put people on a wait list for a mountain that boasts “biggest in the nation” status at 8,464 skiable acres (Park City Mountain checks in at 7,300 skiable acres). Powder Mountain was 2023’s surprise No. 1 in the West winner in the once monthly but now annual SKI Magazine, while Park City was ranked 15^th. Deer Valley Resort, with 2,026 skiable acres, was No. 9.

Netflix cofounder turned Powder Mountain savior Reed Hastings, in a recent letter, admitted that “sadly, Powder has been struggling financially,” but then promised a $20 million capital infusion to fix three old public chairlifts at the ski area that’s all on private land as he pursues an innovative real estate play that will turn part of the vast mountain private for homeowners. The private skiing will fund the public skiing, and allow for limited season pass and ticket sales.

“We believe this blend of public and private skiing secures us decades of exceptional uncrowded skiing for all, funded partially by real estate,” Hastings wrote. “To stay independent and uncrowded, we needed to change, and we didn’t want to join the successful but crowded multi-resort pass model (i.e., Snowbasin) or sell to a conglomerate (i.e., Vail).”

Powder Mountain Resort Chief Creative Officer Alex Zhang, in a phone interview with a Vail-based ski reporter, damned the discount ski pass tsunami with faint praise: “You guys built a pretty creative and innovative model [with the advent of Vail’s Epic Pass in 2008], but I think no one could have predicted the intense demand for it and its sort of second-order effects, which pretty much just means things are very, very, very crowded.”

Powder Mountain’s 3,000-acre, independently-owned neighbor to the south, Snowbasin, at first joined the Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass family of some 40 unlimited ski areas globally (plus another 23 limited-access partners) but then switched to Alterra Mountain Company’s Ikon Pass family of 14 unlimited resorts and 39 limited-access resorts that offer up to seven days.

Snowbasin and Deer Valley are both limited-access Ikon areas, while Park City Mountain is an unlimited Epic Pass area.

Price is one of the greatest drivers of discount season-pass success, with millions of takers at around $950 for an unlimited adult Epic Pass and $1,300 for an adult Ikon Pass, while Powder Mountain checks in at just under $1,295 for the season and around $229 for a day ticket, with $19 night skiing all season. But what price would you pay for untrammeled powder?

“The real sort of headline or the strategy of this quote unquote innovative model that we’re pursuing is quite direct in our eyes in that most ski resorts that are independent have one or two paths,” Zhang said. “They either open themselves up to the larger sort of multi-resort pass model, which is a great model, it just leads to crowding, or they go fully private.

“But we believe there’s an interesting business model that is a lot more sustainable for both the customer, the skier, as well as for the team and the local community that we’re employing, through this public-private hybrid blend.”

The percentage of that blend hasn’t been determined yet, Zhang said, meaning it’s still unclear at this point what percentage of those 8,464 skiable acres — the majority of which are accessed by snowcat — will be devoted solely to the private skiers whose real estate investments will fund upgrades to the very old-school amenities at the rest of the resort.

“The idea is that the private skiing is one of the main pillars of real estate sales,” Zhang said. “And the real estate sales go to fund improvements for the public side — new lifts. We’ve upgraded Paradise Lift, which was a very slow lift that now we’ve upgraded to a high speed. We’ve upgraded Timberline, which is one of the oldest lifts in the state. So just all these public improvements that have been needed but there wasn’t enough capital for under previous ownership, we’re now able to improve those, as well as lodges and renovations and facilities.”

For now, Powder Mountain has taken all of its for-sale lots off the real estate market as it fine tunes its overall plan and gears up to announce that strategy next summer and seek municipal approval. Powder Mountain stretches across Cache and Weber counties.

“We’re working very closely with the county on everything,” Zhang said.

Powder is not interested in the fully private model of another neighbor to the south in Morgan County, the fully private 3,000-skiable-acre Wasatch Peaks Ranch, which is facing a possible public referendum after several local residents objected to its Morgan County rezoning approval in 2019. Pure, high-end privacy is not what Powder Mountain is going for, Zhang said.

“I don’t think we’re interested in that either because such a core component of Powder Mountain is the soul and is the heart and is the vibe of the place and … we want to protect that, we want preserve that,” Zhang said. “This is a model of preservation where all those beloved spots like the Powder Keg, which is this amazing local bar, all these places, that’s what makes Powder Mountain special. And the people and the community that choose to spend time here is what makes it special. This, we believe, is a way to keep the overall picture sustainable because I also believe no one wants like a totally empty resort. I don’t think that’s as exciting.”

For future real estate inquiries, head to Powder Mountain’s real estate tab on its website.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the counties where Powder Mountain is located.

The post Powder Mountain ducks deluge of discount ski passes, touts strict limit allowed on slopes appeared first on Park Record.

Candidates from both major political parties looking to unseat pro-fossil-fuel and national rising-star Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert agree Utah’s Uinta Basin Railway that would dramatically increase oil-train traffic through Colorado is a bad idea, with one GOP challenger saying he’d go to extremes to stop the proposed Utah rail project.

“I almost think of Tiananmen Square with that,” Carbondale, Colorado, Republican Russ Andrews said in a recent phone interview, referring to a pro-democracy demonstrator standing in front of a tank during a deadly military massacre in Beijing in 1989. “I’m thinking I would stand in front of the train tracks, I mean, on the train tracks in front of the train.”

The proposed 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway would connect drilling operations in northeast Utah to the main rail line near Price, sending up to five two-mile-long oil trains a day along the Colorado River and through Denver toward Gulf Coast refineries, increasing production by up to 350,000 barrels a day. Legal action by environmental groups  and Eagle County, including nearly $450,000 in taxpayer-funded legal feels, has delayed if not outright derailed the project.

Utah’s entire congressional delegation supports the Uinta Basin Railway project, with Utah U.S. Sen. Mike Lee particularly outspoken against what he called the “woke environmentalism” of Colorado’s opposition to the proposal, which he said “undermines the integrity of our regulatory process and stifles innovation. I will continue working with my Senate colleagues, our state’s leaders, and all relevant agencies to ensure this project moves forward promptly.”

Andrews, a former engineer who says he went to State University of New York Maritime College to study the design and operation of mobile and stationary power plants, as well as the transportation of toxic materials, made it clear he does not oppose oil and gas drilling overall.

“I am an engineer. I’m a conservative,” said Andrews, who’s now a financial adviser and radio commentator in Carbondale, near Aspen. “I am not opposed to fossil fuels in any way, shape or form. I am opposed to having 30,000-gallon tanker cars, 500 of them a day, transiting across or around the water source for 40 million Americans, which is the Colorado River.”

That sentiment is echoed by Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout, a Democrat who’s seeking the nomination to take on Boebert in next year’s election for the massive 3^rd Congressional District that borders Utah and includes most of Colorado’s rural and energy-rich Western Slope.

“So whether [the Utah oil is] coming through on trains or whether it’s coming through on trucks … 40 million people rely on the Colorado River, and if we had a derailment like what happened in Pueblo along the Colorado River, it would be disastrous,” Stout said in a phone interview, referring to a fatal train derailment near Pueblo, Colo., in October.

The working-class cities of Grand Junction and Pueblo, which is in southern Colorado, are the two largest population centers in the district.

“Until we invest in the infrastructure needed to ensure that our rail lines are safe, and that they are up to current standards, we should be very careful about what we’re sending along any of our train tracks or our rail lines,” Stout added, referring to bipartisan rail-safety legislation that has been languishing in Congress since last summer’s catastrophic East Palestine derailment in Ohio.

“Regarding the train story, there’s no comment at this time regarding it,” Boebert spokesman Anthony Fakhoury wrote in an email. “We’re still awaiting more information and developments into the situation before we take a hard stance on it.” But, he added that Colorado ranks fifth in the nation for oil and gas production and Boebert “has always been a strong advocate for American energy production and considers protecting the thousands of energy jobs in her district a top priority.”

Adam Frisch, an Aspen Democrat who lost to Boebert by just 546 votes in 2022 and is running again in 2024, is a proponent of increased domestic oil and gas production despite its current all-time record levels, arguing it’s produced in the United States under stricter environmental regulations than in other countries, but he said the Uinta Basin Railway is problematic because of where the oil trains have to go on their way to Gulf Coast refineries.

“I realize that some people are against this rail because they just don’t want anything to do with energy being produced in the United States. And you have some really, really important water that is responsible for 40 million people in the country,” Frisch said of the Colorado River in a recent phone interview. “And I fully appreciate that, God forbid, there’s an accident, it’s better that it’s this waxy, quasi-solid than liquid oil. But that still doesn’t calm down a lot of people, and rightly so, about it. I need to look at the maps and I’m not the one that should be doing it sitting in Congress in 2025, but is there not any other path … to figure out how to move [the oil] from where the energy is produced to where it needs to go to?”

Andrews said the Uinta Basin waxy crude, which is too thick for pipelines and must be heated in transit, can’t just be scooped out of a waterway if it spills.

“You can’t [just scoop it up] because what’ll happen is the molecules will slough off all day every day, 24-7-365, until you get it out of there, and getting it out of there, the candle wax will slough off, thousands of pounds of this stuff as it goes all the way out to California,” Andrews said. “When that oil hits that cold water, it will congeal and sink to the bottom, and it will take billions of dollars and years to mitigate that. It would be a disaster, an unmitigated disaster.”

Again, Andrews emphasizes he’s not opposed to fossil fuels, and is in fact is a signatory of the Oregon Petition, “which essentially states that the anthropogenic cause of global warming is not an existential threat to the planet.” But he’s vehemently opposed to the Uinta Basin Railway and any Plan B methods of increasing oil-train traffic through Colorado.

Those methods include the proposed expansion of the Wildcat Loadout on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land near Price, which proponents want to see fast-tracked to accommodate a huge surge in truck traffic from the Uinta Basin, through tribal lands and petroglyph-rich areas such as Ninemile Canyon. The BLM is weighing what type of environmental review to conduct despite recent revelations of ongoing Utah Division of Air Quality violations.

Frisch said he is sympathetic to the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in northeastern Utah, which is a big backer of the Uinta Basin Railway project and deeply disturbed by Colorado lawmakers looking to block the railway, since tribe members say they were forced out of Colorado to their current location and have a right to profit from the oil in Utah.

“Then you have the tribes who are really supportive of it and are raising some frustrations that they don’t feel like they’re being heard. One, I was born on the Indian reservation in northeastern Montana, and so I learned a little …,” Frisch said. “Two, I’m a big believer that the tribal lands need this. There’s a sovereignty conversation, which I respect, with sincerity, and they deserve with sincerity and authenticity, a sincere seat at the table.”

All three Colorado 3rd Congressional District candidates interviewed for this story said Interstate 70 from Denver into the mountains is a nightmare that needs to be fixed, and they blame Boebert for not focusing enough on infrastructure issues while she fights culture wars in Washington.

Frisch said when he graduated from the University of Boulder in 1990, he remembers I-70 being far fewer lanes and argues that despite some improvements it’s still inadequate given the state’s huge surge in population since then. He says passenger rail is one way to take pressure off I-70.

“I’m a big proponent of rail because I still think it is environmentally and economically sound way to move transport around,” Frisch said. “I was up in Craig [recently], and there’s a lot of interest for passenger rail as well, and I do believe increased passenger rail is good for tourism, I think it’s good for economics, and it’s a good way to move people around.”

Frisch said Boebert is focused on all the wrong things in Congress: “There’s just a lot of time and money being spent on reducing the secretary of defense’s salary to a dollar or impeaching this person or impeaching that person when we should be focusing on how do we make sure that we have an energy infrastructure for 2023 and beyond.”

Grand Junction’s Stout, also a proponent of increased passenger rail, points to the stalled rail safety bill and lack of infrastructure spending overall for what she dubs “geographic inequity” in the district – a factor she says makes it difficult move west to east: “We really have not invested significantly in our transportation infrastructure in this country in many decades. We’re feeling the pinch over here in Western Colorado because of it, and in southern Colorado as well.”

Andrews also calls increased passenger rail a good idea and vows to focus on bringing federal dollars back into the district if elected.

“One of the primary reasons I’m running is that Lauren Boebert, she went to D.C. for God knows what reasons, but whatever the reasons were, none of them really had to do with representing the district,” Andrews said. “Last year, she brought 1.1 billion fewer dollars back to the district than the average district in the state enjoyed, and that works out to $5,800 per family of four — [money] that CDOT [the Colorado Department of Transportation] didn’t have to build more roads, to improve bridges, that we didn’t have to improve or increase rail lines. So that’s actually the very first reason that I’m running is to do a better job representing the district.”

The post Boebert rivals in Colorado fight oil train, which Utah’s congressional delegation and Ute reservation leaders support appeared first on Park Record.