Was the 2024–25 Season a Turning Point for North American Skiing?
This winter in the ski industry felt unlike anything we've seen in years—and there’s good reason for that. From operational controversies, to on-mountain accidents, to weather instability, the 2024-25 season was packed with drama, danger, and a few unexpected developments.
So what do we make of all this, and what do these developments mean for the future of the ski industry? In this piece, we'll dive deep into the most notable things that happened across the North American ski world this winter—and why they matter as you plan next year’s ski trips. Let’s jump right into it.
Striking ski patrollers at Park City, UT this past December. The labor dispute reached a resolution after 12 days following a busy holiday period.
Part 1: Labor Unrest
Let’s start with what may have been the most disruptive storyline of the year: ski industry workers pushing back against corporate power. At Park City Mountain in Utah, the ski patrol union made headlines by launching a full-scale strike over contract negotiations. The patrollers, who are employed by Vail Resorts, had been pushing for higher wages, better working conditions, and stronger safety measures. After months of stalled negotiations, they walked off the job on December 27, creating a huge headache for the resort just as peak season was getting underway.
Vail Resorts then responded by flying in patrollers from other resorts they owned around the country, hoping to effectively replace the team on strike; however, the resort still found itself unable to get huge swaths of terrain open, with the overcrowded areas that did actually open facing unconscionable lift lines. This was the first ski patrol strike of its kind in more than 50 years, and it reignited national conversations about labor conditions in the ski industry. The strike reached a resolution after 12 days, but not until the patrollers had walked off the scene for the vast majority of the December holiday period, upending thousands of people’s vacations. Vail Resorts is now facing a class-action lawsuit from some of these visitors, who claim the company intentionally failed to warn them about the strike and its potential impacts.
Park City wasn't the only Vail-owned resort where worker concerns boiled over. In the wake of what happened with the ski patrol there, patrol unions at Keystone and Crested Butte also voiced public frustrations—though both mountains eventually reached agreements with Vail Resorts. Notably, Keystone ski patrollers had only voted to unionize for the first time in spring 2024, making this the first time a bargaining agreement was ever negotiated with Vail.
Several new ski resorts, including Arapahoe Basin (pictured) voted to unionize within the past year.
That being said, it’s worth noting that this year’s unionization developments were not exclusive to Vail-owned mountains. Solitude and Arapahoe Basin, both of which are now owned by Alterra, voted to unionize within the past year, although neither has at least publicly reached a contract. Other resorts out west such as Whitefish and Eldora have taken similar steps as well. Patrollers from these mountains raised similar concerns to that of Park City’s patrollers, citing stagnant wages and lack of career progression in the move to unionize.
Besides the ski patrol strike, the highest-profile labor-related event arguably took place at Breckenridge, another Vail-owned mountain. Employees took to social media to expose unsafe and substandard conditions in company-provided housing. Reports described units without functioning heat during sub-zero cold snaps, no hot water for extended periods, and pipe bursts in at least three buildings. Some employees said their apartments were effectively unlivable—a disturbing reality in one of the country’s most visited ski towns. Winter sports goers and industry observers criticized the company for prioritizing profit over the well-being of its workers, especially in light of the ski patrol strike only weeks earlier. Both of these issues became flashpoints in the larger debate about the future of labor in the ski world, where the tension between corporate growth and worker welfare is more visible than ever.
A chair on Heavenly’s Comet Express lift slid backward into another chair following a grip failure on December 23, 2024, sending five people to the hospital.
Source: xamfed | Reddit
Part 2: Ski Lift Accidents
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just labor issues that rocked the industry. This season also saw a disturbing number of lift-related incidents, sparking new concerns about safety and deferred maintenance. While chairlift malfunctions are rare, there were several high-profile failures that raised eyebrows.
At least four serious incidents caused casualties this winter. At first, the focus was on Vail Resorts, with the first two out of these four accidents occurring at the resorts they owned. At Heavenly, a chair on the Comet Express slipped backwards and collided with another, causing five guests to fall nearly 30 feet and leading to multiple hospitalizations. In New Hampshire, a chair on Attitash’s Flying Bear lift detached and fell to the ground, injuring a skier who was riding the lift and prompting a state investigation. The lift was permitted to re-open more than a month later, but only after several chairs that had been found to have faulty grips were removed from the line.
On February 10, 2025, a gondola cabin detached from the cable at Kicking Horse after a hanger arm failure.
Source: Brandon Shaw
But by March, it became clear that these issues were not exclusive to Vail-owned mountains. At British Columbia’s Kicking Horse, a gondola cabin on the Golden Eagle Express separated from its cable shortly after loading, forcing a dramatic rope and helicopter evacuation. And in one of the most tragic incidents of the season, a strong wind gust at Red Lodge Mountain in Montana caused the Triple Chair to derope, ejecting a rider who later died from his injuries. Looked at together, these incidents marked a dramatic increase in serious lift incidents versus previous years.
While it’s important to note that lift riding remains incredibly safe overall, several concerns have rightly been raised about whether resorts have been focusing too much on cost cutting—to the point of deprioritizing safety investments—in a time of operational strain and climate uncertainty. Notably, every resort that had a serious accident was either in a region that had a below-average season the winter prior to this one, or was owned by a company that was heavily exposed in a region with a below-average season.
Ski resorts such as Mammoth (pictured) saw snow patterns that caused significant snowpack instability in February and March this year.
Part 3: Volatile, High-Avalanche-Risk Weather Patterns
Speaking of climate uncertainty, this middle of this winter also brought one of the most alarming avalanche cycles in recent memory. The situation began with a historically low snowpack across much of North America through December and early January. Many resorts, especially in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, were struggling with bare terrain and unseasonably warm temperatures. Then, seemingly all at once, the storms arrived—and they arrived hard, affecting some of the most prominent ski resorts on the continent.
One of the most tragic incidents occurred at Mammoth Mountain, California. On February 14, two ski patrollers were caught in an avalanche during routine mitigation work. While the area was closed to the public at the time, one of the patrollers, Claire Murphy, suffered critical injuries and later passed away on February 22. Within the two-week period of that tragic incident, in-bounds avalanches also occurred at Snowbird, Big Sky, and Palisades Tahoe, underscoring just how unstable the snowpack was across a large portion of the Western United States.
Another volatile snow cycle resulted in avalanches at Mammoth and Palisades Tahoe again in late March, with the Palisades Tahoe incident causing injuries to a ski patroller on duty. While in-bounds avalanches are still exceedingly rare, the array of high-profile incidents this winter was a sobering reminder that even in-bounds terrain can carry serious risk, especially if a massive storm system follows a long period of no new snow.
Several Southwestern ski resorts, including Lee Canyon (pictured), had decidedly difficult starts to the 2024-25 ski season.
Part 4: Southwest Drought Conditions (Until March)
While many resorts were battling too much snow, others were struggling with the exact opposite problem. Across the Southwest—from New Mexico to Southern California—ski areas experienced one of their most challenging seasons in recent memory. In New Mexico, Taos Ski Valley reported less than 100 inches of snowfall—significantly below its seasonal average of around 200 inches—resulting in the worst season since 2018. Despite a few late-season storms, the resort relied heavily on snowmaking and faced inconsistent conditions throughout the winter. Several resorts near Los Angeles faced similar issues as well, missing out on storm cycles that hit resorts further north in California.
Arizona Snowbowl in Flagstaff had an especially slow start to the season, recording just 2 inches by early January. Thankfully, a series of March storms brought the resort over 100 inches of snow by season’s end—and allowed the resort to extend its season well into the spring. However, many visitors during the core season—including some on our team—were greeted with white-ribbon snow conditions and only a small handful of trails open.
For many resorts in the Southwest, 2024-25 was a reminder of just how precarious skiing can be in marginal climates. Warm spells, inconsistent storms, and climate variability continue to threaten operations in areas that can’t rely on deep base depths or consistently cold temperatures.
Southwest Colorado’s Purgatory ski resort implemented a wave of budget cuts that culminated in a high-profile ski lift accident on March 9.
The terrible season had impacts on operations as well. Southwest Colorado’s Purgatory resort, which is owned by Mountain Capital Partners, a ski resort company that is heavily leveraged in the Southwest, faced high-profile financial issues this March. The company abruptly implemented a wave of budget cuts across its portfolio, including staff layoffs, curtailed lift operations, and scaled-back events. However, despite these issues popping up this year, Purgatory announced a new lift and small terrain expansion for the coming season, so it's hard to place how the financial situation is really impacting MCP as a whole.
But regardless of Purgatory’s true financial state, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Just days after the staffing cuts were publicized, a 7-year-old boy fell from the Purgatory Express lift—and was later airlifted to Denver for treatment. The incident came at a moment when issues like overworked and undertrained staff, high-profile weather volatility, and lift safety were already top of mind. In many ways, it became a flashpoint that symbolized the perfect storm of challenges plaguing the ski industry this year—where financial stress, operational downsizing, and mounting incident numbers collided on the mountain.
One of Powder Mountain’s new homeowner-only checkpoints, which the resort has staffed with a team of “homeowner patrollers” to make sure that the public can’t sneak in.
Part 5: Private Club Business Models
Have the more variable winters been convincing certain ski industry stakeholders to switch up their business models? Quite possibly. Another significant trend this season has been the shift of some independently-owned ski resorts toward a private club model, aiming to offer exclusive experiences to a wealthier clientele. Utah's Powder Mountain, under the new ownership of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, announced a transition to a semi-private model starting in the 2024-25 season. This approach blends public access with private skiing areas tied to real estate ownership, with about a third of the resort’s previous lift-accessed terrain now reserved exclusively for homeowners and their guests. While the move has been paired with some significant public investments, it has sparked heated backlash from longtime skiers and riders, with critics calling it a betrayal of the resort’s community-focused roots and emblematic of a broader trend where skiing is becoming less accessible to the average person.
New York’s Windham Mountain Club remains open to the public, but it has introduced a private membership with a $200,000+ initiation fee—and the resort is leaving the Ikon Pass after the 2024-25 season.
Similarly, New York’s Windham Mountain Club has been repositioning itself as a high-end destination by limiting ticket and pass sales, raising prices, and investing in upscale amenities. The resort also introduced a private membership with an initiation fee of over $200,000, which gives access to an on-site spa, a snowcat that goes up to the mid-mountain restaurant, and other perks that are designed to cater to the exclusive few who buy in. While it hasn’t closed any of its terrain to willing ticket buyers, Windham has announced it will leave the Ikon Pass after the 2024-25 season—becoming the first resort in the pass’s history to exit the partnership. This move follows several questions on whether the Ikon Pass has reached a tipping point, especially as crowding, blackout dates, and resort commoditization become more visible issues. Windham’s decision signals a growing interest among some resorts in reclaiming control over the guest experience, even if it means losing out on volume-driven passholder revenue. We’ll be keeping an eye out over the next few years to see if any other resorts drop off Ikon and its main competitor, Epic, and it remains to be seen whether Windham’s strategy is an anomaly or the canary in a coal mine.
California’s Homewood ski resort tried moving to a semi-private model, but pushback and dropped financial support resulted in the mountain having to fully suspend operations for the 2024-25 ski season.
It’s also worth briefly touching on another mountain that tried moving to a semi-private model but ended up not opening up at all: Homewood. This Lake Tahoe-adjacent resort tried installing a new gondola this past summer and floated plans to go private back in 2022, but the resort ended up having to abandon both plans—as well as their ability to open up at all—after an unnamed financial partner pulled their support. According to the resort, the investor’s withdrawal was tied to concerns over permitting timelines—delays that were ironically compounded by public backlash and speculation surrounding Homewood’s potential privatization. As of spring 2025, the resort now plans to reopen next season and remain public for the foreseeable future. But for now, it appears the long-promised gondola still won’t be making its way up the mountain.
Vermont’s Killington and Pico became two of the first ski resorts in years to shift from corporate ownership back to independent hands.
Part 6: A Return of Local Stewardship?
Despite the developments at Powder Mountain and Windham, not every shift in the independent ownership space has been about exclusivity. For the first time in years, we’re seeing one of the major ski corporations—Powdr Corp—start to back away from ski resort ownership. The ski resort mega corporation, which owned eight notable ski resorts across North America through 2024, made plans to sell five of them, including Killington, Pico, Eldora, Silver Star, and Mount Bachelor. At the end of last year, Powdr went through with the sale of Killington and Pico, although it’s worth noting that they have since gone back on their move to sell Mount Bachelor. The change marks the first time in years that a large ski conglomerate has actively offloaded ski resort assets—making for a change versus the relentless acquisition trend we’ve seen since the early 2010s.
Whether Powdr’s move is an isolated shift or the beginning of a larger trend remains to be seen. But it opens the door to a new era where corporate consolidation isn’t the only path forward—and where independent ownership doesn’t have to mean exclusivity.
After years in federal receivership, Vermont’s Burke Mountain has a new, locally-based owner.
When it comes to resorts historically owned by smaller entities, we’re also seeing them stay in local hands. A similar story unfolded this year at Burke Mountain, also in Vermont, where ownership was transferred to a local group following years of instability tied to the EB-5 investment scandal. The new ownership model emphasizes local stewardship, skier access, and long-term sustainability over short-term profit. Together, these moves challenge the narrative that independent ownership always means privatization.
Another heartening example comes from New Hampshire’s Black Mountain, where a push to become a skier-owned cooperative—similar to the Mad River Glen model—has captured attention for all the right reasons. Faced with financial uncertainty, the resort launched a grassroots campaign this winter to preserve public access and community ownership—and ended up being temporarily purchased by the company that owns and issues the Indy Pass, with the goal of transitioning the resort to a co-op model by the upcoming 2025-26 season. The managing director of the Indy Pass, Erik Mogensen, stepped in as the GM of the resort through the end of this season. The results were promising: Mogensen personally paid parking tickets for visiting skiers, staff handed out free cookies in the lift lines, and the mountain committed to staying open deep into the spring—targeting a season end date of May 3—while nearby Wildcat, owned by Vail Resorts, is closing weeks earlier than usual despite being known for its strong East Coast spring skiing. The effort didn’t just win hearts; it tripled Black Mountain’s revenue compared to the previous season. It’s a compelling counterpoint to the trend of privatization—showing how creativity, transparency, and a commitment to community can reinvigorate a small ski area without sacrificing public access.
This past winter, Deer Valley installed three new lifts and added over 300 acres of new terrain as part of the first phase of its astronomical Expanded Excellence terrain expansion.
Part 7: Continued Capital Expenditures
But even when it came to the mega-resorts, the developments in the North American ski world this winter weren’t all chaotic. As in previous years, dozens of ski resorts continued to spearhead major capital investments. While some major corporations such as Vail Resorts notably pulled back on these projects versus previous years, other high-profile resorts, including Big Sky, Jackson Hole, Banff Sunshine, and Lake Louise, installed new lifts that fundamentally improved the resort experience. And at Sun Peaks, Powder Mountain, and Deer Valley, guests found themselves able to take advantage of substantial lift-served terrain expansions, with Deer Valley’s investment adding multiple lifts and dozens of new trails—and only being the first stage in a massive 3,700-acre expansion over the next few years.
But high-profile investments weren’t the only ones that made an impact—dozens of resorts funneled money into snowmaking systems, upgraded grooming fleets, new employee housing, glade and trail work, and RFID gate infrastructure—investments that may not always grab attention, but collectively made operations smoother and skier experiences more seamless.
It wasn’t just high-profile lift and terrain expansions—ski resorts continued to invest in behind-the-scenes projects such as snowmaking and grooming.
Final Thoughts
Taken as a whole, the 2024-2025 ski season was one of extremes. It featured some of the most significant labor actions in decades, real concerns about safety and infrastructure, a sobering period of avalanche activity, dramatic regional climate impacts, and continued questions about accessibility in the evolving ski economy. But it also showed signs of resilience—and even a few encouraging shifts toward a more balanced and community-focused industry.
As we head into the off-season, one thing is clear: the ski world is changing fast. And whether you’re a casual winter sports-goer, a regular passholder, or someone who just loves watching this industry unfold, it’s worth keeping a close eye on where things are headed next.