After a nearly two week strike, Park City Mountain reaches tentative agreement with ski patrollers

Park City Mountain’s ski patrollers picket near the base of the resort in Park City while their union strikes on Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

After a strike that lasted nearly two weeks, Park City Mountain and the ski patrol union have reached a tentative agreement, the groups said in a joint statement Tuesday night. 

The agreement is still pending and will be ratified after a vote scheduled for Wednesday. Details of the agreement were not immediately clear, and both groups said they would not take media requests until the contract is ratified.  

In a statement, the union’s bargaining committee says it is unanimously endorsing the agreement. 

“Park City Mountain and the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association are pleased to announce that they have reached a new tentative agreement through April 2027,” the joint statement reads. “The tentative agreement addresses both parties’ interests and will end the current strike. Everyone looks forward to restoring normal resort operations and moving forward together as one team.”

Since Dec. 27, the union’s roughly 200 members have been on strike after they said Vail Resorts, which owns Park City Mountain, could not agree to a $2 per hour increase to base wages for new patrollers, moving the starting pay from $21 per hour to $23 per hour. 

Vail Resorts and Park City ski patrol union resume negotiations, but strike continues

The union was also advocating for improved seasonal benefits, including paid parental leave, holiday pay and better paid time off options. They also said the wage scale should be improved, pointing to instances where long-time patrollers are making the same, or less, than patrollers in their third or fourth year.

With the patrollers off the job, chaos ensued at Park City Mountain, the largest resort in the country. Vail Resorts brought in replacement patrollers to keep the mountain open during the holidays, which is typically the busiest time of the year. Long lines and terrain closures plagued the mountain, as guests took to social media to complain. Vail Resorts’ stock dropped as the company picked up negative press from national news outlets around the country. 

“I was out in Park City, Utah, for the last week. We got two feet of new snow, that’s every skier’s dream, right?” said CNBC’s Jim Lebenthal on Halftime Report last week. “Except the problem is, Vail Mountain (Sic), 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.”