Vail Resorts depends on altitude for an awesome ride. So far this year it’s delivered avalanches of downers for peeved snow lovers. Class-action lawsuits, massive waits at the lifts, not enough parking, understaffed resorts, unhappy employees, oversold passes, unopened runs – have we missed anything? Vail has put an unusual spin on its “simple” mission: “the experience of a lifetime.”

Kirsten Lynch was buoyant in her intro to the winter season in December. She stood with snow in the background, probably from snowmaking machines that cranked out a bit of base. Lynch, a data analyst and marketing guru, grew Epic Pass revenue from $135 million to $653 million. She brought on 900,000 more tickets and passes since 2019.

To smooth the COVID disaster, Vail cut the cost of the Epic pass by 20%. About 2.1 million passes sold. That’s not money a company can just bank and walk away with, although with $1.3 billion in cash sitting somewhere, that seems to be what’s happening.

Vail used a portion of its cash to increase its resort holdings during the COVID downturn by purchasing small ski areas near big midwestern and east coast cities. As any banker will tell you, no matter how mature the company, growing too fast causes too many problems. Now Lynch has too many “guests” trying to ski and board at her insufficiently supported and staffed mountains.

Putting fear into the hearts of skiers and boarders across the nation, Vail Resorts will continue to be aggressive in adding more resorts through mergers and acquisitions, according to Rob Katz, former CEO.

Here’s the snow lovers’ dilemma with the Epic Pass: they buy in the off-season for service to be delivered during the in-season. “Guests” take on the risk of a bad snow year. They shouldn’t also have to take on the risk of bad management, bad human resources systems and a bad pay structure.

Lynch’s problems cross the nation and surely affect Colorado’s reputation as a state that provides superior snow experiences. EpicLiftLines, an Instagram site, collects Epic Pass commentary from east to west. Here’s from Pennsylvania on Seven Springs Mountain Resort: “Bob Nutting ruined these resorts years ago. A fine acquisition for Vail. It will fit their portfolio nicely #bailonvail.” Unhappy campers at Stevens Pass in Washington are captured in this video.

Ambitious photographers documented on Instagram the massive ski lift lines across Vail’s resorts (create an account to see). This bit has hundreds of likes: “Crotched Mt open 5 days a week. Boston Mills not open at all. Steven’s 4-5 chairs. 60 plus percent of the back bowls at Vail still closed. When does it move from bad management to false advertising and fraud? Not saying it has but some lawyers must be circling.” The Washington State Attorney General’s office has 81 open consumer complaints on Stevens Pass.

As of mid-January, about 40,000 signatures filled a Stevens Pass petition chastising Vail’s operations. Here’s a comment, “Lift lines are out of control to the point where the majority of a day of ‘skiing’ is spent standing in line at one of the few lifts open.” According to Peak Rankings in early January, Crystal, Stevens Pass’s main competition, was 100% open whereas Stevens had somewhere from 40-70% open terrain, depending on who’s talking.

Vail employees who earn at the low end of the payscale, that is $15 to $23 per-hour, describe the strain of not having enough money to live in an expensive resort community. A Wendy’s in Edwards is offering $18-per-hour to start.

A class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 in Colorado states that Vail Resorts has underpaid employees by not recognizing time to travel from parking lots to their job posts or for putting on gear and uniforms to perform duties as ski instructors, etc. Other issues involve clocking in and out times and overtime. Two similar suits are in the California court system. One employee sums up his future this way: “Soon they’re going to throw locals a virtual reality headset and say, enjoy your 5-star employee housing and endless powder runs.”

Vail offers COVID as one excuse for its service delivery problems. Of course, every other ski area deals with comparable problems at their destinations, but they’re not receiving the same public vitriol. It’s easy to put out the mission statement: “Experience of a lifetime.” It takes more than nature’s great mountains to make it happen.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.