SAM Magazine—Ludlow, Vt., Dec. 29, 2021— In the middle of a busy holiday period, ski area operators in some pockets of the country are being forced to respond to growing regional Covid case numbers and outbreaks among staff with policy updates and operational changes . 

At this time last year, Covid infection rates were trending flat or down. Today, average daily new cases in the U.S. topped a record 267,000. Several regions are experiencing incidence spikes, including parts of the Northeast and Colorado. Colorado ski country, in particular, has been in the midst of a sharp two-week surge, with Summit County, Pitkin County, and Eagle County among the top 10 incidence rates in the U.S.

In response to the climbing cases, effective today, Vail Resorts (VR) will require guests and employees to wear face coverings on gondolas at all of its North American resorts. 

Pitkin County, where Aspen Skiing Company (SkiCo) operates, has a mandate in place requiring masks in public, indoor locations. On Dec. 22, SkiCo extended that requirement to the gondola cabins and lines at its four mountains. It will rely on voluntary compliance, though. VP of communications Jeff Hanle told Aspen Times, “We don’t have enough employees to do that (monitor lines), and we don’t want to be the police.” 

SkiCo, which implemented a mandatory vaccination policy for employees in September, also updated its protocols to require employees to wear masks in all lift lines as well as other crowded outdoor locations, and is encouraging eligible employees to get a booster shot.

In the East, Killington, Vt., updated its Covid policy this week, posting to its website: “Out of an abundance of caution to protect our team and others, we are reinstating our face mask policy starting Monday, December 27. This policy requires all guests and employees, vaccinated or not, to wear a face mask covering their nose and mouth while indoors or riding our gondolas.” 

After a dozen Wintergreen, Va., employees came down with Covid, GM Jay Gamble wrote a Dec. 22 letter on the ski area’s blog explaining that, despite containment efforts, the virus had spread to 30 employees. Gamble shared that the ski area would consequently be scaling down its food and beverage operations over the holiday period. 

To curb further spread, the resort also updated its mask policy. “We are requiring EVERYONE – employees, members, and visitors alike – to wear masks when INDOORS at Wintergreen Resort, regardless of their vaccination status. Signage has been posted to communicate this revised masking policy, and regardless of your vaccination situation, we must insist on strict compliance. We know this may be difficult, and we apologize for any inconvenience, but we would like to get this behind us as quickly as possible,” wrote Gamble. 

“We have taken a very proactive and transparent stance with this,” said Christian Knapp, chief marketing officer of Wintergreen parent company Pacific Group Resorts, Inc. (PGRI). “We’ve tried to give a very transparent point of view to our customers, and I think our customers have really appreciated that honesty. It helps them understand why certain operations might be closed and helps us get compliance with new policies to reduce the spread.”

After successful mitigation measures, including partnering with the Virginia Department of Health to offer employees on site testing and isolate affected staff members, Wintergreen is now expecting to be able to scale F&B operations back up, said Knapp. 

“No resort is immune to this,” he noted. “There are going to be pockets of infection. Resorts have to be prepared to move quickly to isolate these individuals and get them out of the workforce so they can get healthy, but that puts a strain on resorts that are already stretched thin with their staffing levels,” he acknowledged.

Many areas have anticipated the inevitability of infections circulating among staff. “Some of our lift department and many of our unvaccinated staff are out with Covid now, but we have been prepared and have the coverage to keep ops going. Our visitation this holiday week is close to record pace," said Jeff Crowley, president of Wachusett Ski Area, Mass.

“We are continuing to require all staff be masked indoors and for our customers we are following the governor’s guidance of a ‘mask advisory’ for indoors. We will also require a negative test for staff to return to work,” he added.

Sunday River, Maine, has been similarly proactive, said general manager Brian Heon. “Covid is around, for sure, and some staff have gotten infected,” he said, noting that as a result the ski area has had to reduce hours for some F&B outlets due to shortages. But Sunday River has required that all staff wear masks indoors since September. "If they have a roof over their head,” said Heon, “our team members are wearing masks."

The mountain started the season with much of last year's staff health and safety protocols in place, added Heon. Lift attendants, for example, go straight to the lift they're working at that day, not to the locker room first. So, lift ops staff are effectively in pods. Similarly, patrollers have staggered arrival times so they're not all showing up together, which limits their exposure. 

At Crystal Mountain, Mich., being fully staffed provides some cushion against Covid impacts. “We continue to have employees off work due to either being infected with Covid or a direct exposure (often from a family member),” explained Crystal president Chris MacInnes, noting that many of the cases are “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated staff. While it does result in lost work time for the employee, it hasn’t necessitated significant operational changes. 

The resort is operating with an employee mask policy that necessitates face coverings inside but not outside. 

Demand has been strong over the holiday period, said MacInnes, including advance purchase lift tickets, lessons, rentals, season pass sales and lodging. Delta variant cases are dropping in Michigan, which is an inherent advantage. “Despite this currently rosy picture,” said MacInnes, “we know that it’s just a matter of time before we will experience the Omicron surge, which could be a game changer.” 

Covid is not the only thing impacting business this week. On Monday, Giants Ridge, Minn., shared in a tweet that it was scaling back night skiing operations due to staffing shortages.

“The shortages are all in outside operations and are due to lack of applicants. Seems nobody wants to work in the cold, nights, weekends or holidays no matter what the pays is,” said general manager Fred Seymour. 

“We have been fortunate so far with the spread of Covid in the workplace,” he added (emphasis is his). “We are requiring vaccines or weekly testing beginning January 14. We have all employees masking.”

Serious preventative measures were ubiquitous and consistent across resorts last winter when the industry made a significant effort to band together on safety initiatives like Ski Well, Be Well. The result was few staff outbreaks, and U.S. ski areas remained open. This winter, Covid safety policies have been less uniform from resort-to-resort and markedly less stringent, the latter a reflection of updated science and fewer government-mandated protocols no doubt.

There was an overwhelming desire at the start of the season for a return to (more) normal operations, but challenging weather, staffing shortages, high demand, and surging Covid cases are already disrupting those optimistic plans. While the full scope of the impact these challenges may have on business will likely be clearer in the days and weeks after the holiday period, the season is shaping up to be one that will rely heavily on lessons learned from winter 2020-21, and the ability and willingness of operators and guests to adapt.