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.”