March 15, 2021

On this day a year ago we closed the mountain early due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  To say that was a challenging decision is an understatement when you consider the impact it had on our mountain community to both our guests and employees.

Our guests had a great winter season cut short.  Vacations were cancelled, family ski days were shut down and powder days went by unskied. My team had jobs cut short and much uncertainty to manage through.  It was an incredibly challenging time for everyone that loves Snowbasin and the ski industry at large. 

From that day forward, our team has worked tirelessly to get the mountain open safely and to stay open.  Although Snowbasin prides itself as a mountain that pays the utmost attention to the health and safety of our guests, there were still many policies to be put in place and restrictions to be enforced. We quickly learned that some guests believed we were doing too much to ensure safety and others believed we were doing too little. 

I’m glad to say that although the pandemic impacted our employees throughout the year, we were able to create an environment where we had zero workplace spread of the virus, which allowed us to stay open and minimize the impacts our guests might see.  I am so proud of our dedicated team of employees who worked through difficult circumstances, ensuring mask compliance and the highest level of service to our guests.

I’m thankful for the overwhelmingly positive feedback our staff received over this last year from our guests.  You took the time to stop and thank a staff member and I can’t tell you how much that means to a team who just wants to get you and your loved ones on the mountain for some happy turns.  I realize many of you were frustrated with masks and the many reminders.  Please know that this was necessary for us to operate the resort effectively – and it worked.

We also needed to adjust our operations to manage the flow of our guests at lifts.  I sincerely appreciate your patience knowing that lines at times were longer than previous seasons.  We limited the amount of lift tickets sold to ensure our pass holders could ski when they wanted to.  This was not the case everywhere in the ski industry and while it has had its challenges, we have seen an increase in days skied for our pass holders vs. a reduction in days like many other resorts have seen.

Our team invested in many new amenities in order to ensure guests could properly social-distance including new outdoor dining options along with reduced capacity for indoor dining.  These operational adjustments were well received and many of them we will keep in place moving forward.

As we pass this anniversary, I wanted to thank all of our guests for trusting in us and choosing to spend their time with us.  The future is bright and things are starting to return to normal.  We look forward to the last few weeks of the season and hope to see you join us again next season. 

Sincerely,

Davy Ratchford
General Manager