Telluride Professional Ski Patrol Association

Telluride Ski Resort’s Official Ski Patrol

The Situation

The Telluride Professional Ski Patrol Association's (TPSPA) contract term with Telluride Ski & Golf (Telski) ended August 31, 2025.
TPSPA has been negotiating with Telski since June 2025.
TPSPA is seeking a fair contract that reflects their essential contribution to the economic health and operational stability of our region. This includes a wage and benefit increase for new and veteran patrollers commensurate with comparable ski resorts and cost of living in the Telluride area.
Telski has had TPSPA’s financial proposal since August 6.
TPSPA has agreed to work without a contract for now to get the mountain set up for a targeted opening day of December 6.
The next scheduled negotiation sessions are November 25, December 5 and 6.

What TPSPA is asking for?

A compensation, benefit and gear stipend increase.
TPSPA is attempting to fix a broken and out of date wage structure. We want to enhance the attraction and retention of this job. A starting wage here is $21. Solitude patrollers, for example, is making $24 an hour just to walk in the door.
TPSPA wants to improve our Special Team Compensation structure. To join a dangerous and heavily trained Special Team gets you an extra $0.50 an hour. This includes pulling the firing cord on a Military Howitzer, investigating a serious or life altering accident on the mountain, and other highly specialized roles.
TPSPA needs to protect the institutional knowledge that our senior patrollers possess. An erosion of this knowledge would lead to an exponentially unsafe operation. At Eldora 3rd year patrollers are now making more than $30. At Telluride we have 30 and 40+ year patrollers barely making above $30. The institutional knowledge these senior patrollers possess is irreplaceable.
TPSPA is trying to inch closer to a Living Wage. It only gets harder and more difficult to live in the Telluride area. If we lose the Ski Patrol that is barely hanging onto housing right now, we may never be able to replace them.
In some instances, a 30% increase can sound like a scary number. But a 30% increase when patrollers are barely making $30, or under $30, is still not that much.
In a letter to the community on November 20, Chuck Horning the Owner, Telski stated, “The union continues to demand a 35% hourly wage increase. This is not feasible.” Here Telski is referring to a number that includes both a healthcare stipend and a modest increase to our gear allowance, along with a new pay structure that incentivizes institutional knowledge and progression in the company.
TPSPA explains this number is “what our new hourly wages would look like if this were simply applied as a flat, one time, wage percentage increase.”
A 35% increase actually looks like:
- The very bottom of TPSPA’s pay scale, entry level $21/hr (medical certs and expert skiing ability required) would increase to $28/hr
- The vast majority of our patrol with 30+ years of tenure (currently $30-$36/hr, all but two patrollers less than $35/hr) would see an increase to $39-$48.60.
- Reminder, the hourly wages in this example include the financial value of a $60/wk healthcare stipend and gear allowance, no other benefits.

What you can do to help?

Email gm@telski.com responding to this letter asking for a vote.
Email TellurideSkiPatrolUnion@gmail.com with your personal stories with Ski Patrol. Have we helped you or a loved one off the ski area or side country? TPSPA wants to hear from you!
TPSPA also needs letters of support. Write your own or use the community member or business owner outlines (hyperlinked) and send to TellurideSkiPatrolUnion@gmail.com.
Follow TPSPA on Instagram for updates.
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TPSPA does not want to strike!

The hope is to negotiate a contract with Telski in a timely manner that the TPSPA membership will vote for. We are hoping to be a lot closer together regarding a financial agreement by December 6. If we feel we are making good progress by December 6, we will continue to negotiate.

TPSPA is not purposefully delaying bargaining sessions. We are working as hard as we can to secure a fair contract that values the irreplaceable skill, knowledge, and training that successfully make this complex mountain as safe as it can be. We’ve been at the table since early June. Telski has had our financial proposal since early August. They are insistent on an outside consultant to lead them, and they are insistent on a formal mediator for these talks. This has led to a convoluted number of outside calendars that need to align for a session to come together.

TPSPA foresaw this being an issue back in the Spring and asked to schedule more sessions in advance. That didn’t happen and now we are seeing how difficult it is to just throw a session together.

We know how much a possible work stoppage can affect our community, our friends, and the area at large. We want nothing more than for the Company to listen to our concerns and put forward an offer that addresses our concerns. We hope that the Company will start to take our concerns seriously and we can come together for a wonderful season.