When plenty of snow goes to waste...

This weekend was the last day of skiing at Park City and Deer Valley. Both resorts didn't care that it was the local kids spring break when they failed to listen to the pleas of the local community, asking for an extension of the ski season on the basis of our abundant snowpack.

It's paradoxical that early winter, our ski resorts spend millions of dollars manufacturing snow, and when it has finally accumulated in large quantities, they stop operations when they could have easily stayed open another couple of weeks.

Sure, if you're not a skier, you can't wait till the all snow melts around town. If you're passionate about skiing however, it's a totally different story. Personally, I would have loved to see both ski areas extend their operation till May, but I also realize that it would only benefit ski aficionados like me, that have long paid for their season pass, so it would mean an extra cash outlay to our lift operators without much income in return.

Further, the two resorts have no obligation to stay open past their stated closing dates. This said, both Todd Shallan and Bill Rock, the local areas bosses, should have better measured the place their respective resorts occupy within the Park City community by keeping some of their lifts running a little longer.

In doing so, they would have added to their “goodwill bank” for future needs, and thanked the locals for putting up with grid-locked streets and crowded slopes from those extra Epic and Ikon visitors. At a time when we get bombarded daily by emails and postcards asking us to renew our passes for 2019-2020, this too would have been a savvy marketing move.

Of course, I'm not suggesting keeping the entire mountain open till April 30, but just extending lift service by at least one week, or one weekend, and maintaining just a token number of chairlifts open.

Good leadership often means listening attentively and taking the customer's side. In this case, both general managers should have been the local skiers' advocates to Alterra and Vail Resorts by asking the two corporate heavy-weight to return a tiny bit to the community.

By apparently doing nothing or not convincingly forcing the issue, they've missed an opportunity to say “thanks” to all of us and, by the same token, forfeited a chance to add more appeal to the passes they're already trying to sell us for next winter.