A Letter To The Editor Of The Summit Daily Claims Vail Resorts Doesn't Care About Safety


This is something that I have noticed about Vail Resorts, Inc. There is no middle ground with that company. People seem to either love the company or hate the company. I'm sure the company is fine with that, as long as the lovers outnumber the haters. But, as I'm sure we all know from our daily lives, the haters are always the loudest. To that point, I bring to you an opinion piece that was sent to the Summit Daily out there in Colorado calling out Vail Resorts for not being as safe as they claim.

Letter to the editor: Proof that Vail Resorts does not care about safety

Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz has been in the news preaching " safety is not optional " during the pandemic. Apparently, safety must not apply to wildlife on Peak 6 in that Breckenridge Ski Resort never took down its boundary rope after the ski season.


If you didn't read the letter, it basically says that Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz is full of it when he talks about safety. Katz has been vocal about the corporation's commitment to safety in dealing with COVID-19 when the ski season starts. However, the author of the letter, Richard Himmelstein of Breckenridge, claims that the corporation is lax in other safety areas. In this case, the handling of avalanche mitigation explosives.

In the end, Himmelstein makes a few observations about the way in which Breckenridge handled the safe storage of the explosives during wildfire season, going to so far as to claim that it's so unsafe that a possible explosion like the recent incident in Lebanon could happen in Colorado. Oh, he also takes a shot at Vail for putting profit over safety.

To me, the letter was a bit overdramatic, but that's not really the point. The fact is that an opinion is only as good as the way in which someone backs it up and there is no back up here. Himmelstein sites personal observation with no evidence. I mean, that's fine. I have no reason to not believe the guy, but I do maintain a sense of objectivity, so I do question his claim.

As I said at the beginning, Vail Resorts, Inc. has haters all over the place. I see it almost every day. It just makes me wonder if the person that wrote the letter is indeed selling out Vail Resorts and Rob Katz for hypocrisy and being profit-hungry, or if the author is just another hater that can't stand the fact that his local mountain is on the Epic Pass. But, if he is right, keep your head down and your eyes and ears open if you're in Breckenridge. I doubt an explosion the size of the Lebanon incident would happen, but even a smaller one would suck!

Photo: A winter's landscape at Breckenridge, CO - Credit: Jlfdz / CC BY-SA

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