Telluride Closes, Ski Patrol Strikes, & the Future of Ski Resorts w/ Jason Blevins
BLISTER Podcast
BLISTER
4.8 • 560 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On December 27, 2025, the Telluride Ski Patrol went on strike. Chuck Horning, the owner of Telluride Ski Resort, then closed the ski area indefinitely. So what is going on in Telluride? What does it mean for the town and residents of Telluride? And what does this strike — and others — say about the current state of mountain towns and the ski-resort industry? To discuss all of these things and more, we are talking with ski-industry reporter, Jason Blevins, the co-founder of the Colorado Sun, and the man behind Blevins’ Corner on our ‘Reviewing the News’ series.
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TOPICS & TIMES:
BLISTER+ Changes starting January 1st (1:30)
Get CARV (1:56)
What’s Going On in Telluride? (3:00)
How Did We Get Here? (5:19)
What is Telluride Ski Patrol Asking For? (7:10)
Who is Being Unreasonable? (8:46)
The Numbers Behind the Request (11:58)
Other Potential Costs (18:16)
Is Crazy still Better than Corporate? (21:39)
Why Won’t Chuck Just Sell the Ski Area? (23:19)
What is the Community Saying? (26:17)
Will We See more Strikes in the Industry? (32:10)
Billionaires & Ski Towns (33:34)
Blevins’ Prediction for Telluride (39:29)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, welcome back to the Blister Podcast on the Blister Podcast Network. |
| 0:07.3 | I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, and you can check out everything. |
| 0:10.8 | We're doing and reviewing over at blisterreview.com. |
| 0:16.7 | Three days ago, on December 27th, the Telluride Ski Patrol went on strike, |
| 0:23.7 | and Chuck Horning, the owner of Telluride Ski Resort, closed the ski area indefinitely. |
| 0:30.5 | Now, you may recall that it was exactly one year ago on December 27th |
| 0:35.7 | that Park City ski patrollers went on strike against the |
| 0:39.8 | Vale-owned Park City Mountain Resort. |
| 0:43.3 | And it's also worth noting here that we are now currently just a few days away from a |
| 0:48.5 | broader workers' strike at Le Mosif Ski Area in Quebec that is set to begin on January 2nd if an agreement can't |
| 0:58.2 | be reached. |
| 0:59.7 | So what exactly is going on in Telluride? |
| 1:03.5 | What does it mean for the community of Telluride and what do all of these strikes say about |
| 1:09.5 | the current state of mountain towns and the |
| 1:12.4 | ski resort industry? |
| 1:14.5 | To discuss all of these things and more, we are talking with ski industry reporter Jason |
| 1:20.1 | Blevins, who is the co-founder of the Colorado Sun, and of course, the man behind Blevins |
| 1:26.8 | corner on our reviewing the news series. |
| 1:30.6 | Okay, now just before we get going here, folks, remember, big changes are coming to |
| 1:35.6 | Blister Plus starting on January 1st. We talked about the big changes on our last Blister podcast |
| 1:43.0 | episode. That's number 388. |
| 1:46.1 | So please listen to that if you haven't already. |
... |
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