I didn’t ski much during the holidays. I was blacked out at Park City Mountain Resort and crowded out at Deer Valley. There was no possible reason to venture into town. While I wasn’t there in person, I was getting almost hourly updates from people who were. People sent pictures of lift lines that seemed impossible; told me that after waiting in line for nearly an hour, their $30 lunch from the shipping container was cold; two-hour drives to get from Snow Park to Park Meadows. By all accounts, Christmas week was a real goat rodeo.

There are a lot of reasons it got complicated this year. The snow came late, and that warm November really messed up the snowmaking schedule. Stuff that normally has a solid base of wind-proof, machine-made snow went into mid-December as bare ground. It got a good dose of natural snow, before the wind blew it all to Cheyenne. We’ll be dealing with that issue all year. Airline schedules were beginning to fall apart before Christmas. So between uncertain flights and the resurgence of the plague, more people than usual drove this year, without snow tires. Traffic was a nightmare. The weather was winter at its best, with lots of snowy days, extreme winds and snow plowing that seemed behind the curve the whole time. Lots of people missed vacations last year, and were determined to take one this year, so demand was up everywhere.

In the end, it feels like we had 50,000 people cycle through town who will leave feeling like they didn’t exactly have the vacation of a lifetime. The standard excuse is, “They’re from Texas — they don’t know any better.” But if they are spending that kind of money on a ski vacation, they are experienced skiers. They know when things aren’t working. Even a dog can tell the difference between getting tripped over and getting kicked. Charging full price ($250/day at the window) for mountains that aren’t fully open, but are more than fully crowded, seems like getting kicked. Christmas week is always a circus, but this was different. This is the year we broke it.

In a better world, there would be meetings among the two resorts’ management, the Chamber/Bureau, Ski Utah, the city and the county, to sort through the wreckage and see what changes are needed to reverse the decline. Every business in town is hurt if the core ski product disappoints. Local government depends on sales taxes. Some of it can be solved. Deer Valley has top-level execs here trying to fix their self-inflicted mess. A bad experience in a Main Street restaurant one night spoils the meal. A bad experience with the resorts being jammed to the point that the fun is gone sours the entire vacation.

So what did we learn? Well, for starters, we learned that increasing volume by 47% without adding more lifts, parking and food service overwhelms the operation to the point of failure. You would think all those MBAs in the Death Star in Bloomfield would have been able to figure that out. When all those Ikon and Epic passholders all did exactly what the marketing had enticed them to do — take a “free” ski vacation over the holidays — the resorts can’t deliver on the expectations they created. Lifts closed by thin cover, rough weather or avalanche danger is part of the game. Lifts closed because there aren’t enough lift operators is quite another.

A friend sent a Wall Street analyst’s report on Vail Resorts stock. He rated it as a “sell” because the business model of the Epic Pass is creating overcrowding and a poor customer experience that is “not pleasing their customers.” They won’t buy again next year. Why is Wall Street commenting on lift lines? Because Wall Street is running ski resorts. Instead of skiers. What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe the fix is to put a holiday surcharge on Epic and Ikon passes to try to reduce the peak demand and encourage people to take vacations other times. They sort of do that now with the local passes with holiday blackout periods. But the idea that PCMR and Deer Valley are the same price for Epic and Ikon passes over Christmas as Paoli Peaks and Boyne Highlands doesn’t make a lot of sense. Both resorts jack up the window rate for the holidays, and the hotels aren’t shy about raising rates for Christmas, but not the Ikon or Epic passes, which are now the bulk of the traffic.

We also learned that there is no plausible justification for reducing the parking requirement for the PEG Companies project at PCMR by even a single space. Nor is there any good reason to add a single hotel room. At 98% occupancy, all systems failed. The last thing we need is more.

This past week, the mountains were deserted. No lift lines, almost enough parking and probably not enough business to cover expenses. That’s the other extreme. While I love it as a local skier, it’s equally unhealthy for business. We’ve hit the upper limits, and at the upper limits the experience disappoints. There has to be a way to even it out. If we don’t, as Yogi Berra said, nobody will go to Park City anymore because it’s too crowded.

Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.