Industry News
This article is the second article in Civics for Skiers, a series which examines how the ski industry interacts with various parts of our government and how skiers may make their voices heard.
In the late 1970s, the only way to get down the hill was with two planks attached to your feet. But in the sleepy town of Londonderry, Vermont, Jake Burton Carpenter had plans to change all that. 1977 saw the birth of the world’s first snowboard company, and the world changed forever. Vermont wasn’t done yet, however, and before the decade was over, the state gave us the first law governing skiing and the newly invented snowboarding.
Many states where skiing is possible have laws on the books laying out responsibilities for skiers and ski areas. Because each state considers and passes its own legislation, these ski statutes can vary wildly from one state to the next. The purpose of these laws is to establish liability protection for ski areas while also laying out basic requirements to qualify for that protection. For example, you generally cannot sue a ski area if you got hurt skiing down an expert ski trail as a beginner. But, the resort is required in most states to post a sign at the top of that ski run indicating that it is an advanced or expert trail and that maybe as a beginner you should opt for the green run next door.
Ski laws are the products of state legislatures. 49 state legislatures are bicameral, meaning they have two different parts or chambers, usually a state senate and a state house of representatives. Nebraska is the only state with a unicameral legislature, but there aren’t anymore ski areas in Nebraska anymore. State laws go through a similar journey as Federal laws, being proposed as a bill in one chamber, debated and voted upon, then being sent to the other chamber for more debate and voting. If a bill passes both chambers, it goes to the governor’s desk to be signed into law or vetoed. Many states first passed ski laws in the late 1970s in response to a court ordering Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont to pay James Sunday $1.5 million after he became paralyzed while skiing at Stratton. Sunday had crashed after hitting a bush partially obscured by the snow and collided with a boulder. Stratton argued that such dangers were inherent risks of skiing, and that anyone who goes skiing assumes those risks, but the judge disagreed, saying that Stratton had a responsibility to mark that hazard. Following the Sunday decision, many states including Vermont passed laws codifying and detailing the inherent risks of skiing, shielding resorts from liability for hazards outside their control.
Because each state legislature had its own debate about skiing liability and has since responded to specific events in different ways, the inherent risks of skiing appear to be different depending on the state. Alaska takes a broad view of the dangers that can be created while skiing, saying in its law that “because of the size, power, and variation of the winter alpine environment, ski area operators are financially and physically incapable of controlling all the conditions under which skiing takes place.” In North Carolina, the law requires ski areas to “mark clearly any hidden rock, hidden stump, or any other hidden hazard known by the ski area operator to exist,” which may be possible considering North Carolina’s largest ski area, Sugar Mountain Resort, offers a total of 115 skiable acres with 21 different trails. Montana or Utah’s state legislatures likely decided that such a provision was likely not possible in their states, considering Big Sky and Park City offer more than 5,000 skiable acres. That’s a lot more rocks to mark.
Beyond the inherent risks of skiing, state ski statutes agree that vehicles used at the resort like snowcats and snowmobiles should have flashing lights, but they don’t agree on much else. Three states, Alaska, New York, and Connecticut, explicitly require padding to be placed on lift towers, and only seven states require that a ski area provide a ski patrol that can respond to medical emergencies while the resort is in operation. Vermont is currently the only state that requires use of a safety bar on a chairlift and New Jersey is the only state that requires skiers under 18 to wear helmets. Alaska takes the cake for the most comprehensive ski law, requiring each resort to file an operations plan every year with the state, detailing “provisions for ski patrol, avalanche control, avalanche rescue, grooming procedures, tramway evacuation, hazard marking, missing person procedures, and first aid.” And the least comprehensive ski law? California. Despite some of the best skiing in the world, the state has never passed a ski safety statute. Liabilities have been decided through common law and a series of court decisions revolving around the inherent risks of skiing.
State legislatures move slowly, by design. Many state legislatures meet just once per year, and most of their time is often taken up with regular business like passing state budgets. That leaves little room in the agenda for things like updating ski laws. Most updates to state ski laws have been precipitated by a specific event, usually a court decision that alters interpretation of a ski statute.
Oregon law has long held a weak stance on liability waivers, making ski areas and other recreational businesses more susceptible to lawsuits. In May 2025, Safehold Special Risk decided to stop insuring ski areas in Oregon, saying that it was losing too much money because of the legal landscape that exists in the state. Timberline Lodge and Mount Hood Meadows, two of Oregon’s largest ski areas, both used Safehold for general liability insurance and now must look to Mountain Guard, the only insurance company left in the state, or else face the possibility of not operating this coming season. In response to Safehold’s exit, the Oregon State Legislature took up the issue of trying to adjust the state’s liability laws.
House Bill 3140 would have allowed ski areas and other recreation companies to require waivers that protected them from negligence claims. Bills have to be passed out of committee before they are voted on by the whole assembly, and two key people in each chamber of the legislature are ultimately responsible for deciding which bills have their chance to become law. House Bill 3140 first had to make it out of the House Judiciary Committee, but representative Jason Kropf from Bend, Oregon, refused to bring the bill up for a committee vote, stopping it dead in its tracks. Regardless of the support the bill may or may not have had in the Judiciary Committee or in the full house, Representative Kropf single-handedly killed any chance of the house bill passing.
Meanwhile, Senate Bill 1196 sought to study how Oregon could raise more revenue from recreation. In the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee, Senator Mark Meek of Oregon City amended this call for a study with the text from the house bill, and the bill passed out of committee. The Pacific Northwest Ski Areas Association indicated that the bill likely had enough votes to pass the Senate, but Senate President Rob Wagner did not bring 1196 up for a vote before the legislative session ended.
Despite strong support from Timberline, Meadows, and many other outdoor recreation groups, and with an extremely compelling reason for legislative action, neither 3140 or 1196 made it into law before the end of the session. Who was on the other side of this issue? The Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, who Willamette Week called one of the state’s “most potent political forces,” has long opposed reform to liability waiver in Oregon. Similar legislative reform efforts were thwarted in 2015 and 2023 because of opposition from the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, according to Protect Oregon Recreation. Arthur Towers, political director for the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, testified in 2023 before the Senate Judiciary Committee that waiver reform would give a “free pass” to recreational companies, and eliminate the right to a jury trial in recreation negligence cases.
State legislatures are often plagued by low connection with constituents and high exposure to lobbying groups, such as the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association. While threats to ski area operations like what has occurred in Oregon may spark public interest and draw testimony from general managers of the state’s largest ski resorts, state legislators just interact more frequently with lobbyists on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. The relative separation between the opinions of the constituency and the opinions of lobbying group may explain why a bill with seemingly broad support, like 3140 or 1196, could still fail to come up for a vote at all in the House Judiciary Committee or on the Senate floor.
Skiing is dangerous, and state laws can do little to lessen the inherent dangers of the sport. Through legislation, state governments can mandate that ski areas try to mitigate some of the inherent risks of skiing. Exponential rises in litigation and the occasional multimillion dollar payout over the last several decades have drastically changed the legal landscape for ski areas. State legislatures try to respond to this changing landscape, but can be hampered by lobbying groups and slow-moving legislative processes. Issues in the ski industry can often seem to develop at the rate of a detachable high-speed six-pack chairlift, while state legislatures seem to move at the pace of a fixed grip double with mechanical issues. Let’s hope Oregon finds some more mechanics before the snow flies next season.
More from Zach Armstrong:
- Why Ski Patrollers at Park City Initiated The Biggest Ski Patrol Strike In History
- Why is the Return of Rob Katz to Vail Resorts as CEO Such a Big Deal?
- The Idaho Supreme Court Could Change Ski Area Liability Law All Over Again
- Forest Service Budget Challenges Threaten Avalanche Center Operations Nationwide
- How Eldora, CO, Ski Patrollers Finally Got Their Union
