The trails at the Park City Mountain Resort should have been wide open over the holidays with plenty of fresh powder for the skiers and snowboarders who came to Utah’s Wasatch Mountains during one of the busiest times of the season. Instead, riders were forced to wait in line for as many as three hours to get on one of the few lifts that were actually open thanks to a labor strike against the Vail Resorts empire, which is worth more than $6 billion.

On December 27, the union representing 204 ski patrollers and safety workers on the mountain went on strike against Vail, which owns Park City. Among its demands are an increase in the hourly base rate of members from $21 to $23. For comparison’s sake, a cheeseburger on the mountain costs $25. Stuck in the middle are some of the nation’s richest vacationers who spent thousands of dollars on hotels, airfare, and lift tickets to stand in the cold at the bottom of a mountain.

Many of the waiting skiers have been sympathetic to the crews tasked with keeping them safe, chanting in line for Park City to “pay your employees” as the strike lingers into a second week. Others, though, have taken to social media to complain that $20,000 trips have been ruined by the waits. (Non-union ski patrollers have been brought in to service the open trails and lifts.) One surgeon from Los Angeles said he won’t be returning next year owing to the inconvenience. Other vacationers are considering a class-action lawsuit against Vail Resorts for the luxury problems they had to endure. After a wealth manager on X complained of his bad day out, people made fun of him until he deleted his........

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