Ski resort industry urges lawmakers to reject daylight saving bill

The ski resort industry is urging U.S. senators to reject a plan that would end twice-a-year clock changing with a permanent daylight saving time, arguing the loss of an hour of sunshine on winter mornings could endanger resort workers prepping ski areas and delay opening times. 

“Operating safely in alpine environments requires adequate morning sunlight,” reads a Sept. 10 letter sent from five resort trade groups and two resort companies representing 115 ski areas in 10 states to 19 U.S. senators, urging opposition to the Sunshine Protection Act of 2026.

The House passed the bill July 14 in a 308-117 vote, with some of the 36 sponsoring lawmakers — 33 Republicans and three Democrats — citing an October 2025 poll of 1,289 adults by the Associated Press showing only 12% of Americans like changing their clocks twice a year. A Gallup Poll in March 2025 showed declining support of daylight saving time and 54% of Americans ready to ditch the semiannual time changes.

“Millions of Americans across the country have asked Congress to reevaluate the current system of changing our clocks twice a year,” U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky said in a statement after the vote. “Today’s bipartisan vote to ‘lock the clock’ is a response to the advocacy of our constituents and the evidence that year-round daylight saving time boosts economic activity and improves public safety.” 

Resort trade groups in Utah, Vermont, Vermont, the Pacific Northwest and the 20-member Colorado Ski Country joined ski resort owners Alterra Mountain Co. and Powdr in arguing permanent daylight saving time will injure mountain town economies and increase risks to resort workers. The industry is lobbying lawmakers to oppose the bill, saying a sunrise after 8 a.m. in Colorado, Utah and Vermont and later than 9 a.m. at resorts farther west “poses operational, economic and safety risks for our mountain communities.”

Ski patrollers, lift mechanics, snowmakers and groomers all spend hours before dawn prepping their hills for a 9 a.m. start. Operating in “prolonged pitch-dark,” the industry’s letter argues, increases the risks of their work. And if resorts have to wait for sunshine to start loading skiers on lifts, operating hours could be cut, injuring not just operators but local businesses that rely on ski area schedules. 

Why is evening sunshine better than morning sunshine?

So why not just shift operating hours back an hour, opening at 10 a.m. and closing at 5 p.m.? 

“A morning hour and a late afternoon hour are not operationally or economically interchangeable,” reads the letter, which notes that morning hours are when resort crews “do the heavy lifting of avalanche mitigation, lift inspection and run preparation.” 

Pushing that work to the afternoon — in flat light and as skiers leave to beat mountain traffic — could result in a “shortened, degraded on-mountain experience” that impacts the value of a ski day, the letter reads. And reducing the time resorts are open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. would be the same as cutting two weeks off the ski season and result in “a major economic hit” in peak winter season, the letter reads. 

In 2022, the U.S. Senate approved the identical Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, but the legislation died in the House. The proposal would establish a nationwide standard time and end the Uniform Time Act of 1966 that prodded states to observe daylight saving time by rolling clocks forward an hour in the spring and then back an hour in the fall. The clock-shifting proposal stemmed from a 1918 law that promoted an extra hour of daylight to save energy and increase work efficiency in the final year of the first World War.

A handful of Colorado ski patrollers reached by The Sun didn’t seem to be too concerned.

Emil Sante, a 30-year patroller at Telluride ski area, said the legislative proposal was “not a big deal.”

“We actually adjust the opening and closing times as the days grow longer and we have done this as long as I can remember,” Sante said. 

A few patrollers wondered why the legislation does not propose a permanent move to standard time, which would protect that daylight hour when people are heading to work and school.

The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s rules governing the use of explosives requires that “surface blasting operations shall be conducted during periods of daylight,” which could delay terrain openings after a snowfall if patrollers must wait for sunrise to mitigate avalanche hazards.

Crested Butte Professional Ski Patrol Association president Reid Pritchett said the union doesn’t have an official position because the patrol’s avalanche control and operations work has always been limited by daylight as well as a host of state and federal regulations.

“Besides the fact that we do not believe the senators who are making the decision would care for our opinions,” Pritchett said. “These decisions will have effects across the greater economy and we have larger economic concerns at the moment than the time change.”