As dawn breaks on a weekday at the Mt. Rose Ski resort, the mountain, at a base elevation of 8,620 feet, stirs to life. Among the first to arrive are Olivia Lambdin and Ella Hollingshead, two lift operators who carpool together, arriving by 7:30 A.M. to prepare for their 8:00 to 4:30 shift.
“Make coffee, get in the car, drive up. I carpool with Ella. Get dressed. We roll out as a little unit around eight,” explains Olivia, describing the start of her typical day. “Go to our assignments. We get a couple breaks and a lunch and a lot of shoveling, a lot of pick axing. I have never had muscles that I’ve had, so yeah. It’s good.”
It’s been a busy season for local ski workers with repeated snowstorms. With an eye on weather forecasts, many who rely on seasonal work throughout the year are currently also worried about what comes next for them.
Plans are being upended as the Donald Trump administration and the DOGE advisory board reduce federal work opportunities, including seasonal ones.
Like many ski resorts across the country, Mt. Rose operates largely on the labor of seasonal employees who piece together various jobs throughout the year to create a lifestyle that few outsiders fully understand.
For Olivia and Ella, the day-to-day responsibilities revolve around safely moving skiers and snowboarders up the mountain.
“That means I move the people. Just make sure they get on the chair in one piece and then off in one piece,” Olivia said.
Ella, a more experienced lift operator, added her own perspective.
“Well, when I’m running a lift, I guess the number one priority is making sure people don’t die.” Ella said. “But I like to focus on ramp work. I think it’s just because I have a lot of experience with trail work. It’s kind of similar because you’re just grading and leveling. I just like making it look nice.”
Their shifts are physically demanding, especially during heavy snow days, with shoveling and maintaining the loading areas becoming a constant task.
“A lot of people think it’s just kind of like a beginner job or whatever,” explained Justan Wood, who worked as a lift operator for two seasons before transitioning to a year-round position as a lift mechanic. “But you are operating a huge machine and people’s lives are technically in your hands because it’s pretty dangerous. Lifts are moving at a high speed. They’re big giant steel machines.”
The culture among these workers forms a tight-knit community that becomes a significant part of the appeal. “The people are usually the biggest reason why I would stay somewhere with a certain job,” Ella said.
When the snow melts and the resort closes for the season, the real challenge begins for seasonal workers like Ella and Olivia. While Justan has secured year-round employment at Mt. Rose as a lift mechanic, most of the mountain workforce must find alternative employment during the warmer months.
“Finding a job in the summer obviously is a huge one,” Justan said. “If you don’t have a consistent job in the summer then it’s tough because you’re basically getting laid off every single year for five or six months.”
Ella’s employment history demonstrates the remarkable variety of jobs that seasonal workers string together. After starting at a summer camp in Texas, she’s worked as a trail crew member in Colorado, a housekeeper at a YMCA in the Rockies, a lift operator and convention setup worker at Sun Valley Resort in Idaho, a farm worker, a trail builder with Friends of Nevada Wilderness, and a whitewater rafting guide in California.
“I didn’t even really know it was a thing,” Ella said of seasonal work. “Even when I went out to my first seasonal job, I still didn’t really understand how some people did it all the time, like they just travel and travel and go to different jobs.”
The uncertainties between seasons create significant stress. “It’s usually pretty stressful and I already have some general anxiety so it can get really overwhelming,” Ella admitted. “But then usually, I mean, every single time it works itself out.”
Some winter resort workers transition to summer employment with federal agencies such as the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management. These positions, particularly in wildland firefighting, trail maintenance, and visitor services, have provided reliable summer income for seasonal workers while allowing them to remain in outdoor-focused careers.
However, recent policy changes coming from Washington, D.C., are threatening this lifestyle.
“Staffing cuts of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for parks and communities. We are concerned about smaller parks closing visitor center doors and larger parks losing key staff,” Theresa Pierno, the president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) warned.
For Olivia, who holds a Bachelor’s in Environmental Science with an emphasis in Life Science, these reductions have altered her career trajectory.
“Almost all of my friends have been affected by it,” she said. “Being a part of a national park was the dream. Like that was the final goal. That was why I got the degree, why I have done the research that I’ve done. It was to be given a plot of land in a national park or something and be a steward of it.”
Similarly, Ella, who has worked with the Forest Service through an AmeriCorps program and harbors aspirations of becoming a wildland firefighter, finds herself reconsidering her options.
“It’s a little scary,” she said of the federal employment changes. “I know a ton of people that work with the BLM and National Parks and just tons of those federal organizations... and they directly know others who have been laid off or fired. I’m in school right now and I was going to, I always planned to go for forest ecology, but now I’m starting to rethink it.”
In the face of these new challenges, seasonal workers are developing various strategies to adapt.
Ella maintains Mt. Rose as her winter backup plan but acknowledges the precariousness of even this option.
“I've always assumed while I’m living in Reno…Mt. Rose is always my winter job if I can’t get something year-round with one of those federal agencies,” Ella said. “But even that is like, they’re [Mt. Rose] on a permit by the Forest Service and so no one really knows how that could be affected.”
Olivia is now exploring opportunities with non-governmental organizations, while continuing to substitute teach one day a week during the winter season.
“My big fingers crossed one is through the Great Basin Institute where I would be doing restoration ecology in the Great Basin Desert,” she explains. “These places still need protection and to be studied and if it means working on a smaller scale, then so be it, but the work is still there and the place needs protecting.”
For Olivia, a sense of determination remains.
“The next few years are going to be a lot of trying to get through, and hopefully after this administration, there’s one that will restore the National Park budget,” Olivia said. “For the next few years though, probably do seasonal work for a little while, might go back into academia.”
Academia itself feels endangered with the downscaling of federal funding.
Even though the future may look bleak, Olivia concluded with a note of resilience that characterizes many in the seasonal workforce: “It just won’t happen in the way that it was envisioned to,” she concluded.
Reporting and photos by Piper Heath and Sophia Nebesky
