Nonprofit sues Park City Mountain, seeks shutdown of two key lifts

Riders on the disputed Timberline chairlift at Park City Mountain. Resort. Photo: Screenshot via Skiliftguy/YouTube

PARK CITY, Utah — A Provo-based nonprofit has sued Park City Mountain Resort, alleging the ski area is operating two chairlifts and a ski run on its property without legal authorization and seeking a court order that could shut them down.

The lawsuit, filed Feb. 6 in Summit County’s 3rd District Court, was brought by UI Charitable, which purchased approximately 63 acres at the base of Iron Mountain in late 2024. The parcel includes the bottom terminal of the Iron Mountain Express and the southern terminal of the Timberline lift.

UI Charitable claims the resort does not hold valid easement rights to operate the chairlifts or the Cascade ski run on its land. The nonprofit is seeking millions of dollars in damages and an injunction that could require the lifts to cease operations. The complaint also asks the court to grant it the right to remove what it calls “trespassory objects” from the property.

Park City Mountain, owned by Vail Resorts, operates much of its terrain through a combination of ownership, leases and easements — legal agreements that allow use of land owned by others. In a statement, Park City Mountain Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Deirdra Walsh said the resort is “confident in our longstanding and long-term easement rights underlying our ski operations throughout The Colony, including on the parcel in question in this recent filing.”

According to the complaint, the dispute centers on how the surrounding The Colony development was structured. The lawsuit states that in 2003, original developer Iron Mountain Associates granted future easement rights to American Skiing Company, then the owner of The Canyons.

UI Charitable argues that when final subdivision plats were recorded in 2010, they included easements for skiing but not for lift infrastructure. The nonprofit further contends that any easement rights were never properly conveyed to Vail Resorts after it acquired The Canyons in 2013.

In the complaint, UI Charitable alleges that lift operations “exceed the scope of any easement,” constitute ongoing trespass and have unjustly enriched the resort by enhancing connectivity and increasing revenue without compensation to the landowner. Chief Technology Officer Jacob Lundskog said in a statement that efforts to resolve the issue “privately and amicably” over the past year were unsuccessful.

The Iron Mountain Express, installed in 2010, serves intermediate and advanced terrain pods and glades. Timberline, which opened in 2008, functions as a connector lift, providing access to Tombstone and Iron Mountain terrain. Both lifts play a role in linking skiers to the Quicksilver Gondola, which in 2015 connected the former Park City and Canyons ski areas into a single resort.

No hearings have yet been scheduled, and Park City Mountain had not filed a formal response in court as of this week.