Carrig is Out as Vail Resorts’ Local Chief

Vail Resorts announced this week that Blaise Carrig, a familiar face in Park City, would be stepping down as president of mountain division and taking on a senior advisor role. Patricia Campbell, who most recently served as Vail’s COO of Breckenridge Ski Resort, will be replacing Carrig in what appears to be a corporate musical chairs, designed to give Vail senior staffers broad experience across the company’s portfolio of resorts. In the shuffle, Canyons Resort will also lose Michael Goar, who will be moving of  as COO of Keystone.

Carrig and Goar were both instrumental in Vail Resort’s recent acquisition of Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR). From Vail Resorts’ first public appearance, at a fall 2013 event at the Kimball Art Center, it was Carrig who was placed up front as a familiar face. Carrig ran Canyons from 1997 to 2002, and was an obvious choice to lead Vail Resorts’ new operations. His humor and frank comments disarmed many locals and established, early on, that Vail Resorts might not not be the evil corporation that was going to ruin Park City Mountain Resort.

During a photo shoot, for an upcoming Salt Lake magazine story, Carrig said that he will be staying in place another year or more, to apply his construction management expertise to future developments that he was unable to discuss at the time. The implication, of course, is that Blaise will stick around to usher in improvements to the resort, as well as any construction required to connect Canyons resort to PCMR.

Scott Cullins is a writer, photographer, art director and principle at Canyon Media. Cullins also works for JES Publishing based in Salt lake City.