On New Year’s Day, I was awake at 5 a.m. – but not for the reasons you might think. I hadn’t been out all night celebrating with friends. I was awake early because it was a powder day in Utah, the type of day skiers and snowboarders dream of. I had to be at my friend’s house by 6 a.m. so we could be on the road 15 minutes later, beat the traffic and drive up Big Cottonwood Canyon to be at Solitude Mountain Resort by 7 a.m., then tailgate for two hours in the snow waiting for the lifts to open.
While parts of this routine are fun, none of it is by choice. It’s by necessity. Get on the road too late and you’ll be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for up to three hours. In fact, you probably won’t even make it on to the mountain. If you fail to reserve a pass in advance, then it’s time to park on the side of the canyon road and haul your gear for a mile. But it wasn’t always like this.
Families want to introduce their kids to the sport but can’t afford the cost of day tickets, gear and food
Utah is a victim of Instagram. Scroll through your feed during the summer, and you’ll see photo after photo of the red rocks of Bryce Canyon, the arches of Moab, the towering mesas of the Capitol Reef and Canyonlands National Parks. But during the winter you’ll also see photos of something else: total chaos at the ski resorts. Ski-lift lines sometimes over an hour long and a thousand people deep, ski patrollers striking for better pay, parking lots so packed there’s nowhere left to leave your car. And the mountain restaurants? Absolutely overflowing with hordes of people waiting for some chili in a bread bowl after having already dropped up to $300 for a one-day lift ticket.
So how did we get here? Private equity firms such as Vail Resorts and Alterra transformed ski culture from a laid-back winter sport into a luxury commodity aimed at packing the resorts to maximize profits. Vail – which owns and operates ski resorts in four countries – was founded in 1962, and the company grew relatively slowly for decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, it acquired a few resorts in Colorado and California.
In 2008, Vail launched its $579 Epic Pass, a season ski pass that gives the company predictable revenue ahead of the season and which allows access to its resorts. It created a new business model. To make the pass more valuable and to lock in customers ahead of the season, Vail went on a purchasing spree over the coming years, acquiring Perisher in Australia (2015), Whistler Blackcomb in Canada (2016), Stowe in Vermont (2017) and many others.
But for a Utahan like me, the real coup de grâce was Vail’s acquisition of Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) in 2014 because of a total fluke. It’s a long and complicated story but here’s the gist: Powdr Corporation bought PCMR in 1994 and hugely benefited from a decades-old lease from a company called Talisker Land Holdings which allowed them to use most of the mountain for just $155,000 per year. This was chump change compared to the resort’s massive revenues. The lease renewed every 20 years at the same rate, but in 2011 Powdr forgot to submit the renewal on time. It missed the deadline by two days.
Talisker, the landowner, pounced on the opportunity to terminate the lease, which led to a multiyear legal battle in which Vail, which already operated the adjacent Canyons Resort and paid much higher rent, started circling for a PCMR takeover. Facing eviction and dwindling legal options, Powdr ultimately relented and sold PCMR to Vail in 2014 for $182.5 million, ending ownership of its flagship resort due to one, albeit massive, clerical error. Today, PCMR and Canyons form the largest ski resort in the US – and it’s all under Vail’s control.
However, in April 2017, Henry Crown and Company (which owns Aspen Snowmass in Colorado) joined forces with private equity firm KSL Capital Partners to buy Intrawest Resorts for $1.5 billion. It instantly acquired seven major resorts including Steamboat, Winter Park and Tremblant. They immediately went on a Vail-esque buying spree, snapping up Mammoth and Deer Valley that same year. Next came the formal launch of its new Alterra Mountain Company in January 2018 as a direct competitor to Vail’s growing empire.
Today, Alterra owns 18 resorts to Vail’s 42, but through its Ikon Pass partnership offers access to nearly 60 destinations around the world. This has created an effective duopoly over North American skiing. Its 2024 acquisition of Arapahoe Basin was particularly symbolic; it had been one of the last remaining independent resorts in Colorado. It was the final surrender of the old ski world to corporate consolidation.
Today, the Epic Pass and the Ikon Pass are immensely popular. They’re also immensely expensive. Miss the early bird specials and you’re looking at an astonishing $1,183 for the Epic and $1,429 for the Ikon per season.
This problem is obviously bigger than Utah. Am I glad more people can experience the joy I grew up with? Of course. Skiing and snowboarding are a part of me. They are a part of most people from Utah. It’s who we are, it’s what we do. And we’re not fancy or precious about it. We drink beers on the lifts and eat chicken fingers and chili at communal tables. It isn’t Europe, it never has been and we don’t want it to be. And look, I get it. Who doesn’t want to spend $1,000 at the beginning of the season and have nonstop access to some of the best snow on Earth? Utah’s thousands of college students flock to the state for this very reason. It makes sense. I don’t fault any of them.
But something’s got to give. Utah resorts have been struggling due to lack of snow, forcing delayed openings and compact seasons, meaning more skiiers are being packed into shorter timeframes. Day tickets are, in many cases, unaffordable. Families want to introduce their kids to the sport but can’t afford the exorbitant cost of day tickets, gear and food. While it’s encouraging that more people are hitting the slopes, newcomers are being priced out before they even start.
The mountains will always be there, but if only the wealthy and the super-committed can afford to enjoy them, we’ll have lost something essential about skiing. The ski industry can keep chasing profit – or it can invest in the sport’s future.
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