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A statement delivered on the subject of ski area lease fees from late congressman Mike Synar to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources, July 22, 1992 (boldface mine):

As you know, the U.S. Forest Service operates 122 ski areas on National Forest System lands, including 6 of the top 10 concessions operating on federal lands in terms of gross revenues. In recent years, these ski areas generated more than $700 million in gross receipts, but the concession operators paid the taxpayers an average return of only about 2 percent -- a remarkably small return for the exclusive use of taxpayer assets. …

Mr. James Overbay, Deputy Chief of the Forest Service testified on June 25, 1992 before the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands, National Parks and Forests concerning S. 2606, a measure to revise the system for determining the fees paid for special use permits at ski areas located on National Forest System lands. In that testimony. Mr. Overbay stated that S. 2606 was not revenue neutral and therefore does not comply with the Pay-As-You-Go provisions of the 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. I agree that S. 2606 and its House companion measure, H.R. 4970, appear to reduce the level of federal revenues currently received from ski area permit fees.

Because that testimony and the analytic work which supported it had a direct bearing on my Subcommittee’s ongoing review, I requested that the Forest Service supply all materials including a complete analytic data set supporting the Forest Service’s testimony on S. 2606 and the House companion measure, H.R. 4970.

Mr. Chairman, the Forest Service analysis of these measures raises several serious concerns, especially with respect to what constitutes a fair rate of return to the federal treasury and the taxpayers for the exclusive use of these public lands. Until those questions are addressed, action to change the current system of determining ski area permit fees would, in my view, be premature and imprudent.

That analysis will be ongoing, but in the meantime, there is one Forest Service document specifically relevant to the legislation before, which I would like to provide to you and your Members. This is the Service’s analysis of the impact of the fee structure under H.R.4970 on existing fee levels paid at individual 113 ski areas in short, which would increase and which would decrease and by how much.

I would note that the Forest Service has indicated at the top of the document that it contains proprietary information. I do not believe that is the case. Instead, the financial data which underlies this particular document (such as gross sales for individual ski areas) were undoubtedly designated proprietary by the concessioner, and the designation appears to have been carried forward on this material as well. In fact, I do not believe one is able to determine anything proprietary from this document. For example, while this document contains an average fee paid over the past three years at particular ski areas, that single figure is meaningless unless one also knows what the gross sales figure was for that ski area. That gross sales figure is not on this document. …

I do, though, want to say something about the efforts of some federal recreation concessioners to keep information about their gross sales and rates of return out of the public domain. You may recall that in 1990 a group of National Park concessioners actually brought a law suit against the Inspector General of the Interior Department to suppress publication or release of such information. Mr. Chairman, that any segment of the recreation industry would ever go to such extraordinary lengths to keep the public from knowing how much money they make off these private concessions on public lands—and how little is being returned to the treasury in my view speaks volumes about what that information shows.

I cannot accept an argument that the taxpayers -- who have given concessioners the exclusive right to operate and earn profits off public lands -- have no right to know what those concessioners are making and how much they are returning to the public. I think that is simply outrageous.

Mr. Synar, I agree. And while I am less concerned with financial receipts than I am with skier volume and how record U.S. skier visits since 2018 have impacted communities across the West, our animating belief is the same: ski areas operating on public land should be transparent with the public about what is happening on that land.

For decades, a tacit component of this public-private agreement was the annual release of skier visit data by ski areas operating on Forest Service land. These figures were widely cited by journalists, academics, and government agencies as one way to communicate to the public how weather patterns, demographic shifts, and infrastructure projects within and outside of ski area bounds impacted the communities adjacent to ski areas. With that context, the public could understand what ski area operators were doing well and where they were failing to adapt, and could in turn use that information to guide future development and policy decisions.

Ski area-specific data began drying up around 2010, and more or less evaporated after the 2020 Covid shutdowns. Unlike many things that get blamed on Vail, this was Vail’s fault, though I also fault the rest of the industry for parading after them. How this shift happened, why it was a mistake, and how we’re going to fix it are topics I’ll save for another day.

In the meantime, I’ve been patching together the past. You would not believe how incredibly difficult this is. Ski area operators appear to have not only masked current skier visits, but to obscure – or at least blur – the past, bullying the state ski associations into removing from the public domain archived documents itemizing these statistics.

Last month, I published 2,406 years of skier visit data that I’d scraped from archived newspapers, U.S. Forest Service documents, academic studies, and public records. I kept going. I’m up to 4,213 years across 211 ski areas, and 3,422 years across 128 ski areas for which more than 10 years of records exist. While this is slow, tedious work, it is slow tedious work that no one is ever going to have to do again, because I’m organizing it all in one place. Here is a (nearly) complete record of Colorado skier visits from winter 1976-77 to winter 2009-10 (black means the ski area didn’t operate; red, which is just Eldora 1983-84, means I couldn’t find the data):

The brickwork falls apart after the 1976-77 season, and more or less disintegrates by the early ‘60s. That’s a hazard of time, but what’s happened since 2010 is a hazard of corporate power forcing bad policymaking. Here is the full Colorado chart stretching backward from this past winter to the beginning of the state’s ski industry:

Since 2010, the Epic and Ikon passes, industry consolidation, social media, evolving work and social norms, shifting population and age demographics, short-term rentals, and byzantine regulatory regimes inherited from a different time have, among other factors, dramatically changed the ways in which people access, utilize, live, and work in these mountain communities. State-level metrics are useless in helping us understand these impacts: Southwest Colorado has nothing to do with Summit County, which has nothing to do with Steamboat, which has nothing to do with Eagle County.

Annual skier visit information for ski areas operating on public land should be public. Credit to Aspen Skiing Company and Whitefish for continuing to annually provide these metrics. I will continue to chase this information, which I believe to be foundational to understanding the current state and future trajectory of U.S. skiing. If you’re in possession of ski area-level skier visit data for any ski area, from any era, please share it so that I can add it to the full database. If it is post-2010, all the better. I will protect all sources as anonymous. As Mr. Synar stated so well more than three decades ago, ski area information isn’t proprietary just because ski area operators say so.

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None of the numbers in the above charts are estimates that I generated myself. Nearly all of them are sourced directly from contemporary media reports, U.S. Forest Service documents, archival Colorado Ski Country USA statistical sheets, and various government and academic reports. However, a handful - perhaps two dozen - of these numbers are extrapolated with known information. I did this in two primary ways:

1. Using published skier visit totals for an entity containing a limited number of ski areas - Summit County, Aspen Skiing Company, Colorado, etc. - I would, when missing just one value - subtract the known numbers from the total to arrive at the ski area visit number. For example: media provided 1970-71 skier visit numbers for Breckenridge, Keystone, and all of Summit County, but not Arapahoe Basin, so I subtracted the published numbers from the total to arrive at A-Basin’s number (Copper did not open until 1972).

2. If media, sourced to the operator, published a percent increase or decrease in visits from the previous winter or another known winter, and I had sourced the number for the reference winter from elsewhere, I would simply plug in the numbers to calculate that year’s visits.

I focused on Colorado first because the state generally accounts for approximately one in four U.S. skier visits, and has for decades. So while this data narrates the life of a small number of ski areas, it covers an enormous percentage of U.S. skier days over 35 winters. Helping the availability of Colorado statistics is a large media presence, an organized advocacy group in Colorado Ski Country USA, and, for most of history, a cooperative ski industry.

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National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) skier visit records stretch back 48 years, to winter 1978-79. This past winter’s 52.9 million skier visits rank 32^nd over that nearly half-century (annual rankings in black):

That’s not great, especially following six consecutive top-10 winters (excluding the truncated 2019-20 campaign).

But here is a more alarming data point: nationwide average ski area snowfall crashed to historic lows in winter 2025-26. The NSAA’s snow stats only date to winter 1991-92, but this past season’s 112 inches lands dead last over that 35-year period, a full 11 percentage points below the previous low of 126 inches (annual rankings in black):

Truncating the skier visit timeline to match the snowfall records reveals an interesting nuance: while 2025-26 ranks as the worst snowfall season in at least 35 years, it only clocks in as the sixth-lowest for skier visits:

This past winter’s 52.6 million skier visits would have finished as a pretty average season in the 1990s, even with those winters’ substantially higher snowfall totals:

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Who

John Kelly, CEO of Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico

Recorded on

November 13, 2025

About Taos Ski Valley

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Louis Bacon (since December 2013)

Located in: Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico

Year founded: 1955

Pass affiliations:

• Ikon Pass – 7 days, no blackouts

• Ikon Base Pass – 5 days, holiday blackouts

• Ikon Session Pass – 1-4 days, holiday blackouts

• Mountain Collective – 2 days, no blackouts

• Ski New Mexico True Pass – 2 days, holiday blackouts

Base elevation: 9,350 feet

Summit elevation: 12,450 feet lift-served, 12,481 hike-to

Vertical drop: 3,100 feet lift-served, 3,131 hike-to.

Skiable acres: 1,294 (some hike-to)

Average annual snowfall: 300 inches claimed on website; calculated 36-year average using data sourced from Taos’ 2010 master development plan, Ski New Mexico tallies, and media reports is 233 inches. The 10-year average falls to 166 inches. Here’s the year-by-year breakdown:

Trail count: 110 (24% beginner, 25% intermediate, 51% expert)

Lift count: 13 (1 pulse gondola, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 4 triples, 1 double, 3 carpets)

Why I interviewed him

Let’s start with a superficially troubling number: Taos’ long, steady decline in average annual skier visits:

That doesn’t look so good, especially when laid alongside the long-term increase in national skier visits:

Taos not only declined in the context of national skier visits, but also among its peers. In winter 1983-84, Taos drew more skiers (241,000) than Telluride (132,460), Big Sky (136,000), Jackson Hole (177,000), Whitefish (I’m lacking an estimate for that winter, but the ski area then known as “Big Mountain” logged 209,000 skiers in 1980-81 and 170,581 in 1985-86). Taos (dark blue line below), continued to out-duel this group through about the mid-90s before falling off a cliff:

So what happened? 1995 Taos, a freeride mecca before freeride was cool, should have been perfectly suited to flourish in a cultural moment when skiers began demanding more interesting terrain than the groomed superhighways that had become the industry’s default setting. Sure, Taos was remote and a bit harder to access than, say, Keystone or Park City, but so were Jackson and Whitefish and Big Sky and Telluride. A partial explanation: Taos stopped modernizing. After replacing the Lift 2 double with a fixed-grip quad in 1994, Taos didn’t install another new chairlift for 19 years. The first detachable didn’t arrive until 2018. The resort banned snowboards until 2008. Meanwhile, Big Sky laced a tram to the summit of Lone Peak in 1995 and started pushing detachable quads up the mountain; the first high-speed quads arrived at Telluride in 1986 and Whitefish in 1989.

It’s not a perfect narrative – while Jackson Hole rolled out its short Sublette detach in the mid-90s, the mountain didn’t install an upper-mountain high-speed chairlift until Casper in 2012. Skier visits went up and up and up all that time, probably due in large part to aggressive improvements at the Jackson Hole airport.

Maybe, though, it’s as simple as this: banger snow years descended upon Taos – and New Mexico in general – from the late ‘80s through mid-‘90s. It’s little surprise that attendance ups-and-downs largely mirror snowfall patterns:

But, as the corresponding trendlines show, Taos’ skier visits have not declined at the same rate as the mountain’s average annual snowfall. And while Jackson’s long-term average snowfall has remained relatively constant, attendance has crept steadily upward. Attendance spiked at both mountains when the 2018-19 season brought both plentiful snow and the introduction of the Ikon Pass:

Unfortunately, Taos stopped reporting skier visits after the Covid-shortened 2019-20 season, so we have less concrete insight into whether the mountain’s recent investments in a reconfigured beginner area and a second detachable on the backside have insulated it from two historically poor snow years. This is why it’s nice to have basic visitation data, and why I’m pushing the ski industry to again publicize annual attendance for ski areas occupying public lands (since going live with a chart of 2,406 years of skier visit data for 97 ski areas with 10 or more years of attendance available, I’m up to 2,822 years across 108 ski areas, and I have a total of 3,802 years of data across 184 active U.S. ski areas for which I could find at least one year of attendance).

We do know this: Taos doesn’t want to return to the world of 300,000-plus skier visits. Somewhere between 250,000 and 275,000 is the “right number for the experience we want Taos to have,” Kelly tells us on the pod. Meaning: fewer skiers spread via a modern lift network is a better business than 364,000 skiers funneling onto double chairs. This flips the busiest-equals-best narrative that made skier-visit counts a 20^th-century bragging point. I’ve heard the same logic articulated by the leaders of Killington, Waterville Valley, and other ski areas that have created a better business even with fewer skiers on their mountains. Jackson Hole, too, halted its relentless upward surge – that 2020-21 dip was deliberate, as the mountain exited Ikon Base and implemented a reservation system.

This approach makes sense to me. With U.S. skier visits surging (until this year) and an Ikon or Epic pass in every pocket, no one wants to brag about being busy anymore. Space is the new volume. Social media can still transform one bad liftline into an eternal meme, but at least most skiers on the ground will have a better day most of the time than they probably would have 30 years ago.

What doesn’t make sense to me is why, in a less-is-more era, ski area operators have suddenly decided that skier visits should be guarded like Fort Knox. If fewer skiers is a good thing and a stated goal, why hide the numbers? The resorts ought to just say “Hey we’ve deliberately reduced our annual skier count from 300,000 to 250,000 [or whatever] to create a better mountain for you.” Instead, this secrecy around volume just looks cagey - if national skier visit numbers are up, then why should skiers just believe ski areas when they say “trust us, it’s better now,” and offer no data to support it? Perception is reality, and today’s skiing zeitgeist, as channeled by social media, tells us that American skiers perceive busier mountains today than they did a decade ago.

But I’m getting off track. Since Louis Bacon bought Taos in 2013, he’s funded an almost-complete renovation of what had become America’s most decrepit destination ski resort. I don’t think any mountain operating on U.S. Forest Service lands has more completely remade itself in the past decade (rapidly changing Big Sky, Deer Valley, and Powder Mountain operate on private property). Glimmering new but reset to 1970s volume, Taos is beautifully positioned to tap a skiing public that’s burned-out on Colorado and Utah crowds but accustomed to modern lifts and snowmaking.

What we talked about

Taos as a family ski mountain; last winter’s Chair 7 upgrade and custom terminals; owner Louis Bacon’s mission to “improve everything without changing a thing”; why Taos changed from Skytrac to parent company Leitner-Poma for its newer lifts; Taos’ great base-area reorganization; the story behind the Free Tacos run; a green run from the top of every lift other than the fierce Kachina triple; Taos’ massive evolution since 2015; whether the mountain is committed to long-term independence; the founding Blake family’s legacy and presence at Taos today; executing rapid development on Forest Service land; [VIDEO BONUS: Cat photobombing]; running Taos with the context of having worked at also-independent Telluride; becoming a skier growing up in Nashville, Tennessee; Telluride’s evolution from semi-affordable to gigantic housing puzzle; employee housing at Taos; the logic behind the proposed base-to-base gondola and navigating local opposition; thoughts on the evolution of lifts 2 and 8; preserving parts of the hike-to ski experience; Taos’ evolution after the Kachina Peak lift; lift 7A; the Minnesotas glades from the masterplan; avalanche mitigation; old-school boot-packing; parking lot evolutions; an ideal annual skier visit number and why that number is below historic highs; and getting to Taos.

What I got wrong

• When we discuss the wood-paneled terminals on Taos’ new Lift 7, I ask if they’re thematically related to the “wood RFID gates.” This is a reference to an earlier conversation that I cut, about Taos finally installing RFID for the 2025-26 ski season (the gates carry a wood theme).

• I said that the trees skier’s left of the Pioneer chair were not a named run, but they in fact are, and “Free Tacos” has a pretty awesome story behind it.

• I accidentally asked Kelly to, “lay out the housing landscape for Telluride” but meant to say “Taos.” I didn’t catch this in real time, but Kelly – who spent several years at Telluride before moving to Taos in 2015 – caught it and course-corrected.

Questions I wished I’d asked

Taos’ 2010 USFS masterplan proposed a 7,045-foot-long, 2,363-vertical-foot detach quad that would have run parallel to Lift 1 to the top of Lift 2:

We did, however, discuss the proposed 545-vertical-foot, 991-foot-long Ridge Lift off of Lift 8, and why Taos nixed that machine from its latest MDP:

Why you should (or shouldn’t) ski Taos

Taos, like Jackson Hole or Snowbird or Palisades Tahoe, has a toughguy reputation. The place ripples with hike-to chutes and glades. To calm visitors shocked by the vertical bump run rocketing skyward beneath Chair 1, Taos to erected this base-area sign decades ago:

The sign refers to the infamous Al’s Run, which typically ripples with moguls, but was closed on my last visit, in March 2025 (Lift 1 was open):

Taos certainly has plenty of nasty. The terrain ripping off the Kachina Peak triple is among the steepest inbounds terrain I’m aware of in America.

But what shocked me about the place was how approachable it was for my then-8-year-old son, a solid but very intermediate skier. Every chair other than Kachina offers a top-to-bottom green – and some mostly mellow blues – making Taos one of the better family mountains in America.

A lot of the solid-black terrain sits above the lifts, and requires a short, easy hike. If you’ve ever humped up Catherine’s at Alta or Spanky’s Ladder on Blackcomb, the ascent off of Lift 2 over to Highline Ridge or West Basin Ridge isn’t much longer, and it flattens out considerably after the short incline. Unlike East Wall at A-Basin or Highlands Bowl at Aspen Highlands, this is hike-up terrain that’s approachable for people who (like me), live at sea level and only like going up the mountain on machines. The runs are steep, and solo missions are discouraged, but the easy-in and proximity to lifts means a strong skier could reasonably expect to tuck a half-dozen hike-up laps into an afternoon. Here I am huffing and puffing right off Chair 2:

Dang those trees are steep even right off the jump. Crunch crunch crunch:

Go up a bit higher, and things get Lord of The Rings pretty fast:

Taos’ only real buyer-beware statistic is its insane base elevation of 9,350 feet, which makes everything, especially sleep, a bit more challenging. That altitude is actually a bit lower than the bases at Copper (9,712) or Breck (9,600). I start to have trouble functioning around 8,000 feet, which is the Vail (8,120), Snowmass (8,110), Snowbird (7,760), and Mammoth (7,953) range. So maybe see how you do at one of those burners before leveling up above 9,000 feet. Or at least arrive knowing that Taos will try punching you in the face. Hydrate and lay off the beer bongs for a day or two. You’ll be fine.

Podcast Notes

On Stadeli lifts

We’ve got 16 of these guys left across 10 U.S. ski areas, including Lift 7A at Taos:

On the character of old chairlifts

I wrote last year that U.S. ski lifts’ overall design aesthetic has deteriorated with the decline in number of manufacturers and a tacit emphasis on technology over beauty.

And I love old Riblets and Halls and Yans, but sentimentalism that locks skiing in a time capsule ultimately stalls long-term growth and invites disaster-by-disintegration. Rather than fight to live in a museum, I’ve adopted a quest mentality to ride as many of these dinosaurs as I can before they go extinct:

On Taos’ base-area fliparound

On Taos’ current masterplan

Here’s the conceptual overview of Taos’ 2021 U.S. Forest Service master development plan:

The major unrealized part of this is the base-to-base gondola - here’s the most recent plan for that lift:

On “class A avalanche mountains” with more than 200 slidepaths

Kelly mentioned that Taos’ more than 200 slidepaths earn it the designation of a Class A avalanche mountain. I of course went looking for a list of U.S. ski areas so classified, and of course did not find one. In a rare exercise in self-restraint, however, I also did not create one. A quick Google search suggests that that such a list would include Alta, Kirkwood, and Stevens Pass alongside Taos. I would also assume that Alpine Meadows, Palisades, Mammoth, Snowbird, Big Sky, Silverton, and Crested Butte are among the most avy prone. That is not a complete list or an attempt at one so please don’t write that I “forgot about” some particularly avalanche-prone mountain that I’m not trying very hard to remember.

On The Storm’s first Taos podcast

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My son’s half-birthday was last week. Yes I know that’s not actually a thing. I’m not one of these parents who, like, buys him a zebra or rents out Yankee Stadium to mark every made-up milestone. But I’ve Sharpied my now 17-year-old daughter’s height on the wall every six months since she turned 3, and I continue the tradition for my son. The resulting record is a neat physical relic in an increasingly digital world:

But here’s the funny part: how often I get the measurement wrong. Kids are squirrely, wild-haired, uncertain from day to day how straight they ought to stand up to be standing up straight. It’s tricky to hold a marker exactly level and slide it from the crown of their head to the writing surface. Or at least these are the excuses I make when one of my kids suddenly grows nine inches in six months or, once my daughter maxed out a few years back, seems to occasionally shrink.

Measuring is hard. That’s my point here. Even when the thing you’re measuring is a three-foot-tall human. So I grant resort operators, engineers, maintenance teams, government officials, and media latitude to conjure slightly different measurements for machines that climb a mile or more up steep and unruly mountains. For example: Breckenridge’s trailmap lists its Kensho Superchair six-pack at 1,536 vertical feet, the resort’s 2022 U.S. Forest Service masterplan stakes the lift at 1,540 feet, and the independent Lift Blog lists the machine at 1,502 feet. Lengths diverge by source as well: Lift Blog lists Kensho at 5,902 feet long, while the Forest Service says 5,735 feet.

That’s a 167-foot length difference, which felt significant enough that I asked Lift Blog founder Peter Landsman about the discrepancies. “My info comes from the manufacturers,” he wrote via email. “Sometimes they make mistakes compiling data, particularly when converting meters to feet or they flip length and vertical.”

About length in particular, Landsman added: “There are several different ways to calculate slope length. A fully loaded uphill haul rope is longer than an empty line because of stretch. There is also variation when accounting for tensioning, which can add 6-10 feet. Then there is horizontal length which is distinct from slope length.”

These slight variances probably don’t matter much outside of marketing claims over the longest/tallest/steepest etc., and recitations of such stats have mostly given way to storytelling-style marketing in the social media era. Landsman is probably correct in defaulting to the manufacturers’ records, but I tend to go with the Forest Service numbers when they’re available, mostly because ski area masterplan lift tables tend to include top and bottom elevations. While altitude has nothing to do with length, it’s a (mostly) fair determinate of vertical rise, and for consistency’s sake I’ll use all of the USFS numbers if I use one of them.

Which takes us to today’s exercise: itemizing the tallest ski lifts in the United States. Here are the top 10:

Cool list, Bro. But we run into the same set of problems with this inventory as we did with our longest-ski-lifts list last week: three of the machines listed above are not lappable ski lifts, and one of them is technically two different machines strung together as one lift.

So let’s sort out America’s tallest ski lifts, chairlifts, detachable lifts, fixed-grip lifts, quads, doubles, and triples.

One note before we get to that – I intended to publish this article the day after last week’s lift-length dispatch, but the volume of still-incomplete data was bothering me. Even with the combined references of Lift Blog, New England Ski History, U.S. Forest Service documents, and measurements from ski area websites and trailmaps, I was missing lengths for 279 chairlifts, and verticals for 275. That’s around 15 percent of active ski chairlifts in America, and it included some monsters, such as Lost Trail’s Saddle Mountain double chair (which turned out to be the 13th-tallest and fourth-longest fixed-grip lift in the country).

So I set about filling in the blanks. First, I reached out to my contacts at several dozen ski areas where I was missing lift measurements. Officials from Cascade Mountain, Little Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, and Crystal Ridge, Wisconsin; Nub’s Nob and Crystal Mountain, Michigan; Wisp, Maryland; Mountain Creek, New Jersey; West Mountain, Windham, and Hunter Mountain, New York; Wachusett, Massachusetts; Crotched, New Hampshire; Lost Valley, Maine; Lookout Pass, Idaho/Montana; 49 Degrees North and Summit at Snoqualmie, Washington; Whitefish and Blacktail Montana; Boreal, California; and Solitude, Utah provided updated measurements, and several other operators promised to send measurements soon.

In the meantime, I filled in the blanks using a brand-new site that just debuted this week called “Google Earth.” Most of you have probably not heard of this site, since you do not live on the cutting edge of technology like I do.

OK you got me. Google Earth debuted in like 2001 and has long been an obvious tool that could help fill in missing chairlift dimensions. But I’d failed to click some “allow accelerator” setting on my computer, and thus the site hadn’t loaded properly for me in several years. But then Jon Schaefer said “hey Dumbass just measure on Google Earth because I have no idea how long these lifts are” when I asked if he could fill in some missing info at Berkshire East. Well these were not his exact words, but that was the spirit of it, and so I fixed the stupid setting which took like 15 seconds and three clicks. Then I went around measuring lifts.

This sounds very simple, but it took all week, working (no kidding) 12-hour days. But I filled in the grid. I now have an approximate length and vertical rise for every ski lift in America (excluding ropetows and carpets, which shoot me if I ever go there). On the accuracy continuum, the Google Earth measurements fall somewhere between an educated guess and a fully clothed doctor’s office weigh-in. Meaning they’re close enough. To stress test this, I compared my approximations to published manufacturer, resort, or USFS stats, and the numbers usually landed within 15 feet on vertical rise and within 50 feet on length. So not exactly splitting the atom, but close enough to publish statistical rankings of gigantic machines that scale mountains.

OK anyway here are the stupid lists:

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Earlier this week, I blamed a nearly three-week content absence on a relapse into one of my more regrettable habits: overzealous data accumulation in service of a single article. But I have an even worse habit: overzealous data accumulation that never becomes an article at all.

I spent a considerable amount of time last year assembling an inventory of active American ski lifts, but never made it public. I did this because I needed to know, for a story, how many six-pack chairlifts existed, and it took several hours to compile that inventory. To forestall a repeat of that irritating process, I put together a more complete list of active lifts, which I’ve been using as a personal reference document.

Why have I kept this to myself? Well, like the Encyclopedia Bro-Tannica (formerly My Big Dumb Charts), it’s messy, ever-changing, and inconsistent in places. People looking for a site that is not those things can visit Lift Blog, which is the most complete contemporary resource for North American ski lifts (carpets and ropetows excepted), and indexes a page for every active ski area on the continent (as well as non-ski aerial lifts).

The reason I made my own list is that I needed the ability to sort machines by characteristic - type, age, length, height, make, etc. – and across ski areas, states, regions, and companies without cross-checking dozens of individual resort inventories. What, for example, are the 10 longest active double chairs in America? What is the shortest detachable quad? Which Midwest chairlift claims the tallest vertical rise? What is the longest gondola? How many Riblet and Hall lifts remain in service? What are the steepest lifts? The oldest?

All of the information existed to answer these questions, but aggregating the data proved laborious. So I tapped Lift Blog as a primary source, then supplemented missing or contradictory data with measurements from New England Ski History, ski resort websites, U.S. Forest Service masterplans, historical maps on skimap.org, and other sources (I’m attempting to clarify the measurements discrepancies with Lift Blog).

Once I put all this data onto one sheet, I had the foundation to begin answering additional questions: How many active U.S. lifts have been relocated from their original location? What are America’s highest-altitude lifts? How many of the country’s lifts still lack safety bars? I’ve yet to accumulate sufficient data to answer any of these questions comprehensively (though I’ve made good progress on relocations), but I add data as I find it – often while researching a particular resort for a podcast episode.

I’ll leave most of these questions aside for today to focus on one metric, and to explain why even that simple measurement is more complicated than it at first appears: length.

What exactly counts as a ski lift?

To understand why a metric as simple as how long something is proves to be a puzzle, consider this list of the 10 longest lifts that access ski terrain in the United States:

Well that’s pretty straightforward, right? Math is as certain as gravity. But asterisks abound: first, four of these 10 machines are not, technically, lappable ski lifts: the Silver Mountain Gondola, the Sandia Peak tram, Heavenly’s Stateline Gondola, and Ober’s tram. While brave and inventive skiers could perhaps bushwack summit-to-base, skis-on routes in perfect post-storm conditions, these are primarily transit lifts that move skiers to staging areas near lappable ski lifts. Second, four of these lifts are technically two separate machines that riders can exit at an early stage or experience as one continuous machine: Steamboat’s Wild Blue Gondola, Deer Valley’s East Village Gondola, Killington’s Skyeship Gondola, and Palisades Tahoe’s Base-to-Base Gondola. Only Jackson Hole’s tram and Aspen Mountain’s Silver Queen Gondola function as single-machine, lappable ski lifts.

Fortunately, more clarity emerges as we drill deeper into the numbers. So let’s do that.

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There are only two reasons why anyone would attempt to visit every ski area in Ohio. The first is that they live in Ohio. The second is that there is something wrong with them. This is not because Ohio’s five public ski areas are remote or run-down. Most sit directly off an interstate, offer parking within 100 feet of the ski runs, and are served by modern-enough lifts, snowmaking, and grooming. But Ohio is a state you pass through, not one you go to on purpose. Unless your destination is The Horseshoe, where the Columbus Buckeyes (as their fans universally refer to them) play their home football games. But if you’re a visiting fan, the Shoe is less a destination than a gameshow-style survival mission. There’s a reason that this guy, who looks like a Mad Max extra who suffered an onset concussion and never re-joined our collective reality, is television’s favorite Buckeye mascot:

There is probably no telling this dude that it is not in fact a law that the loser of the Michigan-Ohio State football game be drawn and quartered by motorbikes driving in opposite directions.

Then again Michigan has this guy:

But that’s just Terrance. And Terrance is a friend of mine.

Which is another way of saying I’m from Michigan. Or at least, I grew up there. Which is most of the context you need for the Reliable Narrator portion of this story.

Speaking of football, analysts often praise a quarterback’s knack for “taking what the defense gives them.” Meaning: don’t insist on throwing 50 yards to your double-covered receiver when you can just hand off to Stumpy for a guaranteed four-yard gain.

And skiing is like that too: sometimes, you have to take what the winter gives you. And sometimes winter gives you 2022-23, when the daily snow reports out of Utah and California resembled an AI that confused inches with centimeters and had mistranslated the Ice Age movies as contemporary news reports. It snowed 903 inches at Alta that winter and Mammoth closed in August not because it ran out of snow, but because at some point the mountain had to prep for the next winter. But sometimes winter gives us 2025-26, when blizzards paint the eastern half of the continent white while the Mountain West wonders if this El Nino fellow mis-read the calendar.

I was supposed to go west in December and I cancelled it and I was supposed to go west in January and I cancelled that too. And instead I went to a place where generational snowfalls had churned up the best ski conditions in decades and single-digit temps had kept the snow nice. It was a place that I had passed through hundreds of times but had never skied. And that place, (believe it or not, Terrance), was Ohio.

DAY 16 - SNOW TRAILS, BOSTON MILLS, BRANDYWINE

Snow Trails – Ohio’s independent outpost

To reach Snow Trails, exit Interstate 71 and hang a left at the Wal-Mart. Then drive a mile and a half into the 1930s and you’re there.

Snow Trails is the only public ski area in Ohio that is not owned by Vail Resorts. How that happened I don’t know. Actually I do know. Peak Resorts purchased Mad River in 2001, Boston Mills and Brandywine in 2002, and Alpine Valley in 2012. Then Vail bought all of Peak in 2019. And what was once a state of family-run ski areas is now a state of one family-run ski area plus Vail. “Vail took over Mad River, so I only come here,” one woman said when I asked if she’d ever been to Mad River, metro Columbus’ other ski area. And this is what Vail is up against when it comes to public sentiment in Ohio.

They are also up against good operators. The Crislip family has operated Snow Trails since its 1961 founding. That story occupied a good portion of this 2022 podcast:

Snow Trails is not much of a mountain, but it’s a hell of a ski area, packing an unbelievable amount of variety onto 80 acres: six chairlifts, two carpets, and at least four terrain parks, one of which is served by a modern upper-mountain Sunkid ropetow. I rode this one time and cannot understand how Snow Trails park kids still possess functioning rotator cuffs.

Boston Mills - names are hard

I understand that a ski area parked next to an Ohio interstate may, for purposes of marketing and self-esteem, mine the far reaches of Planet Ski in search of a worthy name. Little Switzerland, Wisconsin and Afton Alps, Minnesota both present as playful, self-aware urban ski-hives nodding toward their aspirational mountain gods across the ocean. And I get that Boston - wealthy, cold, swarthy, iron-skinned Boston - is one of North America’s great ski markets, which, along with New York metro, supports the bulk of New England’s enormous ski industry. But to most of the world, Boston is about as synonymous with skiing as it is with bullfighting. Which is to say not at all.

It’s not Vail’s fault that the hill’s name is stupid, but if they’re looking for something with more contemporary ties to the region than a town demolished decades ago to expand Cuyahoga Valley National Park, how about “Cleveland Mills?” Or better yet, “King James’ Kingdom?” They could theme it like the old King Ridge ski area in New Hampshire:

Though I’m not sure if the NBA’s all-time leading scorer would be interested in lending his name to a 230-vertical-foot, 40-acre bump. You may be able to get LeBron’s attention with Big Sky, but from just about any point on Boston Mills, you can see just about all of the rest of the ski area:

This makes it difficult to shutter terrain. And because it had snowed two feet, everything in sight was skiable. And Boston Mills’ mountain ops team, accustomed to offering skiing only where they can make snow, didn’t bother roping anything off. Joyous kids stacked themselves like mountain goats on every knoll and side-hill and blazed novel-if-somewhat-useless forest paths and no one stopped them.

The skiing was intense, short, varied, and delightful. A mix of bump fields and beginner meadows and terrain parks and big heaving snowpiles that doubled as impromptu jumps. School appeared to have been deemed irrelevant and the hill swarmed. I wish Vail would have responded to this unusual volume by opening an extra chairlift. Or at least by repurposing a scanny-gun employee to encourage more than one skier at a time to ride the quad, as anyone under the age of 30 has some sort of allergy to sharing the lift with a stranger (this is true at all Midwest ski areas). Anyway I skied the kids’ dumb little backside run just for fun:

Brandywine - at least it evokes a good buzz

Brandywine is about a five-minute drive from Boston Mills, and the two have been co-owned for decades, and maybe forever. In summer or fall 2022 I’d stopped through both ski areas to inspect the two new fixed-grip Skytrac quads – one at each ski area - that Vail Resorts was installing as part of its Eptacular Lift Upgrade.

They were beautiful new machines, but I was skeptical about their potential impact. What good would one modern lift do for small ski areas that already ran half a dozen lifts each?

I’m not sure about Boston Mills, where the Buena Vista quad replaced a double chair and the old lift 4 rises condemned-looking in parallel (VR reps tell me Boston Mills’ Lift 4 is certified and operational), and the other chair on that side of the ski area sat idle. But the upgrade’s impact was clear at Brandywine, where the Ram quad runs beside an amazing double quad, showcasing the lifts’ speed differential. A video I shot from Ram, with the double quad spinning in the distance:

But Man what is cooler than a double-freaking quad:

The only other such machine I’ve encountered is at Swain, New York, though the looker’s right machine only ascends partway up that ski area:

Brandywine is the RV of American ski areas, with incredible variety crammed onto a steep and narrow ridge: five chairlifts, a terrain park handletow, and one of the steeper carpets I’ve encountered. It’s one of America’s more unique terrain layouts, even if it looks kind of blah on this trailmap:

Like its sister ski area Boston Mills (the two share a website and are often classified as one ski area, though they sit a few miles apart), Brandywine is denuded, industrial, intentional. It’s what ski areas would look like had nature not bothered leaving us hills to ski down: steep and severe and relatively short, littered with terrain parks and ski lifts, with a topridge oriented for spectacular sunsets. It is also a testament to man’s industrial ingenuity and insistence on carving ski centers out of variable-weather zones in which no native ski culture exists.

A quirk at Brandywine: Lift 4, the beginner lift that runs short but quite high, still lacks safety bars, an unusual oversight for a Vail ski area. The company typically retrofits all of its chairlifts with safety bars, even in places like Ohio that do not require such features by law (all new lifts must follow ANSI standards, which require bars, but hundreds of older, bar-free machines have been grandfathered in across the Midwest and West). That Vail has owned this bump for going on seven years and still not gotten around to adding bars felt odd to me, and I asked company reps if there was something inherently challenging about this particular chair’s engineering or construction. The bars were, in fact, onsite, the rep told me. “Our intention is to have restraining bars installed across [this lift and Lift 4 at Boston Mills] for the 2026-27 season,” they wrote.

Both Boston Mills and Brandywine share an unusual moat aesthetic – the former supplied by a gate, the latter by an actual bridge-over-a-stream. This single point of entry makes it difficult to sneak onsite without a valid lift ticket, a strategy I’ve also seen deployed at Trollhaugen, Wisconsin, another urban-adjacent ski area catering to the teenage rule-bending crowd.

A Midwest anecdote before I get the hell off this frozen Midwest bump and find myself in a Chili’s drinking Miller Lite tallboys and eating a molten chocolate cake: I shared my first Brandywine chairlift ride with a purple-bedecked snowboarder. “Watch your head,” I said as I brought the bar down. She seemed shocked, a reaction that I first interpreted as indigence, but quickly translated as joy. “No one ever wants this,” she said. It would have been useless to explain that I lived in New York, where chairlift bars and chairlift bar usage were mandatory, and that I had driven to Ohio to ski on purpose and for no other purpose, importing my effete East Coast habits along with me. So instead she told me how much she liked Vail’s new chairlift and the sunsets off the ridge, and I skied off toward the slow double-quad, where the lift attendant told me I was the first rider of the day.

DAY 17 - MAD RIVER AND ALPINE VALLEY, OHIO

Mad River - the real Mad River ski area

For various reasons, Peak Resorts ended up building a lot of baselodges. At Crotched this was because they rebuilt the entire ski area after it spent two decades rotting in the woods. At Alpine Valley, Ohio, it was because one day the whole lodge just collapsed. At Mad River, it was a fire that chewed up the legacy structure – which I discussed with former Mad River GM Tom Price, current GM at Timberline, West Virginia, when he joined me on the pod in 2023. (Someone on the lift at BM had described the lodge as “industrial” and that was correct – it reminded me of the lodge at Crotched, New Hampshire, which Peak also built, and I wondered if there was some sort of industrial design aesthetic at work within the company.)

The skiing at Mad River is a lot like the skiing at Snow Trails – both ski areas present almost identically: 300-foot vertical drops, a disorienting number of chairlifts strung side-by-side along a broad face, excellent grooming, large sections of the mountain devoted to terrain parks of various sizes, small gladed areas. The differences are more operational than atmospheric: Mad River staffed by Vail’s blue-jacket scanny folks, the 20^th-century lift fleet updated with safety bars, one chairlift spinning rather than Snow Trails’ three. That latter reality was too bad, as the one terrain pod inaccessible via the summit quad is a 2006 expansion installed by Peak and serviced by the Mines Peak triple from the defunct Berthoud Pass ski area in Colorado. I’ll leave it to you to decide if life serving an Ohio buttercup is an ignominious end for a chairlift that once sat atop the Rocky Mountains, or a symbol of skiing’s resilience and an apt way to honor a fallen domain.

Both Snow Trails and Mad River shared an unexpected trait: a competent skier corps. Good skiers – a mix of over-60 retiree carvers and under-25 student park-lappers – far outnumbered fumblers. Every ski area is home to great skiers, but generally the overall student body’s skier rating drops in direct proportion to the bump’s distance from the nearest large metro, especially in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest. Meaning: closer to a city = more beginners. But I suppose it is the hardcore and most-prepared that beeline for spinning chairlifts in single-digit weather, especially on weekdays.

One additional tidbit that I learned at Mad River: folks working at Vail’s regional ski areas design the merch sold in their onsite stores. I had assumed - I guess cynically but not really on purpose - that all designs spun from some Epic Merchandise and Branding team in Broomfield. But both Mad River Resort Operations Manager Brian Onofrio and Alpine Valley Resort Operations Manager Chuck Shultz told me that they had designed the hoodies, hats, and other merch hung in the baselodge shops.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I have been informed by numerous parties that the article I published last month on my visit to Mad River was erroneous, that I had mistaken two completely different ski areas in two different states for the same ski area simply because they share a similar name, that I ought to be ashamed of myself for denigrating a cathedral of American and New England skiing. And so I have to admit a gigantic flaw in my article: I failed to mention THE VAST CONSPIRACY propping up the mirage of “Mad River Glen” in “Vermont.” Nice try, Suckers. But unlike you idiots, I actually did my reeserch and visited the place in person. So eat this Factburger for breakfast:

ALPINE VALLEY, OHIO – The #Realest Alpine Valley

Skiers driving up to towering Cascades bomber Alpental dead-end at a covered bridge. You walk over. It’s an appropriate arrival experience for what may be America’s greatest small ski area:

So when I arrived at Alpine Valley, Ohio in the snowy dusk and encountered a similar covered bridge, with a double chair shooting skyward from the far side, I deferentially parked the minivan and began booting up for the walk across:

And about 30 seconds later, a civilian SUV sped across the bridge. Followed by another and several more. And this was my first indication that Alpine Valley was not in fact the Alpental of Ohio.

It is, rather, the Buttermilk of Ohio: broad, gentle, uncrowded runs. It is quite beautiful:

One reason for that beauty: Alpine Valley, to stick with the Washington State comparisons, is the Mount Baker of Ohio. Meaning it’s the state’s snowiest ski area, and not by a little bit. Because of its position in the Lake Erie lake-effect bullseye, Alpine Valley hauls in around 120 inches of snowfall in an average season, more than double any other ski area in the state. This microdot is, in fact, one of the snowiest ski areas in the entire Midwest, and the only non-Michigan resort in the top 20 outside of not-really-in-the-Midwest-because-it’s-practically-in-Wyoming-and-has-a-5,900-foot-base Terry Peak, South Dakota:

This snowbelt location no doubt helped Alpine Valley weather the great ski-area weedout that shuttered at least half a dozen chairlift-served ski areas across Ohio over the decades:

What really probably helped it along, however, was Peak Resorts’ 2012 purchase of the ski area, their fourth in Ohio. Here’s what the bump looked like before the Missouri-based operators arrived:

Shultz, who has worked at the ski area for decades, rattled off the sequence of improvements as we skied around: Peak had replaced the lower ropetows with the Sycamore Lake triple chair, installed a new base-to-summit Partek quad, demolished the increasingly unreliable summit double, converted the old Hall quad (Chair 2 above) to a triple, and dispensed with the expensive halfpipe:

Then Vail Resorts nudged the bump further along, restoring summit access with an inexpensive handletow, converting Snowbelt from a triple to a double using discarded chairs from its Afton Alps resort, shuttering tubing to focus those operations at its nearby ski areas, and ramping up snowmaking. Future improvements, Shultz told me, could include a progression park on the old tubing site, where a carpet has remained intact, inspected, and functional.

I am not trying to brag, but I have now skied every Alpine Valley ski area in America. This one is not the best one from a pure ski point of view, but it is probably my favorite. Unlike the much larger Alpine Valley, Wisconsin, all of the lifts at Alpine Valley, Ohio have safety bars. Unlike Alpine Valley, Michigan, Alpine Valley, Ohio does not overlook a Meijer superstore. And unlike both of those Alpine Valleys, Alpine Valley, Ohio, actually gets real snow on more than an occasional basis. It’s also probably my favorite ski area in Ohio, because unlike the other four, Alpine Valley had nothing resembling a liftline. I realize most of you will never ski here or ever want to ski here, but if you have kids and live anywhere in this region, I can’t think of a better low-key spot to spend a few hours sliding around.

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Earlier this month, the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) released preliminary skier visit numbers for the 2025-26 ski season. To no one’s surprise, they were bad: 52.6 million visits, a 14.5 percent drop from 2024-25.

How bad is this? This past winter ranks 32^nd out of the 48 years since the NSAA began reliable record-keeping in 1978-79. It is the first winter to land outside the all-time top-10 since the 2017-18 season. Well, other than the Covid-shortened 2019-20 ski season. Winter 2025-26 wasn’t as bad as Civilization-Shutdown Fest 2020, but almost: this winter only beat 2019-20 by 1.5 million skier visits. It was the worst non-Covid winter since 2011-12, which ranks 39^th, with 50.96 million skier visits.

Not everything was terrible. Separately from the NSAA estimates, the three New York State-owned ski areas reported record visitation, with around a quarter-million visits each at Belleayre, Gore, and Whiteface. I anticipate more records as eastern state associations release aggregate 2025-26 counts, but we’ve also gotten tidbits of better-than-expected results out of the West: Whitefish, in northern Montana, improbably recorded their fifth-best season ever for visits. These national results are also weirdly positive for Vail Resorts, which matched the national trend after lagging for two consecutive winters.

A normal person would have written a story around those factoids. But I am not a normal person, and so instead of writing those three paragraphs, which took five minutes, I decided that I needed more historical context to really communicate how bad – or not – the 2025-26 ski season was.

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Six months before the 2026-27 ski season begins in earnest, the Epic, Ikon, Indy, and Mountain Collective passes have secured partnerships with 407 Alpine ski areas, including 52 in Canada, 49 in Japan, and 52 resorts across 15 European nations. Domestically, these four passes collectively grant skiers access to 242 American mountains (excluding Ikon-Mountain Collective overlap), which equals 63 percent of all public ski areas with chairlifts in the country, and 73 percent (176,757) of the nation’s 241,954 lift-served skiable acres.

Is there room in this crowded marketplace for a fifth national multi-mountain ski pass?

Snow Partners – owners of Mountain Creek and Big Snow in New Jersey and popular operating software and learning-terrain programs – thinks there is. Yesterday, the company announced the Snow Pass, which will be an Indy/Mountain Collective-style passport with two days each at “a curated network of regional destination and drive-to resorts in the Northeast, Midwest and Western United States and Canada.”

This national pass builds upon – but will remain separate from – Snow Partners’ Snow Triple Play (STP) product launched last year. STP, which is valid for three total days of skiing across all partner resorts (and a max of two days at any one ski area), will return in two regional varieties for 2026-27:

• East: All 16 inaugural Snow Triple Play partners plan to return for season two. Joining them, according to a Snow Partners press release, will be “approximately six new partner mountains…” in Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

• Midwest: Snow Partners will also debut a Midwest-specific Snow Triple Play, with an anticipated menu of 10 to 15 ski areas.

Partner lineups and pricing for Snow Pass, Snow Triple Play East, and Snow Triple Play Midwest will debut “this summer.” SAM reports that passes will go on sale post Labor Day (Sept. 7) “at a sub-$400 price point and will be on sale through December.” SAM also reported that existing STP partners Mount Southington and Pleasant Mountain intended to join the Snow Pass, and that New York State’s Olympic Regional Development Authority was in discussions to potentially add some combination of Whiteface, Gore, and Belleayre to the new product.

Snow Partners is framing Snow Pass as a cooperative, with “a partner advisory board or mountain partners to help guide the product’s future and growth,” and “open reporting on economics, expenses, and product performance.” Snow Partners will retain a five percent administrative fee, plus marketing expenses (SAM suggests these will add up to 15 percent, noting that 80 percent of “total revenue” will flow down to partners), and distribute the remainder to partner mountains “based on their utilization and ticket value.”

The Snow Pass will enter a congested and somewhat confusing North American multi-mountain pass market, and it will do so well after the now-entrenched March window during which most operators offer the lowest pass prices. Snow Pass faces the task of cobbling together a compelling partner roster with a combination of pass free agents, STP partners, customers of Snow Partners’ software or Terrain Based Learning businesses, willing double-dippers already aligned with Mountain Collective or Ikon’s two-day tier (which allow pass-sharing), and anyone it can coax off Indy Pass (which does not).

Is there room for a fifth national ski pass? Are there enough ski areas to form one? Enough skiers to buy one? Is this a mature market, or an evolving one? Let’s dig deeper:

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DAY 9 – MT. PETER, NEW YORK

This was year five for my son Logan at Mt. Peter’s low-key, low-commitment seasonal program, a once-per-week-for-seven-weeks group skiaround that has the twin benefits of being an hour and 15 minutes from Brooklyn and including one of his good schoolfriends. It also has the benefit of being at Mt. Peter, which with the exception of one extremely steep race trail is one of the more approachable bumps anywhere.

During Logan’s three-hour class, I ski. A lot of the parents don’t, but Bryan does. Bryan is Logan’s friend’s dad. He grew up in Kansas, where there is no skiing, and lives in New York City, where there is also no skiing. He visited Snow Creek, Missouri a time or two as a teenager, and later tagged along with his wife to a work seminar at Jackson Hole, where he took a lesson because he didn’t realize that the instructor would interpret his Brooklyn address as cover to host a one-on-one MAGA rally, and also because he didn’t realize that it was Jackson Hole. In spite of all this, Bryan became a skier when the family purchased a cabin nearby and decided their daughters needed a wintertime activity.

So while the lifelong-skier ski parents who ski five days per year on their trip Out West fiddle with their Pet Rectangles amongst piled bags in the baselodge, Bryan and I ski. He’s bashful about calling himself a skier, but on this January Sunday, he’d skied more days that winter than I had. At one point later in the season, he held up the torn glove he’d purchased a decade ago at a Jackson Hole church sale and said “I need to fix these,” and I said, “you can fix them into that garbage can over there,” and he said, “no way, I paid $5 for these.” And is anything more Skier than that?

On the Ole’ Pete lift we talk about Middle-Aged Bro Stuff like mortgages and medical appointments and snowstorm contingency plans. Then we ski whatever we want and meet back at the lift because every trail ends at the same place at Mt. Peter.

DAYS 10-12 – GREEK PEAK, NEW YORK

Because it’s not that expensive and because there’s a full-service hotel-with-restaurant-and-water-park across the street and because this mountain has the best top-to-bottom green-trails-that-are-actually-trails-and-not-catwalks in New York State, Greek Peak turned out to be a perfect family-from-NYC-with-widely-varying-ski-abilities-and-enthusiasms MLK weekend destination last year:

So this year we visited Greek Peak again for the MLK long weekend. And all the same things that were great about it last year were great this year, except it didn’t snow as much.

Rather than re-itemize all of those mountain attributes here, I’m going to challenge my own generation’s unearned sense of superiority around our collective latchkey upbringing. Self-congratulatory Gen-X analysis has proliferated in recent years, which usually goes something like this: This sandwich generation, born between the early 1960s and 1980 or so, landed in a historic sweet spot, dodging both the extractive generational smugness of the Baby Boomers and the earnest feelings-ball of the Millennials. We grew up without the internet, without a supercomputer in our pockets, without parental supervision, without real concerns of a military draft, and without fealty to pre-1968 social constructs that had sanctioned smoking-and-yelling as an acceptable parenting, teaching, and management style. But also without affordable starter homes, a proliferation of factory union jobs, post World War II invincible-America optimism, a car-optional lifestyle, affordable healthcare, or social gathering spaces that did not involve commerce. This unique combination of social and cultural pressures – lots of free time with fewer distractions than current youth and a harder path to self-supporting adulthood than our parents – yielded a generation that is supremely creative, beholden more to bettering the future than honoring the past, and less entitled and self-congratulatory than the generations before and after it.

Which, OK, some of this is true: I didn’t use the internet until I was 19, and my childhood was essentially an epic of unstructured and unsupervised free time that neither of my children can quite believe in. As I wrote the other day, when my daughter was 8, she asked me how old I was when I was allowed to go outside by myself, and I couldn’t answer the question because I couldn’t remember ever not being allowed to go out alone. That freedom and flexibility from a young age, anchored in an analogue world, probably helps explain my imagination and independence.

But this is where Gen X self-satisfaction needs to take a smoke break. Because you know who let us be outside unsupervised all the time? The fucking Baby Boomers. And you know who stopped letting their kids have mud fights and dam the local creek without a permit? Gen X. We are the ones who ended thousands of years of free childhood play by reclassifying children from small-but-incrementally-capable humans to endangered and possibly suicidal animals in need of constant supervision, and shamed and threatened anyone who didn’t do the same to the point that 21 is no longer considered the legal drinking age, but a milestone at which Billy can (possibly) run down the driveway to fetch the mail all by himself.

And Dear God has it been annoying to raise kids like this even though I don’t want to. Because I remember being 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 very vividly and wandering alone through forest and field and local stores and never dying while doing so. But I go along with our U.S. American Way because I’ve been culturally compelled to and because I don’t have the means or the will to fight back and because part of participating in society is taking the path of least resistance on most issues. But I’ve been pushing this particular nitpick as far as I can, and when Logan (9), and his friend (11), and his dad Dave and I ended up in Greek Peak’s Trax Pub around 4:00 on Saturday, and I got acquainted with a few Miller Lite tallboys and a “single” of Jameson that probably would have filled a half-pint, and I was cold and sort of over skiing for the day and the boys were clearly bored after massacring a basket of fries, I said, “Kids why don’t you go ski?” And the part I didn’t say was “this thousand-vertical-foot mountain filled with strangers, and without a cellphone or tracking device of any kind*, and down icy runs in the bitter cold.” And I looked at Dave (the other dad), who’s a Scottish fellow and therefore immune to the dumber habits of Americans, and he was like, “see you boys later,” and off they went.

*Edit: my wife informed me, upon reading this article, that both kids were in fact wearing GPS-enabled smartwatches.

And we said “go ski three runs and come back,” and they skied four because they “lost track” and told us that they’d had a conversation with a “nice man” on the lift and the reason none of this worries me is that these kids are as smart as we were at this age, and they can comprehend the workings of even a slightly complex ski area like Greek Peak, and neither of them is going to be carted off by a menacing stranger without some amount of noise that would surely be noticed by the hundreds of other skiers milling about, most of whom, I’m assuming, are wired to not abet the doings of criminals.

If we’re ever, as a society, going to wrench back the childhood that we already irretrievably stole from an American generation-and-a-half-or-more, ski areas – busy, slightly intimidating, challenging, massively fun and rewarding of creativity and navigational competence – are among the best places to start.

DAY 13 – CATAMOUNT, NEW YORK

At a certain point, you lose control of your kids’ schedule. At 11 you can drop them in the backseat of a Ford Escape and take subzero Friday night laps at Mohawk Mountain en route to Sunday River and not bring them home until near midnight on Monday after a Loon Mountain pitstop. By the time they hit 16 you can entice them with a week of slopeside Panorama laps at the top of B.C. and they’ll say, “have fun I can’t miss my friend’s birthday party.” Which is both liberating and disheartening, but natural and normal enough that I never forced more ski participation as my daughter’s annual ski days slipped from around 15 to five or fewer over the past couple of winters.

But then the Magic Thing happened, which is that Waverly’s friend decided he wanted to ski and so suddenly she was interested in skiing again. They had a short mid-week school break and I offered to tour them around a couple nearby mountains. Jake had skied only two days before, so I set the first stop at Catamount, a thousand-footer straddling the New York-Massachusetts state line where long green runs flow beneath a mess of five triple and quad chairs. And I said “Jake take a lesson” and he did:

By the end of the day, the kid was skiing off Ridge Run, a gorgeous top-to-bottom green-circle trail weaving through the forest. He even handled the short blue Mountain View trail, a moderately pitched run that terminates in a spiderweb of greens.

Catamount is one of several New York ski areas – along with West Mountain, Holiday Mountain, Titus, and now Kissing Bridge – that has remade itself under new ownership in the past decade. When Wave and I visited in 2018, Cat’s groomers were solid concrete and a pair of SLI doubles dating to 1967 and ’71 teetered up the ridgeline. The parking lot was empty, the lifts were empty, the hill was empty. It made for a terrible but also hilarious ski day:

That spring, the Schaefer family, longtime owners of Berkshire East, bought the joint, and over the next several years knocked down those SLIs, installed three new-used chairlifts, modernized the snowmaking, cut new trails, and generally nudged the bump into the 2020s. And yeah I guess it worked: the parking lot was two double-parked rows deep when we arrived 15 minutes before first chair, the lodge was full, and Ridge quad had a small wait all day. There’s still more lurking boilerplate than I’d like, and I miss the tree islands that once crowded the frontside, but Jon Schaefer told me on the pod in 2019 that he wanted to make Catamount one of the best small ski areas in the country. I’m not sure if they’re quite there yet, but no one who shows up expecting a competent ski operation is going to leave disappointed.

DAY 14 – HUNTER MOUNTAIN, NEW YORK

Less dramatic but arguably as impactful as the evolution of Catamount has been the transformation of Hunter Mountain since 2018. With 1,600 vertical feet and a blow-the-doors-off snowmaking system just over two hours from New York City, Hunter, historically, has been crowded, chaotic, rowdy, and filled with assholes. But a sequence of investments from Peak Resorts and then Vail Resorts have somewhat tamed all but the last one (an unsolveable problem, I’m afraid, as I was reminded on a very long ride up the Kaatskill Flyer with a moron who couldn’t contemplate how we could possibly re-order our chairlift seating arrangement after he cut between our party).

Anyway: Peak’s 2018 Hunter North expansion and supplemental parking lot, Vail’s 2024 addition of a third six-pack, the removal of several older double chairs, and significant snowmaking upgrades – including on the notorious Annapurna trail – have nudged Hunter from Chaos Island to perhaps just Disorderly Island. Or at least a far more pleasant place to ski.

This was, frankly, perhaps my best day ever at Hunter Mountain, a ski area I have visited probably more than any in New York State other than Mt. Peter. The bump is always better on weekdays – and not better like eating warm pizza is better than eating cold pizza, but better like eating pizza is better than eating dirt. But 2026 weekday Hunter is also better than time-machine versions of weekday Hunter: the grooming held up most of the day, the terrain parks are finally in the right places, and the lift network no longer concentrates every skier on the mountain to the Hellgate-7^th-Avenue-Gun-Hill-Road bullrun.

But I suspect there’s another reason I enjoyed Friday more than Hunter Mountain ski days past: I skied the stuff I’d always ignored. At some point, I assumed the kids would want to split off and ski without me, or hole up in the lodge for Serious Phone O’ Clock. But that never happened, and we skied all day, and so I skied mostly greens and blues, and found some terrific and terrifically pleasant runs, especially the winders at the top of Hunter East and the lower-level runs striping down from the top of the Broadway sixer.

By mid-day, Jake was able to ski Belt Parkway, the meandering, sometimes steep-ish, nearly-always-mobbed blue that circles Hunter Mountain from the top of the Kaatskill Flyer to the bottom.

This was the best ski day Wave and I have had together at least since we went Peak-to-Creek at Whistler two years ago, and perhaps of all time, and by the end of the day she was just gliding strong and confident down the mountain:

At day’s end, this happened, and damn it if it wasn’t just one of the best moments of my life:

In the end, she ended up committing to Brown, which was her first choice, and I’m so happy and proud. But the Michigan connection will always be there.

DAY 15 – HOLIMONT, NEW YORK

There is something unsettling about private ski areas. It’s a familiar thing that feels like a status trap. Like walking into a random backyard barbecue where everyone is named Steve or Ed or Carol and they all know one another from like some fucking sailing club or something. And eventually someone asks “so where do you summer?” and you’re like, “uh Doug invited me,” and they gasp “there is no Doug!” and it’s the biggest fuss since Cheryl found the Kensington’s schnauzer rooting through her marigolds.

Holimont is a private ski area of the sort that we have a lot of in New York. Which is to say that it’s only private sometimes. It’s open to the public only when no one wants to be there, like when it’s five degrees and cloudy on a Tuesday. But at least that’s when you can also park directly in front of the baselodge.

Which is directly in front of the high-speed quad. Holimont is one of just eight ski areas of the 50 in New York that spins a detachable lift. This machine, the Exhibition Express, is one of six chairlifts serving a weaving, wandering trail network on a 700-vertical-foot ridge.

After four runs, I did something I rarely do: switched out my dailies – Blizzard Whatevers – with my great-conditions go-tos: 102-centimeter underfoot Blizzard Rustler 10s. And I did this because I had to admit something I’d hoped would prove untrue: that Holimont is one of the best ski areas in New York State. Powder everywhere. Untracked trees. Creative lines beneath the lifts and powerlines. Narrow routes into bowls. Tricky little hills and unmarked side paths that send skiers inextricably to distinct zones of what looks deceptively like a long-ridge, every-run-the-same ski area.

And there were no sailing club vibes. No one asked me what I was doing there. No one asked me anything at all, other than the liftie who wanted to know about my collection of wicket tickets. I skied it was great. I don’t know what else to say.

DAY 16-17 – ADVENTURES IN OHIO (to come in a separate post)

Stand by to read about that one time I skied in Ohio. Well I guess I already wrote a preview:

DAY 18 – BUFFALO SKI CLUB CENTER

Buffalo Ski Center skis like three former ski areas mashed together. That’s because it’s three former ski areas mashed together. As Buffalo Ski Center – which sometimes refers to itself as “Buffalo Ski Club” – explains on its website:

Buffalo Ski Club brings together three ski areas — Sitzmarker Ski Club, Ski Tamarack and Buffalo Ski Club—and covers 300 acres with 43 trails ranging in terrain from expert to beginner.

… the Buffalo Ski Club continues traditions begun in 1931 when eight families from Bavaria , Germany , came together to share their passion for skiing. They purchased land and a farmhouse in Holland not long after and built the area’s first rope tow. They spent winter weekends skiing, then gathering for huge feasts and songfests. By the 1950’s they had moved to Colden, where the Buffalo Lodge still stands. In 1948 UB students and WWII vets, members of the Sitzmarker Ski Club, bought the adjacent property on Lower East Hill and began to clear the hill still called Old Sitz just below the Sitzmarker Lodge. In a building made of cleared timber they gathered as families for weekends of skiing and comraderie. In the 1960’s Dr. Lore established Ski Tamarack just south of Sitzmarker. Although it was a commercial venture, Tamarack was always a family ski area. In 1991 Buffalo Ski Club and Sitzmarker merged and in 2004 the Club acquired Ski Tamarack from the Lore family to make the entire Colden Ridge one private, family-oriented ski club.

I believe these mentions of “club” are dated, as the Buffalo Ski Center Club of Greater Buffalo appears to have quietly rebranded over the past few years from a public-private hybrid that only allowed non-members midweek to a public-private hybrid that allows non-members any day but only sells season passes to members.

Or something like that. The Buffalo Ski Club Center’s website appears to date to the what’s-your-@hotmail era, with just enough information to contradict itself while omitting clear guidance on things like “am I allowed to ski here?” or “is the ski hill open?”

But last year, Buffalo Ski Resort Center at Sitzmarker-Tamarack-Buffalo-Ski-Club joined Indy Pass with just one blackout date (Jan. 3, which I’m assuming is some sort of club-celebration date). Anyway, I interpreted this as permission to show up.

The first-to-open-on-a-weekday base area at Buffalo Mountain Ski Area is Tamarack. This sits down the sort of access road that makes you feel stupid for not better scrutinizing the GPS route before clicking “go”: a narrow, winding dirt road that crosses a one-way bridge before slogging uphill to the parking lot. It’s not a long road, but it’s long enough to give you time to consider alibis when Cousin Orville of the Buffalo Orvilles greets you at road’s end with an aimed double-barreled 12-gauge and demands to know what happened to his chickens. But at the end of the road a ski lift shot out of the flats up a long, steep hill, and other than the fact that there were only two other cars in the parking lot, I assumed I was at a ski area.

I was, uncharacteristically, onsite before the lifts opened, and figured I’d grab a snack at the cafeteria, but there was no cafeteria. Well, there was one, but it wasn’t open. In fact, there was no one in the baselodge at all. Maybe this was because it was Thursday. Maybe this was because it was five degrees outside. And maybe it’s because the rest of the world was as confused as I was as to whether we were allowed to ski at Buffalo Ski Park.

At 3:00, the Tamarack double opened. What a wonderful trailpod, tall, narrow, steep, and varied. Snow had fallen for weeks and weeks and the temperature had never broken freezing and powder had just piled up everywhere. In the waning light I hammered fastlaps, winding between Tamarack’s tree tunnels and full-bore meadows.

The idle T-bar offered a particularly nice line:

At 5:00, the Sitzmarker side opened. Milder terrain over here, big rollers, a bump line skier’s left beneath the chair:

The terrain far looker’s left didn’t open that day, and typically doesn’t on weekdays. Ski Buffalo Mountain’s trailmap is a gigantic tease, the tangled sort of pseudo-guide that you trust less as a literal wayfinder than as a promise of something different. A puzzle. A maze. A toy unboxed intact from some lost decade. A gigantic whole sewn from parts that fit but were perhaps not supposed to, like a late ‘80s red Chevy Blazer patched after an accident with a blue door removed from a wrecked relative. It keeps running even if it doesn’t quite make sense how.

I left Buffalo Ski Circus as dusk settled and the temperature ticked below zero. Just up the road lay Chestnut Ridge, a free muni ropetow that I’d hiked the year before. “Someone was here running the tow, but then they left,” a young Snowboard Bro told me as I arrived. A few other snowboarders trudged over the snow toward the lift, which, per the county’s website, should have been operating. This is exhibit A for why it’s so difficult to accurately count active ski areas: no staff, no signs, no social media accounts to cross-check. I stared down the hill I had hiked 11 months before, looked back at my warm car, which I’d left idling in the parking lot, thought about the six-plus-hour drive home and the aching shoulder that had transformed long drives into endurance contests. And I walked back to my van and changed out of my ski clothes and drove back toward the city in the long New York night.

More of my dumb ski adventures with Slopes:

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Who

Dan Skelton, President and Chief Operating Officer of Blue Mountain, Ontario

Recorded on

October 27, 2025

About Blue Mountain, Ontario

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Alterra Mountain Company

Located in: The Blue Mountains, Ontario, Canada

Year founded: 1941

Pass affiliations: Unlimited on Ikon and Ikon Base

Base elevation: 229 feet/750 meters

Summit elevation: 1,480 feet/451 meters

Vertical drop: 730 feet/223 meters

Skiable acres: 364 acres/147 hectares

Average annual snowfall: 154 inches/391 centimeters

Trail count: 43

Lift count: 11 (5 six-packs, 1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 4 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Blue Mountain, Ontario’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him: A Very Dumb Story About a Very Dumb Person, Volume I

In the winter of 1995-96, I developed Vertical Fever, a syndrome in which the afflicted believes, in a way that is beyond reason and immune from contrary arguments, that the skiing will be better if the ski hill is taller.

This was a problem. Because in 1995, I lived, as I had all my life up to that point, in Michigan. Specifically, Sanford, a flat town in a flat county in what may be the flattest region of the country, the Tri-Cities area of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Fortunately for a skier, Michigan is cold and full of ski areas. Unfortunately, these ski areas are small or short or both. The tallest of the 33 ski areas inventoried on the 1995 Michigan Downhill Skiing Guide is Boyne Highlands, which then and today promotes a probably made-up vertical drop of 550 feet. Right across the street was 427-vertical-foot Nub’s Nob, one of six Lower Peninsula ski areas to exceed 400 vertical, along with Caberfae (485 feet), Shanty Creek Schuss Mountain (450 feet), Sugar Loaf (500 feet), and Boyne Mountain (495 feet).

I’d skied all of these and I’d skied them all many times since my first real ski season, which was the previous winter, 1994-95. But once I’d stopped summersaulting down the hill and learned to carve and to land jumps, I grew bored. Skiing in 1995 was not like skiing in 2026. Terrain parks were rare and, anyway, off limits to skiers. Jumping was forbidden. There were signs all over saying so. Everything was groomed and everything was about carving turns, even though grooming was inconsistent and the shaped skis that would transform the average skier into a carver were years away from mass market distribution.

So I scoured maps and guidebooks for ski areas of any size in any direction that I could reasonably drive to. To the south lay Ohio and Indiana. Useless. To the north, at the far western end of the Upper Peninsula, lay several 600-ish footers (Mount Bohemia did not open until 2000), but Michigan is a deceptively large state made larger by the inconvenience of driving around gigantic lakes – those UP ski areas were 10 hours away. But also to the north, east instead of west and just over the Canadian border, lay Searchmont: 750 vertical feet of ungladed bananas skiing, with little cliffs and rocks and glades all over. It was a glorious real-life validation of the less-stuffy Canadian ski-area management culture that I’d read about in Skiing and Powder. And it was only a four-hour drive each way, an easy daytrip on the cruise-control-empty interstates of northern Michigan. This is what a Canadian 700-plus-footer is like, I decided, and I searched for more of them.

That’s when I became obsessed with Blue Mountain, this mysterious guidebook mapdot floating south of Lake Huron. Stat-line, as listed in contemporary guide books: 720 vertical feet, 13 chairlifts and two T-bars, 920 skiable acres (this was, um, not accurate). A Midwest hack, a backdoor to a secret mini-New England unknown to Michiganders. As with Searchmont, I would rise at 4 and arrive by lifts-on and soar all day among the woodsy wide-open drop-step terrain of Ontario yahoo skiing.

Yeah it didn’t work out like that. The first time I tried to drive to Blue Mountain, I wound up at Mount Brighton, 273 miles away in Southeast Michigan. A blizzard had forced course correction to a more achievable destination. But the second time, I made it. Here’s how it went, per a journal entry I wrote few days later:

Monday, March 25^th, 1996 – 11:53 p.m.

Let’s just call Friday the day that didn’t quite flow. In fact, it didn’t flow like no day on skis ever hasn’t. First off, I only slept four hours. Normally , I wouldn’t give a fuck, but that was directly following three hours the night before, which didn’t help my status in an already exhausting week. Then there was the drive. I figured four, maybe five hours at the most, 250 miles, give or take. Wrong. I only realized this somewhere well over the Canadian border. Six hours, 350 miles. Then there’s the mountain.

I knew Blue was big, but I was not, I’ll admit, in any way, shape, or form prepared for what I found Friday. The place is enormous by Midwest standards, though not as mammoth as I’d originally thought coming up the road, scoping out the two private resorts. Notice I said “enormous,” not necessarily “good.” Which is sad, cause, for one thing, they’re trying pretty hard to make a good hill, and, #2, I drove a long fuckin’ way to get there. The whole thing bore a striking resemblance to western skiing – enormous base lodges, hugely wide runs, high-speed chairs. Which I suppose makes it ideal for families. Then there’s the fifty miles or so of safety fence, zero ungroomed runs, and as many jumps as a Fat Albert convention. This, I surmise, makes it extremely unideal for Stuarts. In fact, I really didn’t enjoy it at all. It was bland, repetitive, and almost sickening in its nature. I was tired, pissed, and lonely. The highlight of the day was jumping off the cornice which was the subject of much inner conflict. But I did it, and I’m glad, and then I drove home, and I’m glad for that too.

I only skied four-and-a-half hours. My ticket was good til’ ten, but I considered a lot of things. For starters, it only cost me twenty bucks; second, I told Clint I was gonna make it a point to get out of there by four [to hang out], so I sorta tried; third, I’d skied the whole fuckin’ place anyhow, and I really didn’t feel like getting home at four AM. It’s not like I didn’t ski well, cause I was actually carving and reacting magnificently (to the terrain, not the carving). I was fluid, but I needed more variety, and they just didn’t deliver.

It would have been nice to have the internet in 1996 (it existed, but almost no one used it, partly because there was almost nothing on it, including driving directions, maps, or trailmaps).

Great endorsement of Blue Mountain, Stu. You managed to convince people not to go and make the people who do ski there feel bad about it all at once. Slow clap for aggressive transparency.

But my message here is hardly “Blue Mountain sucks don’t go.” Blue Mountain is, as it was 30 years ago, exactly what it needs to be: a rapid-fire lap machine optimized to provide a consistent ski experience to the residents of Canada’s densest metro area, Toronto. Blue is, historically and probably still, the third-busiest ski area in Canada after Tremblant and Whistler. It is a low-altitude, variable-weather, high-volume business tasked with the twin burdens of being the sole public outpost for recreational skiing in a ridgeline of upscale private clubs and being a profitable enterprise. It is, from a dollar-generating and Ikon Pass-dispersal-to-the-West point of view, probably one of Alterra’s most important ski areas.

The problem, then, is not that every ski area isn’t like Searchmont. The problem is that, in 1996, I thought every ski area should be like Searchmont. It was like walking into a pizza parlor and complaining that they didn’t sell tacos. I was young and dumb, and it didn’t occur to me until arrival that a 700-ish-vertical-foot ski area dangling off the far eastern end of the Lake Superior wilderness (Searchmont), would, by custom and by necessity, offer a far different ski experience than a 700-ish-vertical-foot satellite orbiting metro Toronto (Blue). I thought every ski area should be for me and for people like me, like the people I read about in ski magazines who toured B.C. in rusty pickup trucks and never took bathroom breaks and who viewed skiing as a constant level-up challenge.

Thirty years later, I view Blue Mountain differently, for two reasons. The first is that I’m sure that Blue, like nearly all North American ski areas, is a more interesting mountain in 2026 than it was in 1996. Freeski culture and snowboarding really did loosen up skiing’s stodgier tendencies, most visibly with the widespread building of come-one-come-all terrain parks. The second is that I no longer approach ski areas by asking if they are the best possible experience for me, but if they are the best possible version of themselves for the demographic of skiers who are most likely to ski there. And with Blue – which I will admit, I never visited again - the answer appears to be, always and ever upward, yes.

What we talked about

Oh Ontario; being a Canadian ski area owned by a U.S. company; “one of the beauties of being part of Alterra is our emphasis on honoring and preserving the uniqueness of each resort and each mountain community”; Blue Mountain’s Reserve Pass; fixing up Blue’s disordered lift mazes; growing up at the base of Blue Mountain; the amazing evolution of ski area technology; Blue’s wacky, charismatic founder; preserving the mountain’s independent character after it’s been absorbed by a conglomerate; Blue in the ‘70s; building Blue’s snowmaking system; big leaps forward in snowmaking during the 1990s; the rise of HKD; Alterra’s point of view on snowmaking; the hit-or-miss Lake Huron and Georgian Bay lake-effect snowbelts; snowmaking in the era of climate change; how snow-depth technology impacts snowmaking volumes; living through the transition from independence to Intrawest and ultimately to Alterra; how the village transformed Blue; “we come to the table scrappy, inventive, entrepreneurial” to this company of mega-resort destinations; the impact of the Ikon Pass; Blue’s amazing lift fleet and how the six-pack became the mountain’s workhorse; building chairlifts in-house; 15,000 skiers on Blue’s busiest days; “we’re not going to cut any new trails, so we gotta squeeze every little bit out and make sure we have a balanced experience”; whether Blue could upgrade to an eight-place lift; operating as the only substantial public ski area amid a huge number of private ski areas; and Blue’s history owning and operating the neighboring Georgian Peaks ski area.

What I got wrong

I mentioned that HKD President Charles Santry had told the same side of a story that Skelton shared on a previous podcast recording, which he had. The problem is that as of now, I still haven’t released that pod with Santry. Stand by.

Podcast Notes

On Intrawest

A brief history of Intrawest:

On “Rusty” in the Alterra/Ikon transition

Skelton was referring to Rusty Gregory, Alterra CEO from 2018 to ’22.

On Blue’s 1980 trailmap

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The Alterra Mountain Company is a remarkable thing. Its 2017 formation was both elusive and inevitable. Someone was going to have to stand up to Vail Resorts, which over the previous decade had transformed from a regional operator into a national power running 14 ski areas, including four of the five largest in North America, three urban-adjacent Midwest feeders, and, most recently, Stowe, one of the crown jewels of New England skiing. Something was going to have to compete with the Epic Pass, which wrapped all of those amazing places onto one low-cost season pass.

It just wasn’t clear who that someone or something would be. Plenty of operators seemed positioned to challenge Vail’s dominance. Missouri-based Peak Resorts matched Vail in number of ski areas, but it lacked a western anchor resort. Boyne, the quiet, stubborn, family-run survivor, owned 11. Park City-based Powdr, still sore from Vail’s hostile takeover of its hometown resort, ran 10. Once-mighty Intrawest had sold off Whistler, Panorama, Copper, Mammoth, June, and Mountain Creek, but was still hanging around with seven ski areas.

A spirit of cooperation and experimentation prevailed. The previous year, Peak had united its 14 ski areas under the Peak Pass (generating what may be the greatest tagline in the history of ski passes: “How The East Was One”). The year before that, Boyne, Powdr, and Intrawest had launched the M.A.X. Pass, with five days at each of their mountains plus several independents. And nearly two dozen large independent and conglomerate-owned destination resorts had joined the Aspen-sponsored Mountain Collective, which launched in 2012. Copper, Winter Park, and Steamboat had shared a menu of season passes, alternately under shared and competing ownership groups, since the late 1990s.

All good products. All just a little too demographically specific to compete nationally with Vail’s blockbuster Epic Pass, which had sold 650,000 units for the 2016-17 ski season.

Unbeknownst to skiers, nearly everyone not named Vail had huddled in conspiracy. A skiing Manhattan Project, massive and urgent, was underway. In April 2017, the coalition took shape in a motley, yet-to-be-named company sewn from the ghosts of failed and struggling conglomerates past: Intrawest’s seven remaining properties (Steamboat, Winter Park, Stratton, Snowshoe, Silver Creek, Tremblant, Blue in Ontario), re-combined, 11 years after selling them, with Mammoth and June, which had three years earlier acquired Snow Summit and sister property Bear Mountain, which had been grinding through the conglomerate mill for 30 years as is was bought and sold, in turn, by S-K-I (1988), Fibreboard (1995), Booth Creek (1996), and Snow Summit Ski Corp (2002-2014). Funding this union were the twin ski powers Henry Crown and Company (owners of Aspen’s four ski mountains, which would ultimately remain separate), and KSL, owner of Tahoe titans Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows (the latter had once been owned by Powdr). Six months later, the still-yet-to-be-named entity bought Deer Valley, which had itself three years earlier purchased nearby Solitude. Three months after that, in January 2018, the 14-mountain coalition became Alterra Mountain Company.

Three weeks later, Alterra dropped its atom bomb: the Ikon Pass would join the company’s entire portfolio on one product that would also include access to top destinations operated by Boyne (Big Sky, Sunday River, Sugarloaf) and Powdr (Snowbird, Copper, Killington), along with A-list independents Jackson Hole, Alta, and Aspen-Snowmass. In the leadup to the 2018-19 ski season, Alterra kept buying (Solitude in June; Crystal, Washington in September), and independents (Revelstoke, Sugarbush, Taos), kept joining. In total, Ikon delivered access to 50 ski areas for the 2018-19 ski season at the incredible price of $599 for Ikon Base and $899 for the full Ikon.

Finally, skiing had a true national challenger to Vail, whose Epic Passes were priced that spring at $669 for Epic Local and $899 for full Epic. The consumer response was immediate, total, overwhelming. Snow hammered the West that winter, and exasperated locals raised their pitchforks against Ikon in Jackson, Aspen, and Big Sky. The protests backfired, as the whining only increased Ikon’s visibility and popularity (though Aspen and Jackson would eventually move off Ikon Base and Big Sky would remove tram access from Ikon). Skiers, long challenged to sort through the statistics and logistics of researching, choosing, and accessing remote ski resorts on their own, rapidly understood that they could simply select from one of two destination menus: Epic or Ikon.

Once that bomb detonated, there was no reassembling it for safe storage. The Ikon Pass altered the lift-served ski landscape instantly and permanently. For ski areas, it normalized the idea that an independent mountain could participate in a larger pass coalition – 242 U.S. ski areas (and 59 percent - 232 of 390 - chairlift-served ski areas), are scheduled to participate in the Epic, Ikon, Indy, or Mountain Collective passes for winter 2026-27. For skiers, Ikon, positioned as a choice against Epic, reset their understanding of what a season pass was and who was allowed to own one, creating a sense of belonging that had been more elusive with a lift ticket dangling from their jacket zipper. The number of skier visits attributed to season pass holders exploded, and within a couple of years had passed the 50 percent mark for the first time.

The Ikon Pass was, on the whole, one of skiing’s best ideas. It is probably not a coincidence that American ski areas have recorded top-10 seasons for aggregate skier visits every winter since Ikon’s debut save the truncated 2019-20 campaign, or that capital investment has ramped up enormously since 2018.

It is probably also not a coincidence that consolidation has slowed – and in some cases reversed – as independent ski areas benefit from Epic and Ikon in two ways: affiliation with a national pass product provides a large, reliable revenue stream, reducing the imperative to join a larger company; and skier visit spillover to non-pass-affiliated independents as locals grow frustrated with the tourist patchwork infiltrating the larger mountains.

This all seems so obvious now that it’s hard to appreciate how long this dynamic took to gel, and how recently it formed. There was nothing inevitable about Alterra or Ikon, and there’s nothing inevitable about their continued existence. Vail, after riding the Epic rocket into the stratosphere for 15 years, has struggled post-Covid with shrinking Epic Pass unit sales and skier visits. We don’t have matching figures on privately held Alterra, but the company is in a delicate spot as it seeks a replacement for CEO Jared Smith following an unceremonious ejection last month. A lot of what Alterra is doing has worked really well, but some of it hasn’t, and whoever gets this job next has to take care not to break things that are working as they fix what’s broken.

If I were Alterra’s next CEO, these are five priorities I would start with, as well as five things I wouldn’t dare change:

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How bad was Vail Resorts’ 2025-26 winter?

Well, the company yesterday shared an initial estimate of approximately 14.4 million skier visits across its 37 North American resorts this season.

To put that number in context, 14.4 million skier visits is:

• A 14.9 percent drop from Vail’s 2024-25 skier visits

• The lowest number of skier visits (excluding 2019-20), to Vail’s North American ski areas since the 2017-18 ski season, during which Vail owned just 13 North American ski areas

• Just 6.7 percent higher than the 13.5 million total skier visits Vail recorded for the Covid-shortened 2019-20 winter, which ended March 14

• Four percent below the 15 million skier visits that Vail recorded for the 2018-19 winter, during which the company operated just 17 North American ski resorts

  

This 14.9 percent drop is even more severe than the 11.9 percent year-over-year skier-visit decline that Vail reported year-to-date on March 9. Vail is blaming the western visitation crash on “record low snowfall and historically bad temperatures.”

Still, it could’ve been a lot worse. Vail’s Rocky Mountain visits declined 25 percent, and a strong overall winter east of the Mississippi surely buoyed Vail’s overall numbers.

It’s hard to know just yet how to interpret these numbers, as the National Ski Areas Association won’t release their estimate of nationwide skier visits until May. But we do have a handful of data points:

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My daughter was 8 years old when she asked me this question: “Dad, how old were you when you were allowed to go outside by yourself?”

I could not answer because I had no answer. I could not remember a time when I was not permitted to play outside unsupervised, I told her. It was small-town Midwest life and it was the ‘80s and all we did all day long was whatever we wanted. I didn’t know where the adults were and they didn’t know where we were and they never asked when we got home.

I’m not sure if this child of Manhattan really understood what I was saying. Anyway, we’re past it. My daughter is 17 now, almost 18, headed to college in the fall. She can do whatever she wants whenever she likes. But I always felt guilty about raising her in New York City, a place that is bacchanalia for adults but a prison for children, who must be ever-shielded from the menaces of traffic and crowds.

Or so we tell ourselves. American parents have, over the past 30 years or so, developed a self-righteous supervision culture that, vested with government authority, mandates compliance. What made me feel simultaneously better and worse was the realization that her circumscribed childhood had less to do with my decision to live in Manhattan than with the fact that she was born in America in 2008, by which time it had become taboo to let children play outside without adult supervision even in the rural and small-town kid-topias I’d rambled in my early years.

The excesses and consequences of this accidental cultural mass movement are well-documented in books such as Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy and The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I read these books like I watch football games, bent in, immersed, cheering for the good guys. “Hell yes!” I say, “we got it all wrong. This must change!” And then I proceed to do absolutely nothing. Well, other than to continue complying with the cultural assumption that children are idiots and hover over them like Predator Drones as they walk 100 yards to the grocery store. Because I don’t know what else to do. Because I don’t want to get my kids taken away and our entire civilization has been reprogrammed as a surveillance state always on alert for unsupervised 7-year-olds and fighting back just feels impossible, like trying to change the weather or rearrange the continents back into Pangea.

But I did find one reprieve from my guilt-as-modern heli-parent: ski areas. Here we have the perfect arena in which to let children roam and explore unsupervised: a confined, well-defined, car-free zone staffed at all times by ski patrol trained in emergency medical services. Ski areas are a recreational version of what urbanist Jane Jacob’s called “eyes on the street” - skiers are constantly in view of other skiers who are skiing, riding lifts, milling about. It would be almost impossible to abduct a child unseen or unheard from such a place.

My daughter, it turned out, had little interest in independent ski roaming. But I started my son, now 9, at skiing much younger, and he was skilled enough, by age 6, to ride the Comet double chair at Mt. Peter with his friends, and lower and raise the safety bar at the appropriate junctures. At first, I would ride the trailing chair, then follow them down the hill, but he quickly progressed to riding up and skiing down without supervision. Context matters, of course. Getting lost at Mt. Peter would be like getting lost in the back seat of your car. Every run takes you back to the same place. And the benefits to his self-awareness, confidence, and self-identity were huge. Repetition flooded him with great confidence, which we could progressively apply at larger ski areas. In January of this year, he skied several late-day runs with his 11-year-old friend at Greek Peak, a sprawling, tricky-to-navigate thousand-footer in Central New York. Last month, he lapped the triple chair at Black Mountain, New Hampshire alone while we hung out in the baselodge. I have limits: when we skied sprawling, hill-and-dale Vail Mountain and Breckenridge in February, he had to stay in my sight at all times.

Oh crap did I just confess to a string of felonies?

On March 1 of this year, 5-year-old Brody Porter boarded a chairlift at Blue Knob, Pennsylvania alone. While adjusting his goggles, he fell 20 feet to the snow. Patrol responded quickly, Brody seemed alert and unharmed, but they called an airlift to Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital as a precautionary measure. He returned home unharmed.

The following week, WTAJ news visited Brody and his family:

It was light work for the news crew: an attractive, put-together family smiling and advocating for helmet use. The parents, Micah and Maya, seemed happy and relieved. The kids are floppy-haired and adorable. Whew, glad that’s over. Let’s make our little pseudo-PSA and get back to planning our next beach trip.

Well, it wasn’t over. On Monday, the State of Pennsylvania filed a second-degree felony count against each parent for endangering the welfare of a child. They released Micah on $50,000 bail and Maya on $30,000. A preliminary hearing is set for May 6 in Bedford Country Central Court.

Court documents provide a vague, somewhat contradictory timeline of the day that contains the following insights: Brody rode the chairlift at least once with his father before, according to a lift attendant, riding alone “three or four times.” Immediately preceding the fall, Brody had been skiing with Maya, who says she asked him to wait for her, which he did not do. He then fell off the Expressway triple chair near the top of the Upper Expressway trail. It took ski area officials 15 minutes to locate his parents. Maya later told police that she did not believe a 5-year-old should be permitted to ride a chairlift unsupervised.

Like for real?

A second-degree felony in Pennsylvania can carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000, according to multiple online sources.

This feels, um, excessive.

Prison? Because your child fell off a chairlift while riding alone?

That would destroy what appears to be a healthy, functional family. Maya’s Facebook photo archive is 100 percent wholesome, backpacks and beaches, family strolling hands-held across a park lawn, Hershey Park, Big Wheels, the Dickinson Children’s Center Pumpkin Run ‘25, kids packing themselves in suitcases, ultrasounds, Halloween on a loop.

It’s easy to dress up your social media profiles, of course. Behind-closed-doors transgressions have complicated the human character since Adam. Court records show that this is Micah’s second felony charge for child endangerment, following a 2022 DUI charge. Well that doesn’t sound like it was a good decision.

So who knows what else we don’t know about this incident or this family? As dumb as I reflexively think these charges against Porters are, I appreciate that we live in a nation of laws and transparency. Here are a few points that I’m certain of and some I’m attempting to clarify as I unravel this very strange story:

What I know

About this specific incident, not much beyond what I’ve outlined above. Micah, Maya, and their lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. Blue Knob officials declined to comment, citing legal counsel against doing so. I’m awaiting comment from several other parties, including the National Ski Areas Association.

But I know that if the Porter parents are convicted of a felony or even some bargained-down charges and the state rules that they were neglectful in allowing their child to load a chairlift alone, this could be a big, big problem for lift-served skiing in the United States.

How would we even begin to determine who can and cannot ride a chairlift alone? Do we regulate by age? Or the easier-to-quantify height? The most rational approach would seem to be defaulting toward ability level: Brody had been skiing for two years, he told WTAJ. The thing he liked best about it was “going fast.” The state may have had a case had Brody’s parents dropped him at the baselodge and said, “have fun with your first-ever time skiing, Son. See you in six hours.”

There are potential consequences beyond chairlifts here. If a parent is to be responsible for their child’s every decision at a ski area, could they also be charged with a felony if their 5-year-old falls and breaks their leg while skiing a trail? Or gets hit by another skier? Can we send children to the bathroom alone? To the cafeteria?

I did not ski as a child, so I have no first-person reference here, but the greatest joy of skiing with my children has been watching them develop confidence by doing something that is physically hard while navigating a large and often-intimidating network of trails, lifts, and base buildings. The best thing I can do for my children is to prepare them for adulthood, and I’ve found no better vector for these sorts of mini-victories than ski areas.

What I don’t know

Was Brody prepared to ride a chairlift alone?

If you have more than one kid or know more than one kid or have been part of a family unit with more than one kid, you know that proficiency gaps can be stunningly wide even between children drawn from exactly the same gene pool. My son could ride a chairlift alone at 6, but my daughter was closer to 9 before she’d reached that ability level. The first time I rode a chairlift, I was 14 and came off the exit ramp like a giraffe on rollerskates, a human bowling ball, a terror - but I was tall so I guess go ahead, Kid?

Before I let my son ride a chairlift alone, I drilled lowering and raising the safety bar with him. He did it with my help and then alone. Did Brody have that same guidance? Was the safety bar down when he fell? If not, why not? Were his parents the never-bar sort who tell their kids not to use them, or was he just too busy being a 5-year-old to remember?

Was Brody allowed, by his parents, to ride the chairlift alone?

Here, official reports offer contradictory stories. A lift attendant told police that Micah had told them that Brody could ride alone. Maya later told police that she didn’t think a 5-year-old should be able to ride a lift alone. Were the parents just out of sync here? Sometimes skills jumps happen fast. Maybe dad was going to be like “hey Mom, guess who just rode the lift alone!” That’s how my family tends to work.

And if the kid wasn’t allowed to ride alone, did he do so anyway because he’s a rascal and thought it would be funny, or because he’s 5, or both?

Were the Porters violating any laws?

I am not aware of any local, state, or federal laws specifying minimum heights or ages for chairlift riders, nor do I believe that any such stipulations or recommendations exist in the ANSI codes, which govern ski area construction standards in North America. I also don’t believe that Blue Knob has any sort of height or age minimum in place.

Beyond chairlift regulations, are there any state or local laws regarding child supervision in a public space? Is it (legally speaking), neglectful to lose sight of your child? At what point are parents allowed to hand children off to the commons? Does an adult lift operator suffice? Fellow skiers on the trail? Again, this could get complicated for ski areas very quickly.

What I want to know from you

This is a developing story, and my surveys of various Facebook threads this morning only reinforced my belief that social media has transformed primarily into a virtue-signaling platform for trolls and idiots. So I want to hear from a smarter group: my readers, on any of the following:

• At what age did you first ride a chairlift alone? At what age did you first ski alone without adult supervision? When was this, and where?

• At what age did you allow your children to ride a chairlift alone? At what age did you allow them to ski alone without adult supervision? When was this, and where?

• How did you know that you or your children were ready to ride a chairlift alone?

• What role has skiing alone at a young age played in the personal development of you or your children?

• Do you believe that there should be an age or height requirement for individuals to ride a chairlift alone? If so, why?

• Do you believe that ski areas are, in general, safe places for children to explore alone or in small groups? Why or why not?

• I’ve found that many fixed-grip lift operators are incredibly skilled at gauging, just by the manner in which a child enters the loading area, whether they need to slow the lift or not. Some will proactively swing the safety bar down for children. What are some cool things you’ve seen lifties do to help kids? If you were a liftie, what were the tells you look for when you assess a kid entering the queue alone?

• If you’ve been a liftie, did your ski area provide any advice or guidance on how to determine who could safely load and ride a lift by themselves?

• If you’re a ski area operator, what sort of guidance, if any, do you provide your employees around loading children onto chairlifts without adults?

Please reply to this email or send a note to skiing@substack.com with your answers. The Substack Messenger app is hard to copy and paste from. I may use some or portions of your responses in a future newsletter. If you would like your answer to be anonymous, please indicate that when emailing, as I may not be able to follow up directly with everyone.

More to come on this story.

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For whatever reason the most transparent and consistent ski area newsletters tend to come out of New England. Win Smith penned the stellar Win’s Word for years as Sugarbush president. More recently, Erik Mogensen’s Letters from the GM have repositioned Black Mountain, New Hampshire from an oh-that-place-is-still-open-I-went-there-in-1985 curiosity to a banging New England party scene with the longest ski season in New Hampshire. But the longest-running current email newsletter series is Alpine Update from Geoff Hatheway, the straight-six never-quit engine behind the decade-long comeback of Magic Mountain, Vermont.

Hatheway’s emails, like mine, tend to be longer than is strictly necessary. So when his April 3 edition referenced Magic’s “record breaking 25/26 ski season” without providing details, I reached out to see if he was playing guard-the-numbers ski-operator chess or had more to share. Unsurprisingly, he had more to share:

“Despite less than average snowfall here this winter, Magic had another record-breaking year (2^nd year in a row) in terms of: overall paid skier visits (+9%), day tickets (includes Indy) +16%, pass sales (+9%), and overall revenue (+8%, which does not include delayed revenue from Indy payout that comes after the season ends—Indy redemptions +24%).”

That’s incredible when you consider Magic’s neighborhood. The ski area sits within an hour of Stratton (Ikon), Killington (Ikon), Mount Snow (Epic), and Okemo (Epic). All are larger and taller. They spin 23 detachable chairlifts between them, including 10 of Vermont’s 11 public six-packs. Vail’s Epic Local Pass (currently $809) acts as an unlimited season pass at Mount Snow and Okemo, and, depending on when you buy it, is often less expensive than Magic’s season pass (for non-Vermonters), currently priced at $789.

How is it possible that such a ski area, with its fixed-grip lift fleet and four-days-per-week operating schedule and history of going broke and falling apart, is posting record business results as Colorado-based ownership and pass products embed themselves ever further into local and national ski culture? Isn’t it common knowledge that Epic and Ikon and Vail and Alterra are killing local skiing? Isn’t this Wal-Mart-comes-for-downtowns-and-then-e-commerce-comes-for-Wal-Mart savage capitalism at work on snow?

I’ve yet to be convinced, mostly because I keep writing stories about small ski areas that are doing just fine - and in many cases historically way better than fine - as national pass products rewire the skiing public’s experience and expectations. Magic is actually doing far better now, when it has corporate skiing as a foil, than it was from 1991 to 1997, when it sat dormant while vultures stripped its chairlifts. The Godzilla duopoly has always been a lazy narrative, mostly because it doesn’t withstand even the slightest scrutiny outside of raging social media anecdote by people whose entire identity is based on having skied 150 days per year at the same ski area since 1972 and Fellas in the good old days we’d punch a tourist right in the face if they asked us where we stored the moguls in the summertime.

Still, this small-ski-areas-thriving story is not the one I expected when Vail and Alterra began stacking Ocean’s 11 all-star rosters a decade-ish ago. But it turns out that story trumps stats, and Magic, under Master Marketer Hatheway, is telling a compelling story. “More soul,” reads the banner pinned to Magic’s website. Well that’s hard to quantify, but you can get away with big claims when they’re stapled to tangible things. Hatheway attributes the record 2025-26 winter to the new-used base-to-summit Black quad that went live a few years ago and daily lift ticket limits, which provide, he says, a “less-crowded experience… especially on peak Saturdays and big holiday weekends.”

My own from-a-distance take, as I’ve documented similar dynamics solidify among ski area clusters across the country, is that we long ago exited the era of the easy ski area victim. Most functioning public ski areas in the country - at least anyone with a chairlift - are hardened, fortified survivors, who have, over generations, endured, among other disruptions: bad winters; evolving skier expectations that demanded ever-better snow coverage, grooming, chairlifts, and trail variety, including elaborate and ever-changing terrain parks; a meta-culture more deliberately oriented around kids’ (non-skiing) sports and activities; deep shifts in the labor and energy markets; and, most recently, the 2020 Covid shutdowns, the 2020-21 adaptations to that circumscribed world, and a sudden mandatory shift from analogue ticketing and marketing to digital. With substantive new ski areas nearly impossible to build and social media’s egalitarian communications network to broadcast from, small ski areas today have significant advantages over the small ski areas that failed by the hundreds in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

Oddly, one of the strongest cultural forces working against Magic’s long-term success has nothing to do with Big Ski: brand confusion with Six Flags Magic Mountain in California and Magic Mountain ski area in Idaho make Googling Magic a chore. This, per conversations with reps from both ski areas and attempts to wrangle Google toward the correct website, is a real problem that occasionally leads to skiers, say, buying tickets for tubing at Magic Mountain, which is offered in Idaho but not Vermont. Kind of a bummer, that drive between. Sign up for Magic Mountain, Vermont’s Alpine Updates here.

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Two Truths & A Lie, Storm edition: which of the following does not explain the newsletter’s two-and-a-half week absence?

1. A simple story about Aspen season passes that a normal person would have written in 15 minutes spiraled into a thesis-length research project tracing the resort’s marketing evolution against the contours of eight decades of American and Colorado ski history.

2. Before I could finish the story on Aspen season passes, which was one week after I intended to finish the story on Aspen season passes for which I had been given no fewer than 45 days advanced notice and an embargoed press release, it was time for my annual six-figure contribution to the American medical-industrial complex in the form of a surgical implant to mitigate damage from decades of flagrant overuse.

3. I’m like, super into weed and all things weed-related and I was baking up an extra-weed-tacular issue for 4/20 Brah!

Dang it, that’s too easy. Before you answer, let’s add a fourth truth-or-lie to the mayhem:

4. My meticulously plotted and always super up-to-date Storm Skiing Journal editorial calendar was eaten by my pet ferret, Fred.

OK that’s still too easy. Obviously my pet ferret’s name is “Jerry Garcia Snoop Dogg Puff-Puff The Magic Mascot.” Because I LOVE WEED AND IT’S 4/20 WHICH IS THE TIME AT WHICH STONERS SUCH AS MYSELF SMOKE WEED, get it???

And by now you’ve either stopped reading or this is exactly why you come here. And if it’s the latter, then you know the explanation for the content pause is some combination of 1. (“you’ll only have to do it once,” I tell myself as I Google “Aspen season pass price 1992”) and 2. (no need for concern as this year’s edition of the Bionic Storm chronicles was a rotator-cuff/biceps tendon repair scheduled several weeks in advance rather than an emergency intervention to prevent sudden death or dismemberment; it hurts but I can write).

Anyway here’s a story about Aspen season passes. I’ve rarely written about this $3,000-ish product and its slightly less-expensive offshoots in the past, but a handful of important changes are nudging the Aspen-Snowmass pass suite into something more than just an expensive pass of little interest to anyone but locals:

“Prepare to plunk down $78 for one day of skiing”

No one has ever accused Aspen of being a bargain. For years, the four-mountain complex jousted with Vail-Beaver Creek over who could charge more for a lift ticket. “Prepare to plunk down $78 for one day of skiing,” the Aspen Daily News warned ahead of the 2005-06 ski season. “My heavens!” we all thought. Until Vail and Beaver Creek, which the Associated Press described as among “the jet set’s favorite winter playgrounds,” dropped an $81 top lift ticket rate on us later that same winter. The AP quoted then-Vail Resorts CEO Adam Aron with a statement that no ski resort operator would dare utter in 2026:

“Vail and Beaver Creek do have the highest lift ticket price in the United States. And yes, we’re actually — as opposed to hiding from that fact — we’re proud of that fact,” he said. “If the resort is capable of successfully charging the highest lift ticket prices in the country, that may be an indicator that it really is the best vacation experience.”

Vail must have been the best locals’ experience as well, because by 2007, when those Eagle County peak-day lift tickets hit a now-quaint sounding $92 ($145 in 2026 dollars), a season pass to those two mountains (which also included access to Breck, Keystone, and A-Basin), cost $1,849 ($2,905 in 2026 dollars). Aspen was just as, um, “successful,” with an $87 lift ticket and a $1,699 four-mountain season pass.

But then something strange happened. In 2008, Vail decided that lift tickets were an extra-great way of telegraphing best-ness, but that season passes should cost roughly the same as a bag of dogfood. Enter: the Epic Pass, a $579 unlimited season pass good at every Vail mountain in the universe. Which for the pass’ debut 2008-09 season was just five mountains, plus A-Basin, but they were some mountains: Breck, Keystone, Beaver Creek, Vail Mountain, and Heavenly.

In response to the Epic Pass, Aspen decided to do… absolutely nothing.

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In their never-ending contest to see who can murder me first by exhaustion-via-compulsory-write-ups-of-obscure-ski-areas, Ikon Pass added two more partners to its 2026-27 lineup yesterday, just as I was finishing my analysis of the seven new Indy Pass partners to join this week: Silver Star, British Columbia will move up to seven/five-day Ikon partner status after a winter on the pass’ two-day tier, while Giants Ridge, Minnesota joins the two-day Ikon Pass tier.

Silver Star and Giants Ridge, combined with previously announced resorts, add up to 23 national-pass partner additions for the 2026-27 winter, all of them on the Indy (15) or Ikon (eight) passes. Here are Ikon’s newbs, which include six ski areas announced last month:

While split by a continent’s worth of statistical differences, Silver Star and Giants Ridge each deliver important signals about Ikon’s priorities and trajectory.

Silver Star is a windfall for Ikon Pass holders. It’s one of the 20-largest ski areas in North America, and was the biggest all-public holdout from Epic or Ikon on the continent (5,000-ish-acre public/private hybrid Powder Mountain, Utah remains pass-less). Curiously, former Silver Star owner Powdr declined to add the resort to Ikon, even as the company committed its other large ski areas – Bachelor, Snowbird, Copper – to the pass. Last year, Powdr finally stapled Silver Star to Ikon, but only on the pass’ two-day tier. Two months later, they sold the ski area to longtime Indy Pass ally Pacific Group Resorts (PGR), whose Jay Peak ski area has led all Indy partners for number of redemptions for six consecutive years. By committing Silver Star to Ikon while keeping its remaining ski areas on Indy, PGR becomes the first American multimountain operator to split its resorts among the two passes:

The addition of Giants Ridge continues two recent Ikon growth initiatives: an emphatic push into the Midwest, and the steady growth of the two-day tier, which now numbers eight ski areas, all of them available only on the full Ikon Pass (and with blackouts). After staggering along with nothing in the region other than Michigan’s Boyne Mountain and Highlands for Ikon’s first seven years, Alterra added a pair of Minnesota bumps (Wild and Buck) to the two-day tier for the 2025-26 ski season, and followed that with Midwest Family Ski Resorts’ trio and more two-day partners for next winter.

“I think this partnership is somewhat of a recognition that we hold a place in the Midwest along with the Boynes that is a different experience, more like the mountain ski experiences that exist out west,” MFSR founder and CEO Charles Skinner told me in a phone call the day of Ikon’s partnership announcement.

Ikon’s refreshed Midwest roster indeed includes many of the best ski areas in the region:

I count Giants Ridge among these regional standouts. This remote, government-subsidized bump is one of the nicest ski areas I’ve ever visited, and it’s a terrific addition to Ikon’s two-day tier:

Ikon’s eight 2026-27 pass additions build on a 20-recruit class of 2025-26, and boost Ikon’s total roster to 98 ski areas for next winter:

Unfortunately for Indy Pass holders, Skinner confirmed that all four of Midwest Family’s ski areas would not return to the pass for 2026-27. “We think Indy is a great product,” Skinner told me. “We think our resorts are a better fit for the Ikon Pass. We feel that we have the only really large, full-service ski resorts in the Midwest besides the two Boynes. And now skiers near us don’t have to choose: should I get an Ikon Pass and fly all the time to ski? They can either ski our resorts on Ikon at no additional cost, or buy our season pass and add Ikon for a discounted rate.”

Ikon Pass prices are set to rise after April 16, right in their typical spring window, a marker of stability in an uncertain time for Alterra, whose CEO suddenly departed last month.

Here’s a bit more about the additions of Silver Star and Giants Ridge, along with some overdue analysis of Lutsen, Granite Peak, Snowriver, and Devil’s Head, and the changing landscape of Midwest skiing.

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Every year I tell all my dumb friends who don’t ski a lot but want to ski more about this thing called the Indy Pass. “Two days each at like 9,000 ski areas,” I tell them and they say, “that sounds amazing.” But then I either forget to tell them when it’s on sale or they forget to buy it because a Law of American Culture is that your friend groups remain as administratively organized as they were at the age you formed them, which for me mostly means between the ages of 3 and 14.

But that magic millisecond when the Indy Pass goes on sale for people who are not organized enough to click a link and enter their email address into a waitlist is this Friday, April 3, at noon eastern. These will be the prices:

Indy will sell a predetermined but undisclosed number of passes, and expects that the sale “will be over in hours, not days.”

Why, in the era of Epic and Ikon, do I keep beating you to death with the Indy Pass? Because unless you’re the sort who skis 100 days per year at the same mountain or takes a locked-in vacation to the same spot every February, Indy is the most streamlined way to mix up your ski diet. And man, there are A LOT of good dishes out there you probably haven’t tried. With two days each at 233 Alpine ski areas locked in for 2026-27, Indy has built meaningful density across most of the world’s best ski regions. Skiers could spend a couple of months just skipping around Europe (30 ski areas), Japan (29), or Canada (30). In the U.S., Indy offers 143 Alpine ski areas, with 50 in the West, 55 in the East, and 38 in the Midwest. Yesterday, Indy added seven more Alpine ski areas to that ever-growing roster:

That ski area collection may appear a bit scattershot, but they are all meaningful strategic additions, boosting density in regions of existing Indy strength. The Wisconsin and Minnesota ski areas – especially riotous, sprawling Whitecap – help mend the tear left in Indy’s Midwest fabric with the 2026-27 exits of Lutsen, Granite Peak, and Snowriver to Ikon Pass. Soaring Les Contamines becomes the second European ski area that, through a strange cultural loophole, is skiable on both the Indy and Ikon passes.

Here’s the full anticipated 2026-27 Alpine roster (I’m no longer tracking Indy’s cross-country partners, which you can view here).

Let’s take a closer look at these seven Indy joiners, and what sort of impact they could have for 2026-27 Indy Pass holders:

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Slopes is once again teaming up with The Storm to document my ski season. In January, I decided to finally check out one of America’s most legendary ski areas: Mad River Glen, Vermont. Unfortunately, the experience was not what I had hoped for.

My main job as a ski journalist is to cut through the LIES, DECEPTION, and INFLATED STATISTICS peddled by ski areas’ so-called “marketing departments,” so I can bring my readers accurate portraits of ski resorts as they are, not the fairytales they’re made out to be.

This is why they call me The Truth God, and why they sometimes call this newsletter The Straight Talk Express.

Because I tell the truth even when it’s uncomfortable.

Even when it goes against sacred beliefs in the ski world.

Even when it calls out some of the most beloved mountains in all of skiing.

And I’m about to expose one of the biggest FRAUDS in American skiing: Mad River Glen “cooperative,” in “Vermont.”

WHAT “THEY” WANT YOU TO BELIEVE

Ski areas are notorious for adding a few feet to their vertical drops or a few inches to their daily snow reports. As you all know, The Straight Talk Express has no patience for this BULLSHIT, and I will CALL THEM OUT with a NUCLEAR TRUTH BOMB!!! But Mad River Glen is not just inflating a few statistics – their entire brand is built on a MOUNTAIN OF LIES, starting with this more than slightly exaggerated “trail map” posted to their website:

And here’s what you’ll read about Mad River Glen on their fallacious website (boldface mine - to highlight the ski area’s RAMPANT LIES, DISTORTIONS, UNTRUTHS, FALSEHOODS, AND DECEPTIONS!!!!!!):

Mad River Glen is like no other ski area in North America. The mountain is famous for its legendary expert terrain, picturesque and varied novice and intermediate trails and of course, the famous Single Chair. The extensive trail system follows the natural contours of General Stark Mountain to a single base area, making it easy for skiers of different abilities to ski together. An average of nearly 250 inches of natural snow each year combines with uncrowded slopes and a pristine mountain environment to create the unique Mad River Glen ski experience.

If you’re a skier, you have most likely heard of Mad River Glen. Amongst an industry of giants this relatively small ski area packs a big mountain punch. What is it that makes Mad River Glen a bucket list destination for all skiers?

It’s a combination of many things, and for every skier the answer is a little different. The area’s character, the result of a long and proud history, reflects the terrain and natural beauty. There is a special camaraderie among the skiers, with its co-op ownership, non-commercial, family-friendly atmosphere, dedicated staff, and – of course – the Single Chair, America’s favorite ski lift.

Mad River Glen offers the most challenging and diverse ski terrain in New England. The trails were cut to follow the mountain’s natural contours. On the one hand, skiers can descend the entire 2,037’ of vertical on true expert terrain with absolutely no run-outs. …

The Single Chair and Sunnyside Double limit uphill capacity which guarantees low skier density on the trails even on the busiest days. Mad River Glen is one of the last pillars of natural snow skiing in New England and is one of only three areas in North America that prohibit snowboarding.

Combined, these qualities create a ski experience that stands in stark contrast to the mainstream world of skiing. The various facets of the Mad River Glen ski experience appeal to different skiers in different ways, but together they create a sense of place that is truly unique. The mission of the Mad River Glen Cooperative is to protect and preserve these special qualities. You are invited to discover for yourself the experience that the skier-owners of Mad River Glen are dedicated to preserving.

Unfortunately for the Mad River Glen “co-op,” I took them up on this invitation to “discover for myself” this so-called “experience.” And it was an EXPERIENCE, all right. In fact, it was “THE EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME.”

MAD RIVER GLEN, HERE I COME

I have to admit that I was excited at first! I knew, from previous trips to Sunday River and Whiteface, that skiing in Vermont could be magical!!! I didn’t know if I would actually like to ride on a single-person chairlift, but I do appreciate one-of-a-kind ski lifts and ski history. I’d recently had the opportunity to ride on the famous six-person chairlift at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is the only chairlift of its kind IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!! I’ve also ridden America’s oldest and first chairlift, the Little Chief double chair at Shawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania, which was built in 1983!! Yes, that’s a “19” at the front of the year. So even if I didn’t end up liking the single chair in the end, the opportunity to experience a piece of Vermont and New England ski history, and to do it with NO SNOWBOARDERS around, sounded pretty good to me! Not that I’m against snowboarders!!! Lots of my friends are snowboarders!!!! It’s just that I ski SO FAST that they have a hard time staying out of my way while I absolutely dominate the terrain parks!!!

But I was also a little nervous! I’ve visited almost 10 different ski areas, and there’s a reason I was leaving Mad River Glen for last!!! Mad River Glen’s famous slogan is “SKI IT IF YOU CAN!!!” And while I know I’m usually one of the best skiers on the mountain because I go straight down the middle of black diamonds with no turns whatsoever, I felt like I was about to play one-on-one basketball against Michael Jordan and LeBron James and Kobe Bryant! And it was intimidating!!!

So I told my Pet Rectangle to set a route from my home in NYC to Mad River ski area, put The Straight Talk Express-mobile on cruise control, and headed toward New England! Little did the Pretenders and Fakers at Mad River know that I’d just launched a precision-guided Truth Missile from the far side of the Hudson!!!

Now, my first hunch that something was wrong was when the robots told me to drive through Pennsylvania. I didn’t remember driving through Pennsylvania the last time I drove to New England, to ski at Hunter Mountain, but I guessed that the robots must have discovered a shortcut. An average person who isn’t a technology expert such as myself probably would have stopped to second-guess the route, but I know a “LIFE HACK” when I see one!!!!!

Or so I thought!!! But after many hours of driving and a sumptuous steak dinner at an exquisite restaurant called Hoss’s Steak & Sea House (can you say “eighth-of-an-inch-thick-steak-with-unlimited-salad-bar-and-BYOB please???”), I ended up in OHIO! Which I know for a FACT is NOT part of New England anymore! But I thought maybe it was still a shortcut and I’d get to Vermont any minute, so I kept driving!

And a few hours later, I at long last arrived at MAD RIVER GLEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

WOW!!! Finally I was at Mad River Glen!!!!!!! I couldn’t believe it!!!!!! But I was still a little confused about the directions, so I approached a group of fellows who were grilling cans of beer in the bed of a lifted F-350 with vertical smokestack exhaust pipes. “Hey Fellas, good morning. Did I miss the ‘Welcome to Vermont’ sign?”

“No but you missed the ‘Go Fuck Yourself’ sign!” one of them yelled, before they all started in on some sort of impromptu spelling bee. “O-H-I-O!!!” they kept yelling. This continued for several minutes, until they began beating one another over the heads with red-and-gray folding chairs.

As I ducked and turned to avoid a Ziplock bag full of flaming poop that one of the young men had hurled at me, I caught my first glimpse of the “mountain.”

And this is when it started to set in!!!! That Mad River Glen was like the moon landing or the pyramids!!! FAKE!!! LIES!!! There was no “mountain” here - there was NOTHING here! Or almost nothing!!! Two-thousand vertical feet MY ASS!!! General Stark Mountain? More like General Napoleon Mountain!!! I could barely see this so-called “ski area” over their so-called “non-commercial” baselodge, which looks like a bus-station brew pub! Hardly what I’d call “historic!!!”

It’s hard to describe how I felt at that moment. I’ve been less disappointed after realizing I’d ordered a salad with raisins in it!!!!! (which is NEVER a problem as Hoss’s because you make YOUR OWN salad at the salad bar!).

So there I was, standed in OHIO among violent Spelling Bee Flashmobs, and I’m supposed to “ski” on some so-called “mountain” that I wouldn’t have been able to see over a handheld flagpole planted at the center of the parking lot? Like this one:

@sports.illustrated🫢🫢🫢 (via JordanStrack/TW) #cfb #michigan #football #ohiostate #viral #foryoupage

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But I’d come all this way. And I knew I’d get to eat at Hoss’s again on the way home even if the skiing wasn’t great! And, besides, they don’t call me the BULLSHIT ASSASSIN because I just believe whatever “advertising” tells me and give up without finding the TRUTH. So I went in and bought a lift ticket! And instead of handing me a sticker to attach to a mini-coathanger, like I would expect out of a supposedly “throwback” ski area, the lady who sold me the lift ticket told me I had to DOWNLOAD SOME APP and that the ticket would be ON MY PHONE! And I was like, “sure, just like the Pilgrims did it.” And I felt bad for being such a smart-Alec, but I was really mad about being tricked! They do call me THE ANGRY SKI CRITIC after all, and you don’t get a nickname like that for nothing!!!!!!!

But I looked past it. Because I really wanted to ride that single chair. And I went outside and there were chairlifts all over the place! Probably five or six altogether!!! But I didn’t see a one-person chairlift! They looked like they could all hold three or four people!!!! And I asked a 5-year-old who was passing by if he knew which chairlift was the single chair? And he gave me the finger and shouted “GO BUCKS!!!” then shotgunned a can of Milwaukee’s Best and threw the can at me!!! And I thought that was strange, but then the lift attendant did EXACTLY THE SAME THING!!!

But then I remembered that I was in Ohio. And I thought “Oh maybe those are single chairs” and they just look like four-person chairs because they’ve been retrofit to accommodate the locals! And I was embarrassed for having been so insensitive.

So I still wasn’t sure about the single chair. But guess what else??? There were snowboarders ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!

And so I stopped a passing ski patroller, and I said, “I know you weren’t expecting a visit from The TRUTH KING today, but you better kick those snowboarders out before I tell my 85-going-on-86 Facebook followers that Mad River Glen’s so-called ‘snowboard ban’ is phony!” And he said “Only if they’re from That State Up North! GO BUCKS!!!” Then he skied away.

So I figured I might as well finally ski. So I rode up the chairlift. And the view off the top was hardly of some “pristine mountain environment.” It was just a bunch of boring farms and shit. And the runs were NOT “challenging” OR “diverse” OR “legendary” like Mad River Glen’s website claimed!!! They’re just a bunch of big wide groomers! With snowguns all over them!!! So much for being a “pillar of natural snow skiing!!!!!!!”

And the runs were SHORT!!!! I’ve seen more vertical drop from a playground swingset:

TAKE SHELTER, A TRUTH TORNADO HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN THE AREA

All right, TEAM TRUTH, here’s the #RealTalkNoBullshit take that you come to The Straight Talk Express for: Mad River Glen is NOT in Vermont (it’s in Ohio)! It is NOT in New England (anymore)! It does NOT have a single-person chairlift (I don’t think)!!!! It is NOT a natural-snow ski area!! It is NOT challenging! There are SNOWBOARDERS everywhere!!!! And it was about as family friendly as a car crash! I hadn’t had that many beer cans thrown at me since I told my Uncle Pete that he couldn’t drive his go-kart on the interstate without probably getting a ticket!

But a true Truth Ninja acts not only in Stealth, but also in Frank Confrontation. And so I calmly approached the customer service desk and demanded to speak to a representative of the co-op. But the clerk behind the counter just kept mumbling something about how “it was only five plays… I shouldn’t a betted alls ah my teeth…” And finally herky-jerky pointed to a large map on the wall. So I went and looked at it. And it looked NOTHING like the fake made-up map on Mad River Glen’s website!!! And at the bottom, written real sneaky and small-like so I could hardly see it, was Mad River’s ultimate secret hiding in plain site: this so-called “independent,” “unique,” “non-commercial” ski area was OWNED BY FUCKING VAIL!!!!!

AND to add insult to injury, the fine print revealed that Mad River Glen was on THE FREAKING EPIC PASS!!!!!!!!:

I was raging hot by then. “I HOPE YOUR VACCINES ARE UP TO DATE,” I screamed at the ticket clerk, “BECAUSE A PLAGUE OF FACTUAL ACCURACY IS ON ITS WAY TO OHIO, AND I’M PATIENT ZERO!!!” I stormed out of there so fast that I don’t even remember leaving. Fortunately I was later able to hack into Mad River Glen’s parking lot surveillance footage of me streaking out of there:

@gobluevisuals“Donovan Edwards. Woah. Can they catch him? No.” #michigan #donovanedwards #fyp #football #ohiostate #buckssuck #highlights

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IN CONCLUSION: Mad River Glen is A FRAUD! It is a tiny small little ski area in Ohio that is owned by Vail and filled with snowboarders and unchallenging runs and boring regular chairlifts!!!! IT IS NOT a 2,000-vertical-foot skiers-only throwback collectively owned by a bunch of regular-Joe skiers in some dramatic Vermont mountain range with a special single chair and super-hard expert terrain and no snowboarders!!!!!! MAD RIVER GLEN IS A PACK OF LIES!!!!!

And I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it!!! This is why they call me THE LIQUIDATOR OF LIES!!! And sometimes also THE LIE DETECTOR!!! And also once in a while the EXTERMINATOR OF FALSEHOODS AND UNTRUTHS!!!! Some people put milk on their breakfast cereal, but I drown everything I eat in TRUTH SERUM!!!

Don’t want to hear it?

DON’T CARE!!!

Because MAD RIVER GLEN IS A LIE!!!

TRUTH ENEMA DELIVERED!!!!!!!!!

So take my advice and next time you want to ski in New England A) just fly there, because the GPS directions are super off, B) Go to a REAL classic, independent New England ski area, like Arapahoe Basin or Park City, C) grab a twelver of MGD before you roll into Hoss’s, and, D) Go Blue!!!

@yahoosportsElliot Cadeau spoke it into existence before Michigan defeated Alabama in the Sweet 16 😤 (via CBS) #ncaa #marchmadness #michigan #collegebasketball #michiganwolverines

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Four skiers filed a class-action lawsuit against Vail and Alterra in U.S. District Court in Colorado last week, alleging that the companies’ Epic and Ikon pass sales tactics violated state and federal antitrust laws.

The lawsuit taps long-simmering consumer anger over escalating destination resort lift ticket prices:

“Following the introduction of Defendants’ Mega Passes, the prices of daily or short term (e.g. weekend) lift tickets purchased during the ski season (“Lift Tickets”) have climbed sharply. But this is no accident, or the result of competitive market forces. Pursuant to Defendants’ identical anticompetitive schemes, Lift Tickets for ski areas within the Epic and Ikon ecosystems are priced in a way to induce (or coerce) customers into buying the Mega Pass bundles.

“The primary (and unlawful) way that both Vail Resorts and Alterra drive skiers and snowboarders to purchase Mega Passes is to charge exorbitantly high prices for Lift Tickets. This coerces customers into buying their multi-mountain season pass offerings (the Epic and Ikon Mega Passes) which they then view as more cost effective as compared to a Lift Ticket. …

So framed, on page six of the 74-page lawsuit, the case appears to be built around the notion that ski area operators drove up lift ticket prices to coerce skiers into purchasing season passes (boldface mine):

“Skiers and snowboarders are led to believe they are making a cost-conscious decision in buying the Epic or Ikon Mega Pass, but in reality, and as a result of Vail Resorts’ and Alterra’s respective anticompetitive schemes involving bundling, they are in fact being forced into buying a Mega Pass, which is itself maximally (over)-priced up to the point where it looks like a good deal when compared to the over-priced Lift Ticket. In short, both the Lift Ticket and the Mega Pass are over-priced.”

But the plaintiffs do not build their legal case around pricing, as the “bundling” at the center of the lawsuit is not about lift tickets and season passes. It is, rather, the bundling of “lift access to destination ski resorts” and “lift access to regional ski areas”:

The Mega Passes offered by Vail Resorts and Alterra function as an anticompetitive tie-in, or bundle, under the antitrust laws.

A tying arrangement is an agreement by a party to sell one product but only on the condition that the buyer also purchases a different (or tied) product. Tying arrangements include instances of discount bundling, such as when a seller does not literally require the customer to buy two or more products together, but economically coerces that result by (for instance) charging a supracompetitive penalty price for the individual products compared to the price of the bundle.

With bundling schemes, as a subset or alternate form of an anticompetitive tying arrangement, there must be both a “tying product market” and a “tied product market.”

Here, (1) the tying product market is the market for lift access to Destination Ski Resorts; and (2) the tied product market is the market for lift access to Regional Ski Areas.

This is a novel argument, and one that I’ve never seen articulated in any ski community, online or otherwise. More on this:

Both Mega Passes can be viewed as bundles of individual, day-access lift tickets. But more important with respect to the allegations herein, the Mega Passes also combine lift access to Destination Ski Resorts with lift access to Regional Ski Areas. Consumers cannot purchase the core value proposition of these products—reasonable access to highly desirable Destination Ski Resorts—without also purchasing bundled access to many Regional Ski Areas included in the same Mega Pass ecosystem, even if they do not live anywhere close to these Regional Ski Areas. …

In other words, the lawsuit is claiming that skiers cannot purchase access to destination resorts such as Vail Mountain or Steamboat without also purchasing access to, respectively, Mt. Brighton in Michigan or Snowshoe in West Virginia. By providing more access than is strictly necessary, the Epic and Ikon passes, the plaintiffs argue, are overpriced (boldface mine):

Competition between two functionally identical (anticompetitive) bundles does not cure the coercion inherent in the tying arrangement, because consumers are still forced to accept the tied product to obtain the tying product. Critically, Vail Resorts and Alterra do not compete on the structure of their Mega Pass products. Instead, both Defendants employ the same exclusionary tying and bundling model: conditioning reasonably priced access to must-have Destination Ski Resorts on the purchase of all-or-nothing season passes that also bundle lift access to numerous Regional Ski Areas. At no point have Defendants meaningfully diverged from this model by offering unbundled destination access, modular pricing, or destination-only passes that would permit consumers to avoid the tied products. Thus, whatever putative competition exists between Defendants does not operate to constrain the tying arrangement itself, which is the source of the anticompetitive harm.

I don’t even know if Vail or Alterra has to assign a real lawyer to this case: I can shut it down with three charts. The argument that megapasses are overpriced because they tie destination resort access to regional ski area access is flimsy for two reasons:

1) the Epic and Ikon Passes, where they function as the sole unlimited season pass product for destination ski areas, are in most cases substantially less expensive in both real dollars and inflation-adjusted dollars than their pre-megapass, single-mountain counterparts. Check out select season pass prices, in real and inflation-adjusted dollars, from pre-Epic, pre-Ikon 2006 to 2026 - season pass prices have fallen substantially even as those passes, in general, covered more mountains:

2) Vail and Alterra do in fact offer single-mountain season passes to the majority of their ski areas, as well as a variety of ticket-pack products that exclude smaller ski areas.

We could turn this lawsuit and its many sub-plot arguments inside-out, and analyze whether Vail and Alterra constitute a true duopoly (I don’t think they do), whether skiers and independent ski areas have benefitted from or been harmed by the advent of Epic and Ikon (I believe it’s mostly been for the better), or whether the “quality” of skiing has declined in recent years (again, I don’t think it has, holistically). I’ll analyze these particulars more as the legal process unfolds. And though I don’t believe any judge or jury will find the plaintiffs’ arguments compelling, I do believe this lawsuit should function as an alarm bell for both skiers and ski area operators.

Ski area operators – especially but not exclusively Vail and Alterra – have massively underestimated the raw anger stoked by the quadrupling of lift ticket prices since 2000. While affordable season passes are novel and cool, it’s a product that no one was really asking for. Most skiers looked at season passes like they looked at their uncle’s boat: wow, that’s an expensive cool thing that you probably only want if you live on a lake. But no one was arguing that boats should be less expensive so that everyone can have a boat, so long as boat rides stayed cheap. Vail has started to soften lift-ticket pricing, but both operators could make this price-gouging narrative disappear instantly by dropping lift tickets back to inflation-adjusted historic rates.

Skiers, watch what you ask for. At early-bird prices, purchasing a $369 Indy Base Pass, $809 Epic Local Pass, and $949 Ikon Base Pass gets you access to 217 U.S. ski areas for $2,127. Remember when we were all pissed off about the cost of cable, and so we said “fuck cable” and let the streamers destroy it, and now we have to subscribe to 18 different services for $17.99 per month just to watch college basketball? The megapass has given us an incredible gift in the form of passports that move us seamlessly across skiing’s formerly balkanized borders. Do we really want to return to the days of the $3,000 season pass just because someone who lives in Park City thinks they’re also paying for access to Wilmot, Wisconsin? Because right now, it kind of seems like we do.

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DAY 5 – PLATTEKILL, NEW YORK

Almost the first thing Ryan asked when we met three years ago was if he could see my Slopes map. And it’s a pretty good map, stretching back to the 2018-19 ski season:

I didn’t suppose a Bozeman Bro would care about anything outside of the Bridger Bowl-Big Sky circuit, because the other first thing Ryan asked me was whether I had a transceiver, and I was like “No, I left it next to the scuba gear and car-waxing kit in my Box of Accessories I Don’t Own for Activities I Never Do on Purpose, like ski out of bounds or go underwater or pretend my minivan is anything other than a Chrysler Pacifica with a roofbox and a broken rear windshield wiper.” And he was like “Well that’s too bad you’d need one to ride Schlasman’s” and I was like “The chairlift at Bridger Bowl?” And he was like “Yeah” and I was like “Man that is so Bozeman.”

But Ryan did like the map because he’s the sort who keeps lists of, like, the names of everyone who’s ever given him a haircut and how many Oreos he ate each week in 1992 and how strange that our wives who were college roommates ended up marrying the same sort of List Bro. But I seized on his curiosity and love of novelty to insert a day of skiing into their annual family Christmas visit to New York, and after a 2024 day of blown-snowtrails over dirt at Windham and Hunter, I hoped to show him a better version of Northeast skiing.

Fortunately December 2025 shaped up better than December 2024. Storms had pounded in one after the next and the obligatory rain-thaw cyclone that would typically have pulverized millions of gallons of accumulated snowmaking back to gutter water never materialized. A fortuitous eight inches fell overnight leading into our pre-planned ski day, and we aimed for Plattekill, an 1,100-vertical-foot elevator shaft disguised as a ski hill about three hours north of the city. And this time there was no dirt to be seen:

Plattekill is the Catskills’ hidey-hole, a family-owned bunker that’s dug an atmospheric moat sufficient to fend off Vail-owned Hunter and state-owned Belleayre and whatever-the-hell-Windham-is. The bump only spins two chairlifts but there are never liftlines, even on Christmas week. The triple gets a little backed up but the double never does. And what a spectacular chair that is, one of my favorites anywhere:

Platty is all vibes. That baselodge. Beers upstairs with the live band jamming. And yeah it was nice to have snow to share with Bozeman Bro in a year where he ended up with very little.

DAY 6 – LOST VALLEY, SPRUCE MOUNTAIN

Lost Valley – this is how you run a small ski area.

As we rolled into 2026, I’d skied nearly every ski area with a chairlift in New England, but Maine had proven elusive. Sort of because it tried to dismember me but mostly because it’s far and because most of those faraway ski areas are Wisconsin-sized coastal bumpies that don’t grab a ton of snow and because some of those ski areas (Baker, Jefferson) operate infrequently, have little or no snowmaking, and communicate their opening hours via websites that make the Pony Express look like Starlink. So my Maine ski history was limited to Boyne’s three mountains (Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Pleasant), Saddleback, and Black Mountain of Maine. But with the snowpack unseasonably deep, I prioritized three days in early January to survey the state’s smaller offerings.

And the first thing I thought when I arrived at Lost Valley was “Damn it I should have come here years ago.” Because my first impression of Lost Valley was that it is one of the best-run small ski areas in the country.

That meta-fact helps explain the existence, in 2026, of a 240-vertical-foot, 45-acre anthill within an hour of mega-bigster Sunday River. That, and the bump’s proximity to Lewiston, Maine’s second-largest city (population 37,121) and, so I hear, a hell of a fortunate place to land if your idea of a sickified ski trick is a tib-fib spiral fracture (I’m incapable of writing about skiing Maine without mentioning this incident a minimum of seven times).

About a decade ago, Lost Valley nearly joined the 79-plus ski areas that have dropped dead across Maine since the beginning of industrialized skiing. But then a fellow named Scott Shanaman showed up. With the help of crowd-sourced stopgap funding, he pulled Lost Valley out of debt. He cut new trails and glades and super-boosted snowmaking. In 2024, he relocated Mount Southington’s Northstar double chair to Lost Valley:

The chair is marvelously new looking for a machine that began life circa 1980 at the long-dead Craigmeur ski area in New Jersey and moved up to Connecticut in 2001 before migrating to Maine. Now called simply “Chair #3,” this is one of the few chairlifts to operate in three locations, and perhaps the only one to spin in three U.S. states.

The first sign of a well-run, skiers-first ski area: All three of Lost Valley’s chairlifts were spinning on a Wednesday night in January, even though they could have gotten away with running two. Everything about the place hummed. The grooming was outstanding, snowmaking had buried the trails. All that infrastructure helps, but what impressed me most about Lost Valley was the thing so often missing from night-skiing operations: order. Even in the froth and throng of teenage yee-haw flippy-screamy night. And everyone was nice. And yes that matters a lot, especially with the lift attendants.

Spruce Mountain – Ropetow roundup

Forty minutes up the road from Lost Valley is Spruce Mountain, a three-ropetow bump so obscure that most ski area inventories miss it. It’s a down-a-dirt-road, up-a-hill, where’s-the-parking-lot-oh-this-is-the-parking-lot, still-has-wordpress.com-in-its-url, is-trying-to-raise-$20,000-to-buy-a-“new”-groomer sort of place.

Which means it was me skiing among a bunch of 12-year-olds who seemed confused as to why I would be here. But isn’t it astonishing and wonderful that places like this still exist?

Spruce maintains a surprisingly varied and dense trail network, a little of which I explored. But the upper-mountain tow isn’t night-lit (or wasn’t that night), and I’m fighting off some shoulder soreness that I later discovered is a torn rotator cuff (to be repaired next month; yes I am the king of stupid injuries and nearly dying on a more or less annual basis).

DAY 7 – BIG MOOSE, CAMDEN SNOW BOWL, HERMON MOUNTAIN

Big Moose – this is what it looks like when a ski area refuses to die.

One thing I’ve learned when planning these ski-10-ski-areas-in-three-days hypertrips is that it helps a lot to not change hotels, even if that means more daily driving. So I set up in Waterville, home of Colby College and a pass-through zone for I-95. From there I drove two hours on Thursday morning to Big Moose, which, depending upon your point of view, is either the most dysfunctional or the most resilient ski area in America. In brief, Big Moose once looked like this, with an 1,700-foot lift-served vertical drop:

In 2004, the summit chairlift (“N” on the map above), broke, and the owner never fixed it, shrinking what had been a remote-but-large 1,700-vertical-foot ski area into a still-remote-but-teensy-tiny 583-vertical-foot ski area. Around 2010 the owner, a Mr. James Canfalone of Florida, stopped pretending to operate it, and was subsequently sued by the state, which had sold him the ski area on the condition that he not let it turn into a decrepit pile of crap. Which he did, while also allegedly running a bootleg timber operation, a crime that sounds so ridiculously antiquated that I’m tempted to ask him which pirate he owed money to.

That’s the dysfunction part. The resilience part is this: after the ski area sat idle for two years, a nonprofit group called Friends of the Mountain restored the triple chair and, over time, added snowmaking, a conveyor lift, and Cat rides to the summit. They also, against Canfalone’s indignant protests, renamed the ski area from “Big Squaw” to “Big Moose,” reflecting a change the state had made to the actual mountain that the ski area sits on 26 years ago. Friends of the Mountain’s goal is to raise nearly $6 million to purchase the ski area.

I hope they succeed. A previous plan to restore summit access with a six-pack chair as an anchor to a $113 million resort died. But this doesn’t feel like a dead or dying ski area. The place is pulsing, vibrant, filled, on the weekday I visited, with kids lapping the conveyor or riding up the old T-bar line on this thing:

Oh and there’s this gigantic abandoned hotel/condo complex in the middle of the hill, which I totally did not explore to take these photos:

The skiing, as it stands, is fine, with a funky windy narrow trail network that delights and confuses in that New England, why-don’t-they-build-them-like-this-anymore kind of way. You can hike to the top but I did not hike to the top. Because that seemed like a lot of work for pretty mediocre snow, because I bought the kind of skis that only go down, and because I’d made the logical-sounding-at-the-time decision to chase my two-hour morning drive with a two-and-a-half-hour afternoon drive to the day’s second ski area.

Camden Snow Bowl – Bro it’s the ocean and we only have like four of those.

Let’s start by addressing what you’re all thinking right now: there are too many “snowbowls” in America and no one can agree on how to spell it, probably because it’s not a word:

Or perhaps Camden Snow Bowl is the rebel, facing off against Arizona Snowbowl, Montana Snowbowl, and Middlebury Snowbowl – a legendary ski area trifecta most skiers refer to simply as “The Strike Lane.”* (Fun fact: all three were founded by John Snowbowl IV, a fortuitous name for the ski-loving industrialist who built his fortune selling doorhinges.**) But that doesn’t explain the matter of the intransigent Elko “Snobowl,” a semi-functional outfit in the Nevada desert, and the utterly confusing Mount Hood “Skibowl,” which, when tasked with distinguishing itself as a ski area on a mountain with a half dozen other ski areas, chose the most confusing name possible.

*No one calls it this, mostly because there are probably a maximum of five people on Earth who have skied at all three of these places, and maybe 15 people who are aware that they all exist.

**Sorry I try to stop myself but it’s impossible.

Anyway, even given all my righteous confusion, I found the Camden “Snow Bowl.” And the first thing anyone will tell you about Camden Snow Bowl when you mention Camden Snow Bowl is that from the summit of Camden Snow Bowl you can see the Atlantic Ocean.

I know that doesn’t actually sound that special. The Atlantic Ocean is not exactly hard to come by. Just go east from anywhere on the continent and eventually you’ll hit it. In fact, the Atlantic Ocean is a global brand, like McDonald’s or Wal-Mart. They have it in Europe and Africa and South America, too. It’s not like you ride the chairlift to the top of Camden Snow Bowl and they have, like, a triceratops up there. No, it’s an ocean that, incidentally, I live maybe 10 miles away from but almost never bother to visit. So why was it so goddamn cool to stand off Camden Snow Bowl’s summit unload and stare at an ocean that was difficult to even see, as water and sky had taken a similar hue on this midwinter Thursday?

I found a potential explanation in an unlikely place: Taylor Swift’s End of an Era documentary. “Taylor is my friend,” the also-very-famous Florence Welch says after a rehearsal scene of the clearly well-acquainted pair, “and I know her as this very cozy person, and I came out [on stage] and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s fucking Taylor Swift!”

And that’s what it’s like to get to the top of Camden Snow Bowl and see the Atlantic Ocean.

Now, there’s a reason why you can’t see the Atlantic Ocean from the top of very many ski areas. It’s because the Atlantic Coast is a lousy place to put a ski area. And Camden Snow Bowl does not get anywhere near the natural snow, at least on average, of Maine’s western monsters. Instead, Camden blows a lot of snow, and on my visit in January, mountain ops had blown a lot of snow. Unfortunately, that translated to just one top-to-bottom ski trail, which by the time I showed up at around 2 p.m. was pretty icy. So I took a few laps, snapped some photos, and bounced.

Hermon Mountain – the mountain of too many names

If you can help it, always try to arrive at a ski area during daylight hours, at least if it’s your first visit. And this is what I tried to do with Hermon Mountain – which joins “Snow Bowl” on the problematic-names list because it manages the trick of calling itself by two different names. Actually three:

Trying to jam Hermon Mountain/New Hermon Mountain/New Hermon Mountain, Inc. into a day that had already included two ski areas in opposite directions from my hotel was ill-advised, and under different circumstances, I may have stowed this 276-footer for a better day. But the longtime owners had declared that they would shutter the place after this season if they couldn’t find a new buyer, and while the bump is under contract, I thought it best to take a few just-in-case laps.

Me and the rest of Bangor, Maine’s third-largest city (population 31,753). From the parking lot, I could see a line backed up dozens-deep across the snow beach at the base of the mountain. And I thought to myself, “Wow, I hope that’s not a line for lift tickets because I would sure hate to have to wait in that line.”

The good news is this wasn’t a line for lift tickets. The bad news is it was the line for Herman Mountain’s only chairlift, which sits exactly parallel to a T-bar that was for some reason idle. Which meant that I didn’t have to wait in that line once, but every single lift ride.

Which ended up being two lift rides. And the line actually moved pretty fast and, for a teenage scene, with great efficiency and order (Maine really is the best). But there was a lot of teenage energy pulsing through the bump. And after driving two hours up to Big Moose, two and a half hours back down to Camden Snow Bowl and an hour and change up to Herman Mountain, my Teen-O-Meter was out of gas. But, hey, I hope I can return next year.

DAY 8 – MT. ABRAM, TITCOMB, QUARRY ROAD

Mt. Abram – nicer than it looks

Mt. Abram is the ski area you see as you drive out of Sunday River toward the interstate and say, “did that used to be a ski area?” Its close-cut trails don’t pop like Boyne’s megastar, and unlike Sunday River’s assortment of high-tech six- and eight-packs, which can be seen from space, it’s hard to make out Abram’s two antique double chairs from the road.

The ski area seems to be trying hard not to take itself too seriously, starting with its Rocky and Bullwinkle theme. Rocky and Bullwinkle, for those of you born after World War II, is a cartoon show that was popular in like the 1800s or something. Which was approximately 200 years after Mount Abram installed its base-to-summit Wayback Machine, a Hall chairlift which still runs, at least as an auxiliary component, on a straight-six Ford engine.* Here’s an Instagram reel where several hundred people probably tell me I’m an idiot for not giving a more complete engineering breakdown of how the various components of this chairlift work in tandem to transport skiers uphill.

*JK Bro-hombries, Abram installed Wayback in 1970.

But Abram, as it turns out, is an awesome little ski area. Fantastic grooming, with no icy patches, top to bottom, and liberal terrain management, with vast sections of off-piste available even on refrozen garbage snow.

On my second off-piste run, I stumbled across this nifty multicolored, de-roped T-bar and skied down the line.

At the bottom, I ran into a patroller who told me that Abram had run that T-bar until around Covid, then abandoned it because the west side chair was working just fine as a beginner pod. I dug up some old trail maps and here’s the terrain he was talking about - the T-bar line I skied is the short red line labelled “Mini T-bar” on the far left:

That section marked “Hillside Condo” is actually an old trailpod that was served by yet another T-bar:

I’m not sure if Abram ever plans to bring back that beginner terrain. The mountain skis plenty big enough. This was, in fact, the only stop on the Storm Skiing Maine World Tour 2026 during which I recorded more than 10,000 vertical feet on Slopes.

Titcomb – the T-bar revolution starts here

There’s a feeling that I get at small ski areas that I’ve always failed to recreate at larger ski areas. Short shots down the narrow trails, skiing solo, fast, no fear of ice, weeds poking up, a down-bound time machine.

And T-bars. Two of them. Titcomb actually has one of the newest T-bars in America. Doppelmayr built it last offseason, a quick-turnaround replacement for a Constam T-bar that had arrived used in 1973, after a 20-year run as Cannon’s Lower T-bar.

If you want a contrast between what you think T-bars are and what modern T-bars actually are, find $30 and a day to visit Titcomb. The old T-bar, a Franken-lift that was maybe at one point a Poma and has been swinging up the hill since 1956, sounds like the inside of an atom bomb. The lift attendant wears earplugs and stands away from the lift when no one is actively loading.

The new T-bar? Its motor wouldn’t be audible over a running microwave. The Ts tug you uphill like a 3-year-old pulling you into ankle-deep lake water. It’s clean, smooth, and fast. The lift attendant can talk to you:

And of course the skiers were great. At the top of the old T, one kid asked me if I’d ever jumped off the cliffs over in the woods. I told him that, no, I’ve actually never skied here before, and besides, I think those trails are closed. “Closed is just another level of difficulty,” he said as he skied off into the forest.

Quarry Road – as basic as it gets

Quarry Road is a ropetow bump that opened in 1937 as “Mountain Farm,” morphed into school-run “Colby College Ski Area” in 1964, went into mothballs around 1979, and sat dormant until the Waterville Parks and Recreation department purchased the bump and, with the help of an outfit called Friends of Quarry Road, re-opened the ski hill in 2021.

It’s a neat little outfit: one tow, a QR code to pay for your $15 resident lift ticket, a nice pitch, and a Slopes-measured vertical drop of 157 feet – about three times taller than most sources list the ski area’s vert. I took exactly one lap, which reminded me that ropetows and sore shoulders are a poor match. My next stop was scheduled to be Pinnacle Ski Club, a typical New England ski “club” where anyone appears to be able to ski if they show up with $20. The single-ropetow outfit was just half an hour straight up I-95. Which means I would have had to drive 30 minutes up 95. Reboot. Ski. Then drive half an hour back down 95, then six more hours home. Or I could just do the six hours right then. So I made a rare adult decision and turned the car back toward Brooklyn and was home by midnight.

So that was my Maine off Main Street Ski Safari. Not a lot of vert, but a lot of road, captured, as always, by Slopes, which buckets your stats together by trip:

I’m documenting my 2025-26 ski season with Slopes. Here’s a recap of days one through four: