20 Northeast Ski Areas That Could Join Snow Partners' Triple Play
What’s still available in a region already swarming with Epic, Ikon, and Indy mountains?
Yesterday, Snow Partners announced its three-day, multi-resort Triple Play product for the 2025-26 ski season. We know the price ($199.99), the basic structure (three days, with two max redeemable at one mountain), sales dates (Labor Day to Christmas Eve), and the first two ski areas (Snow Partners’ own Big Snow and Mountain Creek). The crucial detail we are missing about this three-day multimountain ski pass that Snow Partners insists is not a multimountain ski pass is the six to 10 “premium” Northeast ski areas they plan to assemble on the Snow Triple Play.
But we can make some educated guesses. Here’s what we know so far:
Internal documents shared with The Storm indicate that Snow Partners will focus on eight Northeast states for its inaugural season: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Poor Yawgoo.
Snow Partners CEO Joe Hession told me on a podcast conversation last week (which I will release very soon), that he does not view Epic, Ikon, and Indy as competitors to the Snow Triple Play, and hopes to work with mountains that are already on those passes. He views the Snow Triple Play as a “ladder product” that may inspire a skier who takes their first turns at Big Snow and then samples larger regional ski areas to level up to a national multimountain pass.
I asked Hession what he meant by “premium” resort. “When we say premium, I think what that really means is we're going for a less-is-more type strategy,” he said. “Our goal is not to throw up a huge number of [resorts].” My translation of that is that a partner resort needs to make sense as a next step after Big Snow, which Hession says is the biggest challenge in operating the otherwise uber-successful Jersey snowdome. This could mean snowy Bromley, Vermont, with its high-speed quad, or humble Mt. Peter, with its mini-vert and NYC-adjacent address.
Given that criteria, we could still generate a pretty long list of potential partners. Those eight states are home to 122 public, lift-served ski areas that operate at least one chairlift. Any could potentially be partners. But 71 of these ski areas have already joined a national multimountain pass (16 Epic, 11 Ikon, 44 Indy). While Snow Partners would like to include everyone, Vail, Alterra, and Indy will likely, given their histories, resist such an alliance, at least at the outset. Consider:
Indy’s contracts stipulate that its partners cannot participate in another national ski pass, according to several Indy partner mountain officials familiar with the arrangements. Three years ago, Indy officials asked partner ski areas to choose between membership on Indy (which reimburses ski areas for each visit), or Ski Cooper’s season pass, which had become a de facto national ski pass through reciprocal arrangements (no compensation for skier visits). Most chose Indy, but a few sided with Cooper.
Stowe, Telluride, Whistler, Snowbasin, and Sun Valley all exited Mountain Collective the moment they joined Epic (the latter two have since returned), indicating that Vail don’t share.
While 25 ski areas remain on both the Ikon and Mountain Collective passes, Alterra removed its three owned resorts – Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, and Sugarbush – three years ago. A-Basin, now owned by Alterra, exits for 2025-26. Given its heavy reliance on big-name partners such as Alta, Snowbird, Jackson Hole, Big Sky, and Aspen, Ikon is unlikely to attempt a breakup of what is essentially skiing’s most exclusive country club (so I’ve gathered through conversations with high-level folks at most Mountain Collective resorts).
Snow Partners has a tough sell to the already-aligned, is my point here. So, for today, let’s focus on the 49 public, chairlift-served ski areas across New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania that have not already signed on with Epkondy. Here they are:
Who among the unclaimed 49 (we’ll rule out Yawgoo, and Big Snow and Mountain Creek have already been assigned to this pass), would make the most sense on the Snow Pass? I think the final six- to 10-mountain roster will most likely include some combination of these 20 ski areas: