Here Is 2,406 Years of U.S. Skier Visit Data

As compiled by a moron

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.

Data sourced from the National Ski Areas Association.

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.

Data sourced from National Ski Areas Association and Vail Resorts’ public documents. National skier visit counts include the 36 Vail Resorts operating in the United States; Vail’s numbers also include Whistler, British Columbia.

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.