I Promise This Post Is Not Only About Vail Mountain’s $356 Peak-Day Lift Ticket
It’s also about Beaver Creek’s $356 peak-day lift ticket
I know these headlines annoy the big ski area operators, who would prefer that I focus on anything but the most-expensive lift ticket prices on the busiest ski days. But you can’t start a fire and be surprised when the firefighters show up. So before we get to the hacks, here are peak rates at Vail’s 37 North American ski areas for the 2025-26 winter (Whistler is in Canadian dollars since apparently they invented their own currency along with their own measurement system; indicating this difference in the spreadsheet baffles the robots, reinforcing my lack of concern that they could mass murder us anytime soon):
That’s an all-time-high-for-a-U.S.-American-ski-resort $356 top price for Vail and Beaver Creek. Four other American ski areas cross the $300 top rate: Park City ($351), Northstar ($328), Breck ($321), and Heavenly ($305). Five more clear $200: Keystone ($292), Crested Butte ($239), Stowe ($235), Kirkwood ($222), and Okemo ($219). Whistler’s top rate equates to roughly $254 American. Just for fun: Vail Mountain’s $356 U.S. lift ticket translates to $493 Canadian!
But after years spent maximizing window rates and eliminating discounts to penalize skiers who don’t plan their ski days five to 14 months in advance, Vail Resorts is finally offering an in-season hack: half off lift tickets for friends of Epic Pass holders. So occasional or lapsed or new skiers can tap into The Experience of a Lifetime at a discount:
Here’s a simple list if you prefer. This includes the number of days that peak rates are in effect at each of Vail’s North American ski areas:
A refresher on Epic Friends: anyone who bought an unlimited Epic Pass or any regional variant for the 2025-26 ski season has 10 (if they bought prior to April 14, 2025), or six 50-percent-off-window-rate vouchers to give out any day of this winter. The only real asterisk is that the passholder must also ski that day, and has to scan their pass before their friend’s pass can be activated (Ikon does not require passholder attendance for a buddy-pass redemption, but the discount is only 25 percent).
The best part of Epic Friends, however, is not half off lift tickets that sell for three times more than the product’s historical average. The best part is that the friend can then flip the full cost of their discounted ticket into a down payment for a 2026-27 Epic Pass. This not only blunts the still-high-even-at-half-off price of a day of skiing, but it makes the Epic Pass, likely purchased some time later, feel like a great deal (or even better than it already is). Here is the balance owed on early-bird 2025-26 Epic Pass prices had someone been able to apply half of a $329 peak-day 2024-25 Vail Mountain lift ticket as a down payment:
Skiers can cash in Epic Friend tickets any day of the season, of course. Vail Mountain tops out at six different price points across the 2025-26 ski season. Here’s what the Epic Friends discount would look like at each tier (I’ve also included the Epic Day Pass at current rates):
Buying Epic Day now is still going to be more economical in most circumstances, but not in the Dear-God-what-have-I-done way that it was in past years. And in certain cases, like early season at Vail Mountain, you’ll actually be better off with a Friends discount.
Here’s a deeper look at how peak Vail Resorts lift ticket rates compare to last season, which resorts are actually flat or down in price year-over-year, how Epic Day compares to Epic Friends, and a whole bunch more of my big, dumb charts.*