The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast

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Ikon Pass Adds Camelback and Blue Mountain, Pennsylvania for 2023-24 Ski Season

www.stormskiing.com

Ikon Pass Adds Camelback and Blue Mountain, Pennsylvania for 2023-24 Ski Season

Additions bolster Ikon Pass with easy day-trip options less than two hours from NYC, Philly

Stuart Winchester
Sep 28, 2023
∙ Paid
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Ikon Pass Adds Camelback and Blue Mountain, Pennsylvania for 2023-24 Ski Season

www.stormskiing.com
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The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Draw lines dead west from New York City and north from Philadelphia and they’ll crisscross in a bullseye over the Poconos. There, less than two hours by car for the combined 26.2 million residents of these sprawling metropolises, sit two of Pennsylvania’s biggest and busiest ski areas: 1,140-vertical-foot Blue Mountain and 850-vertical-foot Camelback.

Both are owned by KSL Resorts, an arm of KSL Capital, which, together with Aspen owner Henry Crown, owns Alterra Mountain Company. Both are home to new six-packs installed in advance of the 2022-23 ski season. Both deliver a ski experience that is part evacuation drill, part fall-line glory, and part bedazzling spectacle. And both will join the Ikon Pass as standard five- and seven-day partners for the 2023-24 ski season.

Here's what Ikon’s lineup will look like with its first Pennsylvania additions (as shown in the new-and-improved Storm Skiing Ikon Pass chart):

“Hey Brah, you do know that Mountain Collective is not part of Ikon Pass, right?” Yes, Condescending Internet Bro, I do. However, the products have a lot of overlap, and I included MC here for comparison’s sake.

For anyone outside the Philly-NYC-Poconos drive region, this is the most boring Ikon Pass announcement possible. For a large constituency within this circle, however, the additions of two large day-trip ski areas is the equivalent of that bucket of wine tucked away at the 5-year-old’s birthday party – it changes the whole calculus of the occasion. In this case, the occasion is the ski season, the admission ticket is the Ikon Pass, and the party just got a whole lot more interesting.

Here's a breakdown of what the additions of Blue and Camelback mean for Ikon Pass skiers, the ski areas, and Northeast skiing in general:

Below the paid subscriber jump: complete breakdowns of Camelback, Blue, and the Poconos; tiptoeing into a feeder system; two Blue Mountains oh my!; and more.

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