Indy Leads U.S. Ski Pass Invasion of Eastern Canada with 10 New Partners for 2025-26
As America reaches peak megapass, Indy finds overflow to the north
Amazing really that the Euros ever managed a trans-Atlantic journey when their preoccupation for centuries appeared to be assembling vast armies to invade one another and torture enemy civilians and light their cities like bonfires and basically turn the vast resources of the state not to discovery or enlightenment or invention but to domination and pillaging. That’s how we got a Hundred Years’ War that lasted 116 years in an era when half the population died before age 5 and the other half was married by 14 and just about everyone either dropped dead at 35 from a food-preparation mishap or were beheaded in the town square for neglecting to doff their cap in the presence of the queen’s favorite horse. And looking back it’s like damn it had you people just assembled your resources for good we would have had a man on the moon before Jesus was out of the manger but instead it took us like 1,800 more years to learn about soap.
Thankfully we’ve evolved past the worst of our ignorance and brute violence because just imagine if the eras of stake-burning and Instagram had crisscrossed. But certain legacies of our ancestors still haunt us like baldness genes or old plumbing. For example our dumb language. We say that we’re eating “beef” rather than “cow” and “pork” rather than “pig.” Why? Because the French and English couldn’t stop mass-murdering one another 1,000 years ago and the languages got twisted together in all the conquering, giving us this strange Germanic-Romance language hybrid that compels us to grandfather nonsensical spellings like “muscle” and “receipt” and “rendezvous” into our lexicon (“beef” is from the French “boeuf” and “pork” from the French “porc”).
Which takes us to Quebec. Like what a strange thing. This gigantic arctic France. Quebec is the largest province in Canada, 50 percent larger than British Columbia and bigger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. Quebec is nearly three times the size of France. Yet they get no credit from anyone either on their size-matters continent or in their language-chauvinist motherland. The French condescend to Québécois French like Colorad-Bro looks down on Midwest skiing. The Canadian provinces and U.S. states that surround Quebec are so baffled by its existence that everyone who grows up there ends up having to learn English anyway. No wonder Quebekies (as they often refer to themselves), nearly voted to separate from Canada 30 years ago.
But they didn’t. And even if they had, I’d still be stuck trying to explain 75 North American ski areas that are all named Mont [unpronounceable] except that one called “Owl’s Head,” which could be interpreted either as a passive-aggressive troll or an act of linguistic surrender. Quebec fuses the most flustering aspects of EuroSki language confusion (even the English-language version of the Quebec Ski Areas Association’s website generically lumps T-bars, Pomas, and ropetows into a category called “teleski” lifts) with North American earnestness. The association’s translated-by-a-dumb-robot-or-confused-human description of the Mont Saint Mathieu ski area can summarize the problem without explaining it:
Your family ski destination! The family destination for board sports enthusiasts: 29 ski and snowboard trails including 12 undergrowths and 1 snow park, a free school slope, a snow school with certified instructors and 10km of snowshoe trail. The natural snow is plentiful and the prices are dynamic and advantageous for all. The multifunctional chalet offers a restauration service with quality menu, and also friendly and welcoming public areas.
Yes what modern ski area is complete without a minimum of a dozen “undergrowths?” And it’s hard to overstate the importance of competent “restauration” service. And all at “advantageous” prices.
There is a culture gap, is my point here. That makes Quebekistan more intimidating to outsiders than it ought to be, and helps to explain why, until very recently, this big, snowy province and its dozens of ski areas have mostly been absent from U.S.-based multimountain ski passes, even though the place borders several U.S. states in a friendly nation whose currency offers Americans a perpetual sale sign.
Fifteen of the 19 Quebecois ski areas on Epic, Ikon, Indy, Snow Triple Play, or Mountain Collective have joined those passes in just the past two years, and 11 are brand new for this winter. Here’s what’s been claimed so far:
That feels like a lot, but look at what’s still unclaimed:
Despite Quebec’s monster size, most of those hills orbit civilization, and they tend to exist in bunches. That means they are accessible and collectible to the gallivanting skier, a process ripe for streamlining in our pass-quiver era.
Indy went big in August, tacking seven Quebec ski areas onto the three that it had already signed, and boosting that offering with a fifth Ontario ski area and a pair of new partners in Newfoundland & Labrador. This #TeamCanada offering was part of the approximately 9,000 new ski areas that Indy announced in a single day, and I promised more detailed write-ups whenever I could get to them. Some of those are live: Eastern U.S., Western U.S., Midwest. I still owe you Europe and Japan, and I’ve been avoiding this Canada write-up mostly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it without insulting an entire country that’s already mad at us. But anyway here’s more on Indy’s growing Canadian portfolio: