Jared Smith to Exit as Alterra CEO
Tenure included huge expansion at Deer Valley, multiple resort acquisitions, and sizable expansion of Ikon Pass roster
Jared Smith will exit Alterra Mountain Company - owner of the Ikon Pass and 20 ski areas in the United States and Canada - at the end of the 2025-26 ski season, the company announced today.
The departure was unexpected, and comes less than a week after Alterra released its 2026-27 Ikon Pass suite, which included several new partners and passholder benefits.
Alterra did not provide a reason for the sudden exit, and company representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Despite the end-of-season timeline that Alterra provided, Smith appears to be finished as day-to-day leader. A press release indicated that representatives from Alterra’s two parent companies - KSL Capital Partners and Henry Crown & Company, which also owns Aspen Skiing Company - would “function as an Office of the CEO,” in collaboration with former Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory to “lead the company’s day-to-day operations through the end of the season and until a new CEO is appointed.”
Smith held the CEO role for just under four years, taking over for Gregory in 2022. His tenure was marked by the largest terrain expansion in the history of U.S. skiing, at Deer Valley, Utah; a modernization of Steamboat, Colorado that included installation of the longest gondola in North America and a 650-acre, experts-oriented expansion; the acquisitions of Snow Valley in California, Arapahoe Basin in Colorado, and Schweitzer, the largest ski area in Idaho; and the addition of 37 new Ikon Pass partners, bolstering what is perhaps the strongest top-to-bottom pass roster in the history of lift-served skiing.
That roster may have come at a cost - Alterra’s large partner corps gives the company considerably less control over pricing and pass access than arch-rival Vail Resorts can apply to its 42 owned resorts and its Epic Pass. That dynamic likely contributed to the approximately 30 percent Ikon price premium over Epic for the past several years, as well as a day-pass product that was among the worst in the industry. And years of escalating walk-up lift ticket prices left Alterra with little room to maneuver following Vail’s decision to cut lift ticket prices in half with its Epic Friends program (they tried) and the worst winter in the Western United States in decades left little demand for casual skiers.
Smith’s departure is the second abrupt exit of a major American ski company CEO in less than a year, following the sudden ejection of Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch last May. Lynch had been appointed in 2021 as successor to transformative CEO Rob Katz, who ended up replacing her. Prior to Lynch’s exit, Vail had recorded its first-ever drop in Epic Pass unit sales the previous year, and had just wrapped its second consecutive winter with declining skier visits, even as the overall ski industry recorded increased attendance.
Alterra is a privately held company, and does not disclose its finances, as publicly traded Vail Resorts is required to do. That leaves us with little other than speculation, at this time, as to Alterra’s financial performance and how that may have impacted Smith’s departure.
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