Last Chance for a Discounted Annual Storm Subscription
20% off (forever) to thank you for supporting independent ski journalism
TLDR: click through to upgrade to The Storm’s annual paid tier at 20 percent off the regular rate of $65. That’s $52 for year-round coverage of lift-served skiing – and that rate will renew for as long as you keep your subscription active (don’t worry, you can shut off auto-renew any time).
Sometimes people ask what I write about in the summer. And I’m like Dear God summer is when everything I write about happens, because I write about things like chairlifts and terrain expansions and consolidation, and ski area operators are generally too busy operating their ski areas to deal with these things from November through February.
Which is another way of saying that The Storm is, unlike most ski newsletters, a year-round enterprise. I guarantee 100 articles per year, but I usually blow way past that (last year was around 140). The news cycle slows down a bit in peak season, but it explodes in March, when all the big multimountain passes drop at super-low rates for next winter. We’re only halfway through March, but I’ve already pushed out a dozen articles this month dissecting pass offerings from operators large and small. A paywall anchors most of them, and the sale rate is your best chance to hurdle it.
Full Ikon Pass Prices Go Live: Watch for Landmines
The 2026-27 Ikon Pass suite went live last week without a full price breakdown, but the start of pass sales yesterday filled in the blanks (well, most of them):
Epic, Indy, Ikon, Mountain Collective: Which Pass Accesses the Most U.S. Skiing?
We start here because this is enough to scare anyone trying to decide which multimountain ski pass to buy:
Killington Offers $199 Spring Pass to Small Ski Area Season Passholders
Dear God I said I was done with roundups but there’s so much happening and I can’t write a full story on everything, so here’s a sampling of developments in 2026-27 Ski Season Pass Land:
2026-27 Epic, Ikon, Indy, & Mountain Collective: By The Numbers
Yesterday I sent around a Big Dumb List of Big Dumb Charts as a sort of homework assignment for Big Dumb Pass Bros (like me!) who are already plotting out their 2026-27 through 2039-40 ski seasons. “Oh look at this, Uncle Greg’s 63rd-and-a-half birthday will be on March 12, 2033 and he only lives six hours from Antelope Butte. I could fly into Rapid City, but Minneapolis is $75 cheaper and if I just add six days onto either end of the trip I can hit every ski area in North and South Dakota on the loop up through Red Lodge.”
2026-27 Ikon Pass: Snowmass Rejoins Base; A-Basin Unlimited on Base; Lutsen, Granite Peak, Snowriver Join as Full Partners; Tamarack, Devil’s Head Join as 2-Dayers
OK let’s just start with the prices because there’s a lot to process with Ikon’s 2026-27 pass release:
Vail Resorts Discounts 2026-27 Epic Pass for Skiers Aged 13-30
Vail Resorts’ released 2026-27 Epic Pass prices and details this morning. The pass suite, resort menu, and blackout structures remain unchanged from previous winters. While overall prices tick up slightly (an average of less than four percent over 2025-26 rates), Vail introduces a discounted tier for 13- to 30-year-olds on the full Epic and Epic Local passes:
This pass coverage is central at the moment, but I also heavily cover acquisitions and consolidation, the evolution of the ski industry operating model, and the stories of individual ski areas:
Entabeni Systems Purchases Black Mountain, N.H., Shelves Co-Op Ambitions
The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.
Jared Smith to Exit as Alterra CEO
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.
I wish I could make everything in The Storm free. Seriously. I love writing this newsletter, and I try to make it fun to read. And a smile is something we all want to share. But after launching this thing as a side-hustle in 2019 and building it, improbably, into a widely recognized niche news source, it has become my one and only job and basically the only thing I do. It is my life’s work. It is also a sustainable small business, but it has to be a business, because if I have to go get a job working for someone else (which I never intend to do), the newsletter would suffer for it.
So thank you for supporting independent ski journalism – or at least for considering it. I know we’ve all got infinite choices, infinite expenses, and subscription fatigue. I live here too. And I respect that every time someone makes a choice to support The Storm, I owe them the best newsletter I can produce in return.