6 Comments
May 20, 2022·edited May 20, 2022

Whoa. Snow Valley is my fourth favorite of the four “big” SoCal hills, and while Mt Baldy has all the side country, it doesn’t snow here anymore. But for the price, I might have been talked out of renewing Ikon.

As much as I’d like to get away from Big Bear as my “regular” day ski spot, of course I’m sticking with Ikon. Heading to mammoth in the morning for the last runs of my season.

Still, the wife was talking about doing a trip out to Powderhorn, her old home mountain…hmmm

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May 19, 2022·edited May 19, 2022Liked by Stuart Winchester

Great article Stuart, as always. I definitely see potential for another Indy style pass out there with some of these existing coalitions and other powder players that got left out of the party (ahem, ORDA). If someone could land the CO5 coalition (Loveland, Monarch, Powderhorn, Cooper, Sunlight) the ORDA beast, and one of the marquee monsters still hiding in its cave (Whitefish per se) they could sweep up a bunch of partners and use something similar to the 85/15 pricing model Indy thought-up to create a second monetized pass product. Competition would probably be good in this space, and these reciprocal visits turning into real dollars can be a huge difference maker. After all, if people are buying Ski Cooper or Loveland passes to supplement their Indy/Epic/MC already then the proof of concept is there. Perhaps the impetus for such a product could come from one of these groups, like the mid-western mountains mentioned in your article, or the Colorado coalition, similar to how a group of mountains formed the Mountain Collective to compete for skier visits.

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This is so interesting to me. I've already maxed out my purchasing of passes for next year (3 once november comes around and I can get the Bohemia pass), but adding whitecap as a midwesterner makes me pretty jealous. I think Whitecap is the best of the northern midwest along the likes of Lutsen, Spirit, and Bohemia. If all these northern WI and MI resorts stick around I cant imagine not getting it for the 2023-4 season. I agree that the really ideal scenario would be all of them just creating their own coalition keeping the money local instead, but that will be for them to work out. Really does seem to be a golden age of value in resort passes/tickets that cant last forever. This pass plus Indy would easilly cover the northern midwesterner all season

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