Snow Partners to Launch 5th National Ski Pass, Expand Triple Play to Midwest
New pass to mirror Mountain Collective, Indy Pass model with two days each at yet-to-be-named North American resorts
Six months before the 2026-27 ski season begins in earnest, the Epic, Ikon, Indy, and Mountain Collective passes have secured partnerships with 407 Alpine ski areas, including 52 in Canada, 49 in Japan, and 52 resorts across 15 European nations. Domestically, these four passes collectively grant skiers access to 242 American mountains (excluding Ikon-Mountain Collective overlap), which equals 63 percent of all public ski areas with chairlifts in the country, and 73 percent (176,757) of the nation’s 241,954 lift-served skiable acres.
Is there room in this crowded marketplace for a fifth national multi-mountain ski pass?
Snow Partners – owners of Mountain Creek and Big Snow in New Jersey and popular operating software and learning-terrain programs – thinks there is. Yesterday, the company announced the Snow Pass, which will be an Indy/Mountain Collective-style passport with two days each at “a curated network of regional destination and drive-to resorts in the Northeast, Midwest and Western United States and Canada.”
This national pass builds upon – but will remain separate from – Snow Partners’ Snow Triple Play (STP) product launched last year. STP, which is valid for three total days of skiing across all partner resorts (and a max of two days at any one ski area), will return in two regional varieties for 2026-27:
East: All 16 inaugural Snow Triple Play partners plan to return for season two. Joining them, according to a Snow Partners press release, will be “approximately six new partner mountains…” in Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Midwest: Snow Partners will also debut a Midwest-specific Snow Triple Play, with an anticipated menu of 10 to 15 ski areas.
Partner lineups and pricing for Snow Pass, Snow Triple Play East, and Snow Triple Play Midwest will debut “this summer.” SAM reports that passes will go on sale post Labor Day (Sept. 7) “at a sub-$400 price point and will be on sale through December.” SAM also reported that existing STP partners Mount Southington and Pleasant Mountain intended to join the Snow Pass, and that New York State’s Olympic Regional Development Authority was in discussions to potentially add some combination of Whiteface, Gore, and Belleayre to the new product.
Snow Partners is framing Snow Pass as a cooperative, with “a partner advisory board or mountain partners to help guide the product’s future and growth,” and “open reporting on economics, expenses, and product performance.” Snow Partners will retain a five percent administrative fee, plus marketing expenses (SAM suggests these will add up to 15 percent, noting that 80 percent of “total revenue” will flow down to partners), and distribute the remainder to partner mountains “based on their utilization and ticket value.”
The Snow Pass will enter a congested and somewhat confusing North American multi-mountain pass market, and it will do so well after the now-entrenched March window during which most operators offer the lowest pass prices. Snow Pass faces the task of cobbling together a compelling partner roster with a combination of pass free agents, STP partners, customers of Snow Partners’ software or Terrain Based Learning businesses, willing double-dippers already aligned with Mountain Collective or Ikon’s two-day tier (which allow pass-sharing), and anyone it can coax off Indy Pass (which does not).
Is there room for a fifth national ski pass? Are there enough ski areas to form one? Enough skiers to buy one? Is this a mature market, or an evolving one? Let’s dig deeper: