Vail shocked and confused the American lift-served ski world when, in 2012, the Colorado-based operator of six of the nation’s largest, tallest, and snowiest resorts purchased a pair of Midwestern microdots that wouldn’t have made a square meal for Sun Down Bowl. One of them was one-tenth the size of Northstar but ran a more or less equal number of chairlifts, the newest of which was built the year before Beaver Creek had come online. Afton Alps rose just 350 vertical feet, but at least it was a natural rise, cut over millennia by the St. Croix River angling south toward the Mississippi. Mount Brighton, Vail’s second surprise acquisition, rose 230 feet on landfill trenched out to build nearby Interstate 96. What could Vail be thinking?
The answer – that skiers from metro Detroit and Minneapolis would buy an Epic Pass to ski their local bump and then use it to vacation in Colorado and Tahoe – was quickly obvious. What’s less obvious is why it took everyone else so long to figure out that bundling ski areas near where people live with ski areas they most aspire to go to is the best way to secure a national audience. Alterra inexplicably failed to import Lutsen and Granite Peak, the largest ski areas in Minnesota and Wisconsin, respectively, from the predecessor M.A.X. Pass to the company’s Ikon Pass in 2018 (it would take eight years to fix the mistake). Indy snatched them both, and it was only when Indy had gathered the leftovers into the world’s largest pass coalition that skiing – and skiers – began to appreciate the appeal of non-destination resorts when assembled into a single pass package.
Only in the past year has Alterra responded, finally realizing, I suppose, that skiers like to ski near home when they’re not waiting in liftlines at Steamboat floating through dream pow on spring break. In addition to finally signing Lutsen and Granite Peak, the company has courted a small roster of two-day partners near big population centers such as Vancouver, New York City, Minneapolis, and Madison.
But there are plenty of smaller cities with established ski cultures filled with skiers who would love the chance to venture out and up using – or nominally adding to – a season pass they already own. Vail seems content sticking with million-plus metro areas to feed Epic, but Alterra’s decision to sign Snowy Range suggests that they are open to mining more remote outposts such as nearby Laramie, home to around 31,000 residents and 10,000 University of Wyoming students.
It’s a smart move that pushes farther into fringe ski territory long dominated by Indy, whose western network largely knits small-city bumps like Logan, Utah’s Beaver Mountain to regional destinations like Brundage and White Pass. Though Indy has lost a handful of partners to Ikon (Snowy Range not among them), and a handful of mid-sized destinations such as Mission Ridge have left, the pass’ overall coalition continues to grow behind the steady addition of understated community bumps like Showdown, a 90-year-old, three-chairlift hill serving 60,000-resident Great Falls, Montana.
Examining the roster of Western U.S. mountains that have joined the Epic, Ikon, Indy, Mountain Collective, or Power Passes, it’s clear that big passes are no longer reserved for big mountains: 112 of the 173 active ski areas across the 12-state region have joined at least one coalition.
Let’s take a deeper look at how Snowy Range and Showdown will help boost the Ikon and Indy passes, respectively.