Over several months in 2026, The Storm examined hundreds of newspaper articles, ski area master development plans, U.S. Forest Service reports, and other archives documenting the evolution of lift-served skiing across the American West – and, in particular, Colorado – since the end of World War II. This fossil record of a mostly pre-internet culture captures the facts and sentiments of skiing’s past unfiltered by nostalgia or selective memory. This is the second in a series of articles summarizing those findings.
When The Storm was new and Covid was newer, I launched the earnest and somewhat foolish project of documenting and comparing every ski season pass in America.* Fueling this endeavor was a self-evident belief in the ski season pass as a product: of course all ski areas offered one. I assumed they always had.
*The Google spreadsheet I created to track season passes has since evolved into whatever I’m calling this monstrosity today (it will come when called as The Pass Tracker 5000, The Encyclopedia Bro-Tannica, The Big Bad Badass Season Pass Chart, The U.S. American SnoSport Skiing Masterchart, and probably some other ones I forgot about). As longtime readers have probably surmised, I no longer attempt to track every season pass in America, mostly because it’s tedious and boring and frankly not that important in terms of the highest and best use of my time. I do still try to capture the early-bird and final prices for any public ski area with a chairlift, but don’t expect this to be like Expedia for ski passes.
So I was shocked to find this throwaway reference to ski season passes in The Straight Creek Journal on Nov. 8, 1979:
For the true skiing addict, a season pass may be the most economical way to go. Not all areas offer them and, in some cases, only the locals know they exist. Keystone, for example, has six categories of season passes: adult, child, family, midweek, nonconsecutive picture pass and spring pass. An adult can ski all season for $300; at Arapahoe Basin only, the same privilege costs $225. A family pass is $500. A midweek pass is $175. A spring pass, good from April 1 to closing, costs $125.
This bargain tip, intended for savvy skiers, appears seventh on a list that includes several discount cards and night sessions at Keystone. Understandably so: these passes were no bargain at all. Adjusted for inflation, Keystone’s unlimited adult pass is $1,320 in today’s dollars; the A-Basin pass is $990; and that spring pass is $550 (Keystone routinely remained open into late April or May in the decades prior to Vail’s 1997 purchase of the resort). All-day adult lift tickets at both Keystone and Arapahoe Basin – then jointly owned by Ralston-Purina – ran $15 per day for the 1979-80 ski season: $66 in 2026 dollars.