The Storm Is Tracking Every 2022-23 U.S. Ski Season Pass With This Chart

Welcome to The Pass Tracker 5001

Last summer, in preparation for taking The Storm national, I launched the Pass Tracker 5000, which inventoried every ski season pass price in the United States. I had been doing the same thing for a couple of seasons for the Northeast (New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), and it seemed logical to build the tool out for a larger audience.

Now, after roughly 500 more hours than I had estimated it would take, I am pleased to provide you with the Pass Tracker 5001. It is built on the same Google Sheet as the PT5000, so you can tab over to last season’s prices on the bottom of the page. Here it is:

I made a few improvements to this edition:

• I grouped the states into collapsible blocks, so you can minimize the ones you don’t care about. Just click the + or – controls to the left of each state:

• I streamlined the columns to tighten the presentation. Rather than spelling out each resort’s refund or deferral plans, I just indicated whether they offered one or not. Far fewer ski areas are bothering with this (a fact I’ll analyze in a future newsletter).

• I eliminated the majority of the state’s gold passes, which are phenomenal products but beyond the means of most skiers and extremely limited in quantity. The Ski Utah Gold Pass, for example, was $5,700 last year. Colorado’s was $3,500.

• I highlighted the passes that have not yet been released in yellow. This should make the chart easier to scan.

• I removed several ski areas that did not operate this season or appear to have stopped offering skiing: Osceola, Massachusetts; Caspian, Covington, Petosky Winter Sports Park, and Sault Seal, Michigan; and Mount Prospect, New Hampshire. I left several ski areas on the tracker that have yet to open for this season, but are still regularly updating their Facebook pages or websites on their continuously foiled efforts to open: Silver Mountain and Tower Mountain in Michigan, Sandia Peak in New Mexico (I’m not 100 percent certain this never opened, but it is now closed for the season), Cranor Hill in Colorado, Cedar Pass in California, and, of course, the fire-scorched buy indomitable Sierra-at-Tahoe.

A few additional orientation notes:

• All prices are for adult, no-blackout passes. Most ski areas offer a range of passes, from child to senior to young adult, with many demographics in-between. There are often midweek, blackout, or nights-only options. Since every mountain defines these categories differently, it would be too unwieldy to document every one. But in just about every case, the adult full-access pass is the most reliable baseline for gauging a resort’s approach to pass pricing in general, even if the age range used to define “adult” varies somewhat from ski area to ski area. To view a ski area’s full pass offering, click on the resort name in the left-most column - in most cases, that will take you directly to their season pass page.

• For mountains whose season pass is a megapass, I have pointed to the lowest-tier pass that offers no-blackout access as that mountain’s season pass. Since Snowshoe’s $449 season pass grants unlimited access to that mountain, I list that as its pass price, even though the $769 Ikon Base Pass and $1,079 Ikon Pass also include unlimited access to Snowshoe.

• I am adding reciprocal pass partners as resorts confirm them – this typically takes place over the summer. That’s why the “free days” columns for ski areas such as Loveland, Monarch, and Ski Cooper – which traditionally forge dozens of such partnerships – are empty for the moment.

• I’m sure I missed a few ski areas or a few pass offerings, or got some details wrong. If you notice one I missed, please let me know, and I’ll add it. Email me at skiing@substack.com, or, if you’re reading this in your inbox, just respond to the email. I reply to almost every email that sounds as though it was written by a person who doesn’t have a People to Kill List.

• I included every ski area, even little municipal bumps that don’t offer season passes or private ski centers like Yellowstone Club. That’s because this pass tracker is doubling as my inventory of U.S. ski areas.

• I’ll update this every week or so through April, as most ski areas push their passes live. After that, I’ll shift to monthly-ish updates, after which I will see this monster only in my nightmares.

• I write about season passes quite a bit (in case you hadn’t noticed). Follow me on social – especially Twitter – for the most up-to-date info:

Now that this is live, I have a good baseline to begin breaking down and analyzing 2022-23 ski season pass trends. The best way to get those is to subscribe to this newsletter. Remember that the partial paywall is activating on March 14, so a subscription is the only way to guarantee that you’ll see 100 percent of The Storm’s content after that. Prices will also increase that day (I wonder where I got the inspiration for that business model).