‘The Storm’ Is Tracking Every 2024-25 U.S. Ski Season Pass With This Chart

With a new and improved Pass Tracker 5001

Long-time Storm readers are familiar with my somewhat irrational habit of inventorying U.S. America’s ski season passes each March. Here’s a link to the 2024-25 edition, which is actually split into two documents:

And here’s a Q&A to explain the whole thing:

So what’s new?

I’ve added basic information about each mountain, including core mountain stats (vertical drop, skiable acreage, average annual snowfall), ownership, pass affiliations, whether its open to the public, whether it runs chairlifts or not, and whether the place actually operated this season.

A few months ago, I put together this document, which includes all of the above data and was intended as a sort-of permanent one-sheet itemizing active U.S. ski areas. I quickly realized that such a format – a Word doc uploaded to Google – was almost impossible to maintain long-term, especially when it overlapped not only with the Pass Tracker 5001, but also with the dozens of other charts I’ve created to inventory passes and such. This is my first effort at consolidating all of that information into one resource. As soon as I can figure out how to create tabs that aggregate pass- and owner-specific data from the main sheet, I’ll do that (maybe this can’t be done on Google Sheets though and I need a different platform).

Anyway, there’s a lot more info on each mountain than before, so I made the left-most column (the one with the mountains), sticky, so you can just scroll over to pass prices if that’s all you care about.

The whole thing is easier to read/interact with on a desktop, so maybe just do that.

What’s with all the colors?

I’m not very good at colors. If you asked me to list every color in the world, I’d probably be able to name about 10 and then run out of ideas. Blue, green, black, white, red, orange, purple, pink, brown, gray, yellow. Hmm. I’m already stumped. Anyway, the idea is to break things into sections, so passes are shaded in blue, active pass prices are in green, yet-to-be-announced pass prices are in yellow. Maybe there are better colors to use, but this is an information tool, not my Pinterest page, so let’s keep moving.

Why did you get rid of information on specific reciprocal partners?

Because it’s nearly impossible to keep up with. While a few reciprocal programs are well-orchestrated operations with detailed maps and defined redemption processes, most of them are ad-hoc and poorly maintained. Mont du Lac still thinks Snow Valley is a reciprocal partner, even though Alterra purchased the mountain 14 months ago and ended all such arrangements. If you want to anger and baffle a roomful of exhausted ski area middle-managers, show up at Tussey, Pennsylvania with a season pass to Ski Cooper, Colorado and tell them it entitles you to a free lift ticket (it doesn’t anymore, but when I tried this a couple years ago when they were reciprocal partners, they looked at me like I was trying to redeem a coupon for Hamburger Helper).

Anyway, until I can figure out how to program the robots to update this information daily, I’m just going to link to each ski area’s reciprocal partners page and let people explore, rather than housing a bunch of bad information on the chart.

Why do you have Facebook links to some mountains but not others in the “notes” section?

The vast majority of America’s surface-lift-only town bumps use Facebook as their de-facto websites. This is because it’s a lot easier to update and requires no technical knowledge of any kind. The website for Arrowhead, a 120-vertical-foot ropetow bump in Claremont, New Hampshire, still advertises “2017-18 season pass pricing.” The ski area’s Facebook page, however, has been updated within the past month, proving that the hill was open. I don’t need a social media post to validate that Breckenridge spun lifts this winter.

Why did you separate single-mountain passes and multi-mountain passes into separate tabs?

First of all, if you don’t know what that question even means, here’s how you navigate between the tabs:

Some of you are like, “Duh,” and some of you are like, “Ohhhh.” We are not all living in the same digital ecosystem just yet.

I’ve also kept tabs up documenting prices for the past several ski seasons. I did not update the format in those tabs, but it’s useful reference information to me.

Anyway, the reason I split single-mountain passes from multi-mountain passes is because the first 11 new columns didn’t make any sense to include for the multi-mountain pass section. So the first 40-some rows of the document were going to have a lot of black space and “N/As.” Plus this finally organizes all the mountain statistical data into a sortable format (well, I can sort it; I can’t figure out how to let you sort it without handing over admin control, in which case some knucklehead would wipe out five years worth of work in under five seconds, leaving us nothing but a photo of a shaved seal pup and a warning that I “better don’t mess with the Canyon Krew Chump.”)

I can also sort by ownership group and pass affiliation. Again, as soon as I can figure out how to teleport data between tabs or grant you sorting capabilities, I’ll do that.

That’s not actually that hard to do.

I never said I was smart. Only patient enough to build this stupid chart every year.

Why did you include ski areas that didn’t operate this past winter?

Because they operated the winter before and so were in my U.S. American ski areas inventory. But getting an accurate count of ski areas is like trying to count swarming starlings. Some fly off on their own and some drop dead but mostly they’re just bunching together and pulling apart in indecipherable animal code and you just have to trust that there’s a lot of them and they won’t all make it.

Really though I haven’t figured out where to put these edge-case ski areas yet. This was another reason for moving away from static documents. At least I can have the “operated last season” tab and change it in under one second.

You forgot about Mt. Waterman.

No I didn’t.

It’s not on your list.

Yes I know there are five people in Los Angeles that still think Mt. Waterman is a real ski area, and for some reason they all read this newsletter and act like the place is Whistler, Jackson Hole, Snowbird, and Mammoth rolled into one secret San Gabriel hillside. But the place has no snowmaking and has not hosted actual paying skiers on its actual chairlifts in more than four years. Yes I know about the highway damage. But they wouldn’t have opened anyway.

But you also got [one particular data point in a chart with 7,000 of them] wrong and I’m going to tell you about it in the most passive-aggressive way possible.

Just don’t expect a response.

Why is this chart ready so much later than last year?

Because of all the updates. Also because of some ill-timed travel. Also because I’ve had some health issues that I’ll tell you about soon (I’m fine now).

This seems really annoying to create and maintain.

It is.

So why do you do it?

Because the mental exercise of sorting through every ski area in the country on a monthly or semi-monthly basis creates a deep familiarity that is otherwise difficult to acquire and maintain. Also because people like it and it draws a lot of new subscribers to the newsletter every year.

OK but when are you going to start the Pass Notes newsletters up again?

Soon. Now that the Pass Tracker 5001 is updated, I can start extrapolating data from it and forming narratives around the current season pass landscape.

Can you add the non-U.S. American megapass partners to this?

Yeah it’s on my list to do that.

Why do you call it “U.S. America?”

It’s a long story. And I don’t want to ruin the joke.

Please?

OK fine:

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The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 20/100 in 2024, and number 520 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019.