Whiteface, East’s Tallest Ski Area, Joins Mountain Collective
Mountain Collective now includes discounts to Silverton, Colorado, and several heli-ski operations.
Once in a while some dumb headline about “the vertically challenged East” knifes its way into my Google alerts. And I’m always like, “Huh? This East?”
That’s 17 ski areas with a continuous lift-served vertical drop over 2,000 feet, which is more than most skiers can manage without stopping. The headlines are annoying because this information isn’t sealed in a CIA vault – I have it all organized right here: national, East, Midwest (the Midwest actually is vertically challenged; the region’s top mountain, Terry Peak, hangs off the western edge of South Dakota and is more Rocky Mountain preamble than Midwest dominator).
Anyway this vert chart is one reason skiing’s most exclusive multimountain pass, the Mountain Collective, tiptoed into the East a decade ago with the addition of mighty Stowe. Vail bought the Vermont mountain in 2017 and yanked it out of the coalition, but Mountain Collective has slowly anchored itself on the East Coast with the additions of Sugarloaf (2020) and Sunday River (2024), and, just north in Quebec, Le Massif du Charlevoix (2022) and Bromont (2024).
For the 2025-26 ski season, Mountain Collective adds Whiteface, New York. The state-owned and -operated skyscraper claims the biggest vertical drop in the East and the 17th tallest in America. Whiteface delivers more lift-served vert than Taos, Mammoth, Winter Park, Keystone, Copper Mountain, or fellow former Olympic hosts Palisades Tahoe and Snowbasin. New York State has (somewhat controversially), funneled tens of millions into Whiteface over the past decade, supercharging the snowmaking system and building four new chairlifts in the past five years. The Slides, a rarely open but rip-roaring extreme zone rising above the lifts, is as severe an in-bounds zone as exists anywhere in North America.
With the Whiteface addition, Mountain Collective passholders get two days each at 27 destinations (32 total ski areas), for the 2025-26 ski season:
Whiteface joins Grand Targhee, Wyoming and Sugar Bowl, California as the third U.S. ski area that Mountain Collective does not share with the Ikon Pass.
Whiteface is Mountain Collective’s first addition for the 2025-26 ski season, returning the roster to its 2024-25 all-time high of 32 ski areas after Arapahoe Basin exited in March. Whiteface is the seventh U.S. ski area to join a national ski pass or Mountain Capital Partners’ Power Pass this year, and the 22nd resort to do so in 2025 overall.
Whiteface has stood as a conspicuous but elusive prize for the national megapasses since the M.A.X. Pass’ 2018 collapse orphaned the mountain. After Alterra neglected to invite Whiteface and its sister resorts, Gore and Belleayre, to migrate onto the upstart Ikon Pass, the trio leaned into their Ski 3 product, an unlimited season pass to all three mountains. In the years since, the state has aggressively modernized Belleayre, which sits just two-and-a-half hours from New York City, and Gore, the state’s largest ski area at 453 acres. These efforts, which include 10 new chairlifts across the three mountains and monster snowmaking upgrades, have ratcheted up the appeal for national coalitions who covet the New York City market and its destination-oriented, wealthy skiers.
Mountain Collective membership signals that the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA; the state agency that operates the three ski areas), is open to supplemental partnerships that would wrap their ski areas into the ever-expanding international ski pass networks. Whiteface-on-MC could serve as a trial partnership before ORDA considers its other mountains for the pass or, as often happens after a season or two on Mountain Collective, for Ikon Pass membership.
Mountain Collective also announced new passholder benefits, including 25 percent off window rates for friends and discounts at several heli-ski destinations near existing partner mountains: Selkirk Tangiers by Revelstoke, Wasatch Powderbirds in Utah, and RK heliskiing near Panorama. Passholders will also be eligible for 30 percent discounts to guided lift-served days at Silverton, Colorado, as well as $200 off a six-run heli-skiing day. As with all Mountain Collective partner resorts, full passholders (meaning anyone with the Ski 3, even if they purchased it through Gore or Belleayre), will receive unlimited half-off days at every ski area on the pass.
Here’s a deeper look at Whiteface’s addition to Mountain Collective, and what it means for passholders, ORDA, and the multimountain pass landscape in general: