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Comment by cbm-vic-20 | Hacker News Reader

$100+ lift tickets are killing alpine skiiing. While in college in southern New England, we'd pile a few dudes in a car, drive up to Vermont/NH/Maine at 5am, get there when the lifts open, ski until they close, and drive back home.

Lift ticket prices have become crazy expensive, and every ski area wants to become a resort destination: the messaging here is that you have to be wealthy to be able to ski.

As a result, a lot fewer young people are going to take up skiing- fewer people getting into the pipeline.

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What's happened is consolidation with Vail and Alterra buying up many of the most popular areas -- and with it affordable mega-passes (Ikon, Epic) have made it possible to ski at very expensive places for a very low per-day cost -- but only if you are dedicated and can ski more than 10-15 days a year.

And the flip side of that is that per-day lift ticket prices are very high, to milk the casual skier and the luxury-seeking 1%ers who can afford to spent $250 (lift ticket+ rentals+snacks) on a single day at Stowe or Vail or Whistler.

At this point you basically have to either buy one of the mega passes, or seek out the smaller family owned resorts that still charge reasonable prices.

Look into the Indy Pass, it's an affordable pass that gets you 2 days at a bunch independent smaller ski areas.

Freedom Pass (http://freedompass.ski) is another option similar to Indy Pass, which may be better depending on where you live in the US. In the northeast, the Dartmouth Skiway and Magic Mountain are both on it, and are two of my absolute favorite "hidden" places (I have more fun skiing them than most of the mid-size places on Ikon or Epic).

Interesting that Bolton Valley (one of my favourites!) is on both passes.

Freedom looks tempting except absolutely nothing Canadian on it. Too bad.

Yep, since I moved to BC I was excited at all of the skiing options but it's just too pricey. Even the local resorts e.g. Cypress.

Ikon pass will get you 5 or 7 days at Cypress as well as Crystal in Washington, and Revelstoke in the interior, so you could try that.

And Epic will get you unlimited at Whistler, as well as some days at Kicking Horse if you buy the full version.

What? Cypress is like $300 for a season pass and it's easily the best local hill. If you want to go to a worse hill, $99 3SKI at Seymour gets you 3 days of lift + 3 days of rentals (anytime in the same season).

If you consider that expensive you moved to the wrong neighbourhood.

Where can I get $300 for a season pass at Cypress? My friend paid like $500. Graduating soon so I could definitely manage that.

I think the problem is many people don't want to commit to season's passes, and at this point that is the only way to make skiing economical. Sucks for people who only get out 3 or 4 times a year.

If I lived Van I'd totally ski Cypress, though. :-)

I lived in a popular ski town.

Every week you would hear "it's too expensive, what about the youths?!"

Every week you'd also hear "overcrowding is killing alpine skiing, why are the lines so long, why do we allow so many people?!"

I've never related too much with the people who, upon witnessing the high season hordes as the park operates at 100% capacity, conclude "yes, it's cheaper entry that will fix our problems."

Skiing has never been cheaper for the people that actually use the passes. Last year I skied ~40 days, at 8 different resorts in 3 states, for a total of $650.

Of course if I were flying in for a 4 day trip once a year vs living near the resorts, I’d be singing a different story.

We are off to the 3 Valleys in a couple of weeks and the full area lift pass for 6 days is ~300 Euros - which given the vast size of the area and quality of the lifts is actually not too bad.

Certainly better value than the £35 a day you can pay here in Scotland on the rare days where we have snow and no wind!

[€183 for 6 days at Nevis Range, ~€300 for the same in the 3 Valleys....]

>Lift ticket prices have become crazy expensive,

Unfortunately it's what the market will bear. Of course college kids can't out-compete the hordes of DINKs from the Boston area who decide last minute that this will be a good skiing weekend.

As other commenters have mentioned there are still reasonable prices to be had but you have to go find them. The days of just showing up on a whim and getting a fair price are over (this applies to a lot of things, not just skiing).

>the messaging here is that you have to be wealthy to be able to ski.

It's recreational activity you have to travel to and requires a lot of gear and a somewhat prepared area to do it. That sets a pretty high wealth floor no matter what.

You might be right that prices not related to climate change will kill the industry but if that doesn't happen climate change will increase prices (a mountain that's open for fewer months has to charge more to cover fixed costs) until the same effect is achieved.

A lot of ski mountains offer deep discounts if you buy tickets online a few days in advance, rather than at the window the day of, I guess on the theory that they’d rather have sure money than you deciding at the last minute not to go. I’m back in NH visiting family and yesterday I snowboarded at Ragged for $35 by buying my pass on Monday.

Also a season’s pass at Ragged is $249 too, which is an insane deal. There are still smaller mountains in New England that aren’t trying to be mega-resorts where prices are good.

Many towns in VT and NH still have public/non-profit ski hills that are even cheaper. Especially for people who are new to skiing, these are fantastic deals (many also have cheap lessons, and there's no reason to pay big-mountain prices to spend all day on the beginner slope).

I learned to ski here as a kid: http://www.vtsnowsports.org ($75 season pass, $200 for a family). Down the road from me now (lift currently closed for a mechanical issue, will hopefully re-open this weekend): https://skistorrshill.com ($160 season pass, $270 for a family). There's a bunch of gems like these scattered throughout New England if you look. And, since they're in "normal" towns, there's plentiful cheap lodging and plenty of other stuff to do. You're not isolated at a resort.

Cross-country and back-country skiing are even better options for the budget-minded, and almost limitless in where you can go. Ski-skate sales are full of cheap gear every fall, so the cost to get started is almost nothing.

> I guess on the theory that they’d rather have sure money than you deciding at the last minute not to go.

Wouldn’t everyone? Salaries have to be paid, equipment maintained, property taxes paid.

This is why my partner and I have taken up XC skiing in our area vs downhill. We can pay something like $35 a year when we register our vehicle, and we then have unfettered access to the State's national parks, which contain a lot of ski trails in winter.

$35 to have us both access 25+ trails within 2 hour drive, or pay $250 per person for a season pass at the local ski mountain.

Wasn't a tough decision, and I was surprised how many hills there are in XC ski. I thought I would be bored switching over but I really am not!

Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

I have no beef with cross-country skiing but to be frank, it's as much of an alternative to alpine skiing as a carousel is to a roller coaster.

XC Skiing is more an alternative to jogging than it is to Downhill skiing.

Austria has gotten more expensive since I moved over here 15 years ago, but is still far cheaper than New England - the big areas are about 55 EUR/day this season, with discounts not really kicking in until you buy 4-5 days.

Given what’s happening to the ski seasons in the Alps, I’m not sure if teaching a kid how to ski today is kindness or cruelty. I’m pretty sure there will still be some decent skiing until I’m ready to hang up my boots (I’m about 40), but my 10 year old niece? Her kids?

They have to do that or the lines become unbearable and the mountain unskiiable because of overcrowding.

There are other ways to allocate scare resources than giving it to the highest bidder (disproportionately the wealthy). Lotteries, first in line, etc.

There are other reasons they may be incentivized to use higher prices as the mechanism to decrease crowding, but it is definitely not the only way.

Why? Highest bidder generates the most revenue, and the entire point of running a business is to make money...

I agree. The comment I was responding to said they had to raise prices to combat overcrowding. I was specific in saying that if that were truly their goal, there are other ways to achieve it, and that there are other reasons to raise prices. No need to use over crowding as an excuse.

But why wouldn’t they go with the option that also increases revenue?

Also, if there’s so much unmet demand, why aren’t we seeing tons of new ski areas opening up, which could help lower prices?

In the U.S., much of the land where ski areas could exist is owned by the government, typically National Forest or BLM. Some ski areas actually lease the land from the government, which puts constraints on operating hours and overall length of the allowed ski season.

The prospect of the government ever selling the protected wilderness to private companies is often met with public outcry.

Personally, I think the Ikon Pass is a fantastic deal and skiing is more accessible and affordable than it has ever been in my ~25 years of hitting the slopes.

This is why I switched to backcountry. Resorts are a god damn zoo.

Agreed on this, try it with a few kids on a busy weekend and its really both expensive and miserable.

college pass for loon, sunday river, and sugarloaf is ~$400.

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