If you’ve been skiing or snowboarding lately, you’ve probably noticed the walkup prices are, in a word, insane. Want to hit the slopes at, say, Vermont’s mid-size Stratton Mountain this weekend? It could cost you as much as $180 per day. That’s a far cry from yesteryear, when this writer used to catch a roundtrip bus from NYC to Stratton and the price, lift ticket included, was less than a hundred bucks.
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What’s a disgruntled powder hound to do? The only reasonable way to go these days is to buy in advance and buy in bulk, investing in a ski resort mega pass. Going by names like Ikon and Epic, these season passes are package deals that provide access to dozens of different resorts across the country and even the globe. If you sk’ride more than a couple weekends a year, they will save you considerable money over the day pass approach.
It should be said that, big picture, there are pretty mixed feelings about the mega pass movement. Depending whom you ask, it’s either saving skiing or killing ski towns and exploiting the workers who keep the resorts running. That being said, we sure don’t want GP readers spending upwards of $200 for one day of turns. So our advice is to be nice and considerate as hell to the locals and lifties — and check out the following breakdown of the four major mega passes (plus one kinda underground one) to decide which option is best for you.
Three other points worth noting: First, timing is everything. The 2023/24 Epic and Ikon passes recently went on sale, and in general the best prices and benefits are available early — like within the next month or so. One sweet bonus for new customers is, you can typically use new passes for spring skiing this season in addition to all of next season. For example, spring skiing availability on the Ikon Pass starts April 10th for Mammoth Mountain: considering the massive California resort kept the lifts spinning till June 4th last season, that’s a pretty nice perk.
Second, it pays to read the fine print, because many of these passes do have blackout dates for certain resorts or require reservations ahead of time (you don’t have to pay any more, but you do need to put your name in). On the upside, most passes allow you to score discounts for non-pass-holding friends.
Third, there’s more to the shopping process than pure numbers. We’re giving you the key ones here — for adult passes, there are often cheaper ones for kids — but it pays to explore the links and think about how you and your crew sk’ride. One thing I’ve realized after a few years of using mega passes is, they make it very hard to go anywhere that’s not on your pass — because once you’ve chunked out a thousand bucks or more, you really don’t want to add to the tab. So your decision may be as simple as, which pass covers the resort my friends and I hit most regularly?
