Crazy Lift ticket Prices!!!!

[randoskier]

Lift tickets at Winter Park resort this weekend are $209. Or you can ski at the old Berthoud Pass ski area for free. They even have the lift poles for you to run into. Jack-hole snow boarders and newbie AT skiers to cut you off or run in to you. BYOB Après-ski in the parking lot. It will be a lot more crowded tomorrow. And I forgot that every year some dummkopf almost dies and has to be rescued.

This weekend if you went up to the Dolomites and bought a Dolomitii super-ski pass for 197 EUR ($231 because the dollar is weak at the moment) you could ski Cortina, Val Gardena, Alta Badia, Corvara, Mamalada, Arraba, Civetta, and several other ski resorts on that one pass. 450 lifts 1,200 KM (745 miles) of slopes. Mind boggling vertical drop (7,700 ft).

Or you could go into the national park in the Dolomites and ski whatever you want backcountry for free, in fact you could ski the entire alpine arc backcountry (my friend Tania did) but that takes like 80 days.

And oh yeah I forgot to mention that the $231 ticket is the price for four days of skiing for an adult. It is less for <17 and 65 and older.

What does that work out to per lift?

[connyro]

Marquette may be a different story, but Marquette itself is pretty different from the rest of the UP.

Marquette is indeed a different town, only place in the entire world where a woman sent me a drink in a bar. In Marquette it happened three times!
I had a lot of fun skiing that little resort too! I also saw my first backcountry ski in Marquette. It was back in the day when skis were skinny, and it was a Karhu. That is when the seed was planted.

Well I'm sorry to report mqt mtn, under new management/ownership has decided to jack up the prices and put fencing up all around and pass it off as a "resort". with the same creaky slow lifts and poor snowmaking.

The marquette area and the UP in general is a fantastic area for endless bc skiing and has a surprisingly healthy bc skiing crowd due to lots of open wilderness and long, cold, snowy winters.

Bohemia is a pretty special spot, especially for the Midwest. low crowds, low price, crazy terrain but it's pretty isolated if you don't live in the keewanaw...Porkies is exceptional too with low crowds, low prices, and a lot of bc opportunities from the immediate area

[randoskier]

The crowds you mention are proof the prices are sustainable. People are paying them. And as far as government action, I know you've bounced, but many of us here are quite a bit more worried about blowing up 2400 acres of traditional apache land with esablished biking, hiking, and climbing, or the opening of sandstone canyons and bluffs to coal mining than what vail charges and the FS gets in return for 4 months a year. We don't really need your concern from afar.

Having stupid-high lift prices does not help the environment in any way shape or form. You are talking about apples and oranges.

[randoskier]

"There's a sucker born every minute" -PT Barnum

[Papa Tele]

Lift tickets at Winter Park resort this weekend are $209. Or you can ski at the old Berthoud Pass ski area for free. They even have the lift poles for you to run into. Jack-hole snow boarders and newbie AT skiers to cut you off or run in to you. BYOB Après-ski in the parking lot. It will be a lot more crowded tomorrow. And I forgot that every year some dummkopf almost dies and has to be rescued.

Is that 209$ per person!? OMG
Go Berthoud!

[corlay]

Vermont has endless lines.

Ive heard this over and over, but in my experience - not always true.

our day this past Tuesday was pretty awesome. The mountain was sparsely populated, and on the day immediately after a Nor’easter dumping of 14”+, no less.

We set our alarms, and arrived to the lodge an hour before first chair, because my daughter needed a ski rental. The rental process took all of ten minutes and no one else was there. :-/
So, then we took our time layering-up (it was very cold/windy) and the only appreciable lift line we waited in all day was that first one.

Even the gondolas were zero wait all day.

And the snow was *perfect*… go figure.

Perhaps everyone else in the world was there for MLK weekend?, which I hear can be brutal with crowds…

I guess my point is: $120 for a day like I had? Yes, please… but paying that for what conditions were like the week and weekend prior? NoThankYou…

[joeatomictoad]

My 2-cents...

1. The implied exclusivity of a premium priced lift ticket tends to make American market feel like they're getting a premium product. Especially a niche market like mountain sports where the consumer may be taken advantage of because they know little... do it 0.5 to 1.0 times per year... etc. (I think it's safe to say that most here on TT forum are not the target market, nor are similar to the market majority.)

2. Ski mountain operations is traditionally a low-margin, seasonal source of income. Anything limited to seasons (farming, fishing, etc.) is always going to be a feast or famine type of thing. I'd be interested to know if the European operators enjoy any subsidies from the local area, state, or the EU.

3. Business hates income fluctuations. They like to forecast their budgets with as much certainty as possible. The premium priced day pass incentivizes consumers to purchase more season passes. Season passes is money upfront, and they'd rather have "consistent less money" upfront rather than "uncertain more money" later... Bird in hand, 2 in the bush kind of thing... and the resort operators are willing to gamble on this pricing scheme.

[kumachan]

Why do lift tickets cost so much in the USA? After all most of the resorts are on our land- leased US Forest Service land.

Hiya, I usually lurk around here and don't post much 'cause I don't ski too much xcD and don't buy new gear all that often. But your topic really hit a sore spot with me. I'm bummed that my 10-year old kid won't be able to have the kind of lift service access that I had when I was at kid in the 70's and early 80's. It seems to me that skiing has become far more "exclusive" than ever before and many people are getting priced out of being able to ski. Even my nearby hills with lifts are jacking up their lift ticket prices this year! Thank the gods and goddesses for small, co-ops like Ascutney as they seem to be the last places around that are focused on making lift service skiing affordable for everybody.

I recently read a book called "Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow" which focuses a lot on the economics of the resort skiing industry and how the profits being made aren't trickling down to locals or dirtbags/ski bums, which in turn is making it really difficult to reside in ski towns.The book doesn't really have an upbeat ending. Anyways, I think that resort pricing is about maximizing profits from a commodity. That's what property is here in the U.S., regardless of whether it's National Parkland or privately owned property. If it wasn't why would we be having these arguments every few years about whether or not to open National Parks to development?

[Woodsbum]

Ski Inc. 2020 by Chris Diamond.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978099797842 ... _sb_noss_1
His first book is great, too. I knew Chris when he was GM at Mount Snow. A very readable insider's look at the business model. Day pass pricing is a tool to change behavior - buy an Epic/Ikon pass. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the Feds negotiate some kind of price cap for the lease rights. But, whether it's $70 or $120, it's still expensive for most people. Some stuff is expensive. I'd sooner see better pay/benefits for employees if we're going to force a little public good out of that bottom line. Neither is going to happen. As a member of the local vol. fire dept I get a free season pass. This year Vail's giving us Epic Passes. No arm twisting, we just asked. I've never used one. I like the woods better. But, I know a bunch of people like corlay whose day at the mountain with family is worth way more than what they paid for a day pass which is very cool in my opinion.

[joeatomictoad]

Fair article on methodology, but the numbers are 4 years old.

https://www.snowboarder.com/transworld- ... expensive/