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It's not just Stowe. I was at Squaw Valley last spring. I couldn't believe how far I had to walk from my car to the base! The lot was like 75% full in late April. I've skied Squaw in spring quite a few years, it wasn't nearly half as busy back then.Here's my experience at Stowe- Stowe has always been very busy on holidays/weekend powder days. Like everywhere else it's ski on-off M-F. What has been noticeable to me since Epic is early and late season weekend crowds. Primarily late season, but it applies to early season (defining this as pre-Christmas).
I resemble that remark!I think a big part of this is that you can find really decent deals in the many Stowe hotels/inns + Airbnb in early and late season. Since ski cost is already covered, you can squeeze a relatively cheap weekend in coming from NY/Boston, etc. This is most notable in the Spring though. The Mansfield lot is now typically full right to the end of the season on weekends. I think Epic has definitely increased the number of crowded weekends. As far as holiday crowds & lift lines I avoid holidays like the plague. That's XC ski time for me.
While nationally the reported annual skier/rider visits data hasn't fluctuated too much year to year over that time frame, with the fluctuations attributable more to whether it was a "good" or "bad" snow year in various regions of the country that year, I think what it going on is with the multi resort mega passes, you are seeing more and more people who used to spread their days around across a host of resorts, now primarily taking advantage of the resorts solely on their passes for the majority of the season's days on the hill, thus keeping the total annual skiers visits relatively level and at the same time making some resorts that are part of the "mega passes" more crowded.
Mega passes are good for skiing.
It makes it cheaper for all.
We all "see" it! The the CEO of mountains in the Ikon/Epic pass kept telling us it's not! "It's ONLY because we had a bumper snow year".This is exactly how I see it, and I cannot come to any other logical conclusion by crunching the data. C'est simple.
My anecdotal take from the Mount Snow perspective over the last dozen plus years where it's gone from an ASC property to a "restricted" Peak property (with limited days for Peak pass product holders unless you bought the top of the line pass) to an "unrestricted" Peak property (most any Peak pass product vaild the majority of the days each season) to now an EPIC property
Without a doubt, the crowds are noticeably larger, most any day of the season, than they were in the ASC and "restricted" Peak days era. While I don't have any hard data, as someone who has skied Mount Snow the majority of the weekends they're open for the season for close to the last 15 years now, currently, and for the last season or 2 when Peak removed the limited days a season for Mount Snow for most of their pass products, crowd wise it certainly feels like what used to be a "Holiday Week/Weekend crowd" is now a typical weekend crowd (especially if the weather is remotely decent), and a Holiday Week/Weekend crowd sure feels like its 10-15% above what used to be a BIG crowd. That's just me going by how long the lift lines are, how crowded the base lodges are, how crowded the parking lots are, etc.
Thus far this season, with EPIC now part of of the equation, I have seen some early season weekend days where there were cars in parts of the parking lots that typically don't get used until either the $12 ticket Founder's Day (next Friday the 13th this year) and/or Christmas week crowds, as well as I have already had more rides up the Bluebird this season where it was obvious it was someone who was on the chair with me, first ride on the Bluebird just based on them thinking that they had to lift the bubble up at the top to unload verses letting the chair lift the bubble for you as it does, than I typically have encountered in an entire season the last few years.
While nationally the reported annual skier/rider visits data hasn't fluctuated too much year to year over that time frame, with the fluctuations attributable more to whether it was a "good" or "bad" snow year in various regions of the country that year, I think what it going on is with the multi resort mega passes, you are seeing more and more people who used to spread their days around across a host of resorts, now primarily taking advantage of the resorts solely on their passes for the majority of the season's days on the hill, thus keeping the total annual skiers visits relatively level and at the same time making some resorts that are part of the "mega passes" more crowded.
It will be interesting to see how things are in a few years if the NSAA can accomplish it's goal of adding roughly 5 million annual skier/rider days across the country by 2025 and help grow the sport, as well as how the mega pass situation continues to play out...
Unless Mega passes eventually have a material deleterious effect on skier recruitment, which is exactly my hypothesis, and that is because.........
nothing could be further from the truth.
Killington early March last season:
View attachment 25727
The line for the gondola at K1 stretches behind the lodge going towards SS.
I would think more passes = marginally more skier days, but it will take several years to flush that out of the background noise.
How is it more expensive?......Now if you’re a dumbass sucker laying window ticket prices. Yeah it’s expensive.
It costs more to start skiing. Most new skiers don’t ski enough per year to even make the 750 worth it.
And yes, the other side of the coin....it brings more skiers to the hill which could help the sport overall.
Not just the northeast. All over the country!...heyday of skiing in the northeast prior to the second wave of ski area contractions.