The most recent Alta blog broke down skier traffic increases this year

[abc]

In terms of everyone taking educated guesses...

Actually, there're 2 aspect of that.

One, the lift lines are longer and snow were being tracked out faster. That's not a guess. That's a fact. And that data is pretty readily available.

In some mountains, that's WAY more noticeable than others, like running out of parking in Jackson's commuter parking lot. That's a rare event in years pass but a regular event every weekend this season.

Second, the reason behind that increase is open for guessing. Perhaps different for different mountains. But if Jackson rarely run out of parking in the 10 years past, good snow or bad, it's inescapable to conclude the only main thing responsible for it is the the one thing new this year: Ikon pass.

For the LCC mountains, the picture can be a mixed one. But for BCC (Brighton/Solitude), again the same logic as in Jackson. If they rarely run out of parking in many years, but suddenly run out of parking REGULARLY this year, to say it's NOT due to Ikon is pure willful denial.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing for the mountain. I don't really know. Just that there's no denying Ikon is responsible for the significant increase. Whether a mountain likes that result, it's up to the management to decide. As for the locals bitching? It's one of those many factors the mountain need to take into consideration.

 

[BenedictGomez]

Tons of variables and scenarios to consider. Even the fact that we're looking at one sample year makes this challenging.

Exactly.

But math is math, and if only about 1 in 20 people who buy IKON visit Jackson Hole for 4 days on the hill, you can easily get an additional 50,000 skier days. Variables be danged.

 

[HowieT2]

Theres always BC as an option..PITA to get to but mostly desolate (excluding Whistler). Not that I won't go to JH or LCC..

yeah, the walk up rate for whitewater is $89 canadian.

 

[abc]

Theres always BC as an option..PITA to get to but mostly desolate (excluding Whistler). Not that I won't go to JH or LCC..

And AB too. Castle, Fernie...

Not that hard to get to from where I am. But the cost of the flight is a bit of a gamble. Sometimes, I can score a really inexpensive flight, other times quite costly.

I'm probably going to give Jackson a miss rest of season. May go to Utah one more time. LCC or BCC depending on condition. The crowding level there are still acceptable, as long as I can get through the roadblocks.

 

[Domeskier]

Exactly.

But math is math, and if only about 1 in 20 people who buy IKON visit Jackson Hole for 4 days on the hill, you can easily get an additional 50,000 skier days. Variables be danged.

This open letter from JHMR estimates that IKON accounts for an 8% increase in incremental skier visits this season:

https://www.tetongravity.com/story/culture/jhmr-pens-open-letter-explaining-impact-of-ikon-pass

 

[slatham]

Solitude was empty Thursday and Friday, both powder days. Very crowded on Saturday for big powder day but just in the morning and pretty empty on Sunday. I would still go. We stayed in the village so did not have to deal with parking, but on Saturday you could see from the lift cars lining the side of the road. On Saturday, once they finished with avy control work and got Honeycomb open that helped disperse the crowd.

Thanks for the insight Tumbler. I would definitely try to stay away from a Saturday in any case.

 

[slatham]

L

I dont understand why you are so definitively certain that you are correct and AdironRider is wrong.

A little back-of-the-envelope math.

In their last public statements, we learned IKON passes have hit roughly 250,000 units (all-in) of sales.

We dont know the split, but let's say it's 20:80 full versus Base (i.e. 7 days versus 5 days)

Now lets say only 15% of all IKON pass holders hit Jackson Hole this season (i.e. 85% of people didnt even ski Jackson Hole) and that the average 5 day pass skis 4 days and the average 7 day pass skis 6 days, which seems logically conservative.

That's 37,500 additional skiers on the slopes with a blended average of the FULL/BASE days which equals roughly 170,000 skier visits per season. Given last year JAX Hole announced a "record" all-time high in skier visits at 634,500, my 170,000 guesstimate is a significant slice of that. And keep in mind, that "record" slaughtered their previous record by > 70k skiers visits, meaning a more typical JH year is akin to maybe 550,000 skier visits.

Now, I can already hear you saying my 15% estimate is too high? FINE.

Even if only 5% or so of IKON users hit Jackson (that sounds too low, IMO), that's almost 60,000 skier visits, or >10% of their typical total skier days. Again, a significant bump, and my guess is more than 5% of all IKON'ers hit Jackson Hole. You'd need to have access to the pass data to know the real numbers, and only Jackson Hole and Alterra know that, but I feel confident by back-of-the-envelope analysis shows Jackson Hole is probably getting hit pretty hard over what it's prior "typical" season looked like.

And I’ll bet those skier visits concentrate around Saturday’s and holidays, and thus become an even larger problem on these days than they do over the course of a winter.

 

[slatham]

Careful...Win didn't say there was a 6% increase from Ikon. He just said 6% of overall visits are from Ikon and 60% from passholders (Sugarbush has always had a high percentage of visits being from passholders though so no surprise there).

In terms of everyone taking educated guesses...the problem is none of us have access to the actual data so we can speculate all we want. There are far too many variables. Some people buy Ikon and probably never leave the unlimited options. Some people buy Ikon and use mainly unlimited destinations and maybe only do one other trip to ONE of the 5/7 day destination options. Some may only use a couple days at the 5/7 day options if they only go for a weekend. Tons of variables and scenarios to consider. Even the fact that we're looking at one sample year makes this challenging.

The key data we don’t have is the distribution of Ikon skier days over the 7 days of the week. If you believe they concentrate on Saturday’s, thers’s a problem. Let’s take Wins 6% of visits are Ikon. A big day at Sugarbush is nearly 10,000 (rounding up for easy math). Add 600 people and at the margin that causes issues. But if the visits are concentrated on Saturday, maybe it’s an extra 10% or 1,000 people, which would be a huge issue. I do not know, this is all gut feeel and speculation.

And I agree this needs to be analyzed over several years, not a huge snow year right after Ikon hits the market. And behavior could change further muting the impact over time.

Or the passes could be adjusted. Peak season Saturday blackouts? Or maybe a point system. 500 points rather than 5 days. Weekday cost 100 points, but Saturday is 200?

 

[Jully]

Exactly.

But math is math, and if only about 1 in 20 people who buy IKON visit Jackson Hole for 4 days on the hill, you can easily get an additional 50,000 skier days. Variables be danged.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I have to believe that Jackson was a huge draw for many buying the Ikon. It has its own airport (albeit expensive) and it's not super hard to get to from SLC (where I expect a lot of Ikoners to go).

50,000 skier days is a LOT especially because it is concentrated on the already busiest days of the year. While many locals do only ski when it is good, a lot also come out early and late season. These 50,000 Ikon visits are coming on top of the busiest times of the year already (very few plan a trip to JH in November or early December).

The one variable is how many of the Ikon visits are NEW folks to Jackson versus cannibalized MC or day ticket folks. Definitely some, but like BG's math earlier, it's hard to make the case for Ikon to not be adding a big chunk of skiers.

The bigger issue IMO is how long resorts are tied to Ikon for. It was already mentioned somewhere that at least one resort (Snowbird..?) Was in a multi year deal with Alterra. I can't imagine that was an exception. So, even if JHMR wants out, they may be stuck for a awhile.

 

[BenedictGomez]

JHMR estimates that IKON accounts for an 8% increase in incremental skier visits this season:

Interesting. And keep in mind, last year was the record year in > 50 years of data at 634,500 skier visits.

In other words, Jackson Hole's basing their "8% increase" estimate off literally their highest tally ever on record, which makes this IKON boost even more impressive (or completely horrible depending upon your perspective).

And what is an 8% increase to 634,500?

It's 50,760 skier days, so I'm pretty close with a 50k estimate, and that's assuming Jackson Hole is being on the up-and-up with their customers, and not trying to "massage" IKON in a somewhat less negative light.

 

[tumbler]

Thanks for the insight Tumbler. I would definitely try to stay away from a Saturday in any case.

It would be really nice if they had some kind of lift line organization/corral for Saturday. It was every person for themselves to get through the RFID gates. Instead of going up with your group, you fought thru the gates and found 3 other people for the chair ride. Like 10 lanes of traffic merging into 2.

 

[cdskier]

The one variable is how many of the Ikon visits are NEW folks to Jackson versus cannibalized MC or day ticket folks. Definitely some, but like BG's math earlier, it's hard to make the case for Ikon to not be adding a big chunk of skiers.

Another valid point and one that is potentially more difficult to track (although in the age of computers perhaps not). Depending on how much data they collected in the past on ticket sales, they could still possibly see that x number of CCs purchasing day tickets had a name that now matched an Ikon user. It is actually a bit scary how many people don't realize how much data businesses can track on people just by them always using a CC vs Cash as was the norm years ago.

I think there's little doubt that Ikon adds skiers to many of these partner resorts...the question is by how much?

 

[cdskier]

Actually, there're 2 aspect of that.

I was referring purely to the reason behind the increase and not whether there actually is an increase in my post.

 

[Zermatt]

It would be really nice if they had some kind of lift line organization/corral for Saturday. It was every person for themselves to get through the RFID gates. Instead of going up with your group, you fought thru the gates and found 3 other people for the chair ride. Like 10 lanes of traffic merging into 2.

I guess you've never skied in Europe.

Primary takeaway from the Jackson Hole letter: Record snowfall is the dominant factor driving crowds.

Not sure what she means about increasing Ikon and Collective Pass prices...that is already locked in for 19/20. Maybe they push the increase to Ikon but Ikon's consumer prices are already fixed for next season.

 

[abc]

There’s a lot of “I heard” being thrown around. I don’t know how reliable those stories are based.

I also “heard” from 2 JHMR employees said Jackson is in a 3 year contract with Alterra. One said they looked into buying their way out of the remaining 2 year. But the price is too much to stomach. So they’re locked in for the 3 year.

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of what I heard either. But the number seems reasonable.

 

[kingslug]

Ok..no i heard..i skied Revelstoke last year..zero lines..a 2 bedroom apt..snowed a lot..desolate but who cares..things change..go with the flow..we have no control over it but can choose where we want to ski..i think BC is the solution..at least to insane crowding

 

[machski]

I dont understand why you are so definitively certain that you are correct and AdironRider is wrong.

A little back-of-the-envelope math.

In their last public statements, we learned IKON passes have hit roughly 250,000 units (all-in) of sales.

We dont know the split, but let's say it's 20:80 full versus Base (i.e. 7 days versus 5 days)

Now lets say only 15% of all IKON pass holders hit Jackson Hole this season (i.e. 85% of people didnt even ski Jackson Hole) and that the average 5 day pass skis 4 days and the average 7 day pass skis 6 days, which seems logically conservative.

That's 37,500 additional skiers on the slopes with a blended average of the FULL/BASE days which equals roughly 170,000 skier visits per season. Given last year JAX Hole announced a "record" all-time high in skier visits at 634,500, my 170,000 guesstimate is a significant slice of that. And keep in mind, that "record" slaughtered their previous record by > 70k skiers visits, meaning a more typical JH year is akin to maybe 550,000 skier visits.

Now, I can already hear you saying my 15% estimate is too high? FINE.

Even if only 5% or so of IKON users hit Jackson (that sounds too low, IMO), that's almost 60,000 skier visits, or >10% of their typical total skier days. Again, a significant bump, and my guess is more than 5% of all IKON'ers hit Jackson Hole. You'd need to have access to the pass data to know the real numbers, and only Jackson Hole and Alterra know that, but I feel confident by back-of-the-envelope analysis shows Jackson Hole is probably getting hit pretty hard over what it's prior "typical" season looked like.

No, I'll take your math, the math itself is good. So take your 15%, and here is where the math may mislead without a deeper dive, of those Ikons, how many WOULD HAVE visited JH without it (so a reduction in days skied via other means)? Mountain Collective allowed a weekend trip before fully covered (and successive ones at 50% off) and yet, we heard nothing from that and it was a cheaper pass option. I look at both JH and Big Sky and those resorts have been on the March hard upgrading lifts/facilities/terrain and convincing airlines to add options into their airport for years. All that had nothing to do with Ikon but CANNOT be discounted as to why they are drawing higher now. I have no doubt Ikon is adding to it, the pass surely has yielded those areas even more visibility in the general skiers eye. But to blame the mass increases on Ikon alone is living in a vacuum. There are too many variables being changed to just finger one of them.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using AlpineZone mobile app

 

[jaytrem]

i think BC is the solution..at least to insane crowding

Indeed, that's a big reason why I went to interior BC 4 years in a row. Plenty of other places around the US still uncrowded too, but a lot of those BC places are quite large and have great snow.

 

[abc]

No, I'll take your math, the math itself is good. So take your 15%, and here is where the math may mislead without a deeper dive, of those Ikons, how many WOULD HAVE visited JH without it (so a reduction in days skied via other means)? Mountain Collective allowed a weekend trip before fully covered (and successive ones at 50% off) and yet, we heard nothing from that and it was a cheaper pass option. I look at both JH and Big Sky and those resorts have been on the March hard upgrading lifts/facilities/terrain and convincing airlines to add options into their airport for years. All that had nothing to do with Ikon but CANNOT be discounted as to why they are drawing higher now. I have no doubt Ikon is adding to it, the pass surely has yielded those areas even more visibility in the general skiers eye. But to blame the mass increases on Ikon alone is living in a vacuum. There are too many variables being changed to just finger one of them.

I'm afraid you're ignoring the math (again?)

Mountain Collection is NOT included with any local passes. So it's an EXTRA $350(?) for EVERYONE.

Ikon is INCLUDED in many Colorado skiers "local pass", namely the former Rockie Mountain Super Paas, which the Ikon REPLACED!

So no, Mountain Collective is NOT CHEAPER option. It's cost extra, while Ikon does NOT.

I know because I've been a RMSP holder for many years. That option was taken away this season. I had no choice but to either go Epic local, or pay $200 extra for the Ikon. Once the Ikon is forced upon all of us formerly RMSP holders, Jackson and Big Sky became a "freebie"!

So basically, Alterra forced many Colorado skiers to pay the $200 extra. And for that extra cost, Jackson is the closest to make that $200 extra pay! Is it any surprise majority of them flock to Jackson after they are forced to cough up the extra bucks for their home pass?

To say Ikon isn't the MAIN reason of the crowding in Jackson is a bit ignorant.

 

[Domeskier]

To say Ikon isn't the MAIN reason of the crowding in Jackson is really ignorant.

Jackson itself says Ikon is not the main reason for the recent crowding: https://www.tetongravity.com/story/culture/jhmr-pens-open-letter-explaining-impact-of-ikon-pass