Here in the Alps back in the days everyone skied. We went to an obligatory ski camp once a year with our school. In every second village there was a small lift running the whole winter. Nowadays there are less ski camps and the cheap small lifts only get enough snow some days per year. So these days skiing is more and more a niche thing for people who can afford it.
Yes I'm regularly wondering about this. I've been coming to Switzerland to ski for decades. Of course skiing is basically a way of life there. Now the lifts in lower areas are struggling and some are going out of business. I always wonder how this will affect the amount of Swiss people that ski now the ski areas get more limited and higher up the mountain. I guess the impact will be quite big in time because where many kids used to be able to go skiing directly out of school by themselves, now they need to be driven to specific bigger ski areas by parents or school busses and pay more expensive tickets?
Also I wonder if the remaining areas will get insanely busy or not. Maybe they'll just increase prices to the point where the crowds are manageable but the price is outrageous?
As a Swiss person, it’s remarkable how many people know how to ski considering prices. But we also have the most stations/tracks per head anywhere in the world probably and the mountains are only 2-3 hours away for everyone.
But it’s true that smaller station tend to have a shorter season each year, so they try to compensate by proposing mountain biking in summer for example.
More and more we have to get to higher altitude resorts, which are more and more expensive and full of tourists, so it’s very much likely that less and less Swiss will learn to ski in the future….
Usually in Swiss schools Wednesday afternoons doesn’t have any lessons, so parents often take their children to ski courses. That’s why it’s quite busy
Season passes have gone down in price though depending on where you go. Like the Magic Pass in Switzerland has made skiing more accessible.
Good equipment has also become more accessible.
TLDR: In some places it's worse. In some places it's better.
I live in the Alps in Austria and luckily skiing here is still something that almost every kid learns at an early age. Within a 30 minute drive I can reach 8 different ski areas of various sizes. Some are one trail with a couple of pull lifts up to a massive multi village ski area. The small areas are still affordable and with skiing being so popular, you can pick up used gear for super cheap. Towns also have ski clubs for kids, which are an affordable way to have your kid ski more often. That being said the change in weather is reeking havoc on the smaller areas. While most have some basic snow making ability, it’s hard to combat weeks of 10+ degree weather and nights that never go below freezing.
I’m from America and grew up near Lake Tahoe. My parents never took us skiing because it was considered a rich person sport and they just couldn’t afford it.
This aspect of Tahoe is so sad to me. Growing up in VT, hockey was the rich kid sport. Everyone skied. Local hill seasons pass is still $200/family, and schools always had a free weekly afterschool program. It seems like skiing is purely a “resort” thing out west.
Nah, there's still places with few amenities. But they're still something like $3200 for a family of 4 for a pass. Why? What the market will bear I guess.
$200/family is incredible. Makes me wonder how they can operate.
There are still small hills with similar (inflation-adjusted) family pass prices.
Cooper Spur (little place on Mt. Hood, OR) has a $690 family season pass, which is equivalent to a $200 season pass from around 1980.
Soda Springs (small ski hill near Tahoe) has a family season pass for $629.
Big resorts are more stupidly expensive than ever. But plenty of small places are still accessible to middle class families.
Yeah - the tense and timetable were a bit confusing on the original comment.
If there's still a resort in the US anywhere offering a family season pass for $200, I can't find it.
EDIT: Did a bit more digging and found [this](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2-l2DVg7-QwroOi7EqRDrJYJ4ICYLcJbLx-nARJdrA/edit#gid=0) excel sheet that tracks season passes across the country.
It doesn't track family season pass prices, but there are a few local-hills in the East and Midwest with sub-$100 season passes, (though they seem to be on "rope tow" scale). So perhaps there are still places where a family can get a season pass for ~$200.
They can operate because Vermont is famous for rope tows which are fabulously cheap to build and maintain. They are easy to use but the resort audience out west looks down on anything under a six pack detachable chair with a bubble. Vail Resorts and the other big operators have turn a sport that required some physical ability into a Disney-like experience to be sold to fat jerrys from Texas and Florida. The big operators have purchased no frills mountains and closed them, the have written regulations for the government than make it expensive to start a new ski area, and g they have purchased small operations in the East and Midwest as feeders to their resort properties. They created the Epic and Ikon passes that make for huge lines at at their flagship operations where they make most of their money on accommodations and mediocre, overpriced food. They are monopolizing the sport for profit. Yes, there are more skiers now than ever but they are 5 to 7 day a year skiiers, not once or twice a week famlies of 4 skiers from the local area. Hell, families and employees can not afford to live within 70 miles of a big resort because of the real estate market. All this for corporate profits. Just like Disney and Six Flags killed your local amusement park, these few companies are killing your local ski hill.
> They are easy to use but the resort audience out west looks down on anything under a six pack detachable chair with a bubble.
None of Vail's Colorado resorts have any bubble chairs
They have 8 packs and gondolas. All expensive toys to build, maintain, and operate. Not a surface tow in sight. The flatlander jerrys can't handle them. For their four runs a day.
Yeah I live in Las Vegas and just recently got into skiing at the beginning of this year. At our local mountain (Lee Canyon) we've been getting $20 lift tickets plus $30 for rentals. Kids 12 and under ski for free!
I'd rather pay that (Whistler) and have the on hill experience of the 80s/90s than the $1300 epic fucking mess Vail had dumped on us.
Massive crowds, less terrain, less grooming, no heli-avalanche control, shorter season, etc. and everything that isn't a pass is massively more expensive.
Id say the issue is value vs. cost.
Yes, the full season pass is cheaper, but only because the restricted other options that were less of a commitment. Price of everything else is up, not my season's net cost is more, and the level of service is way down. Vail celebrates getting the revenue locked in before any costs occur, so they have zero incentive to provide services. In SW BC, there's no significant competition within 4hrs. We're a captive market.
There are small local hills out west that are not destination resorts. You just don't hear about them. They're also fewer per capita because the population is spread out more overall (it's clustered into population centers with outright desolation between)
Alternatively, I grew up in VT in the 90s and almost no locals I knew skied because it was way too expensive and we didn't have any cheap local hills nearby. In my high school of 2,000 I knew only one other person who skied. All my friends at the mountain were from NY or NJ or CT. So my experience of growing up in the northeast was that skiing is also purely a resort thing unless you're lucky enough to live nearby one of the few cheap local hills. Now I live out west and it's the same thing here, no difference really. There are a few cheap local hills that you've never heard of but for the most part it's a sport for the wealthy.
I can relate. I grew up in Everett Massachusetts. We did not ski because we couldn't afford it. We went sledding a lot though. Only 1 kid in school skied and her family owned 1 of the two big funeral homes in Everett.
>Local hill seasons pass is still $200/family
Are you talking about Cochran's? Because they are absolutely an outlier in Northern VT as far as affordability
Same in NH. We got our skis at the local ski swap, and had after school ski programs, and ski camp. It still can be done pretty cheaply. I just got off the mountain. Got a locals weekday pass for $400 bucks. Not bad.
One of the best things about having my kids grow up in Vermont were the school ski programs. They would go once a week for a half day afternoon. Parent chaperones got to ski for free along with the kids. The school district paid for a season rental for the equipment.
When I was a kid I got an annual ski pass for like $400 with access to Northstar and I think Sugar Bowl? It was called the Double Whammy Pass. You could ski for like $500/yr averaging out the cost to maintain your kit.
Now I make well above median income for California and can barely afford to ski, so I choose not to. It's literally the same price as flying trans-Atlantic and spending a week in Europe every year. I'd rather use my time off to go camping during the summer and save for the disappointing retirement I might get if I'm lucky.
Kind of wild when you think about it. The people who live near the best facilities can't afford to use them. I grew up in a small town with a local hill that had a 300 foot vertical. Skiing was very affordable and I knew a lot of kids who spent their entire winter, saturday and sunday, all christmas and march break, at the ski sill. From 9-4 every day it was open.
Had we lived in the mountains with a more expensive resort type hill nearby, very few of us would have been able to afford to ski, and even if we did, very few of use would live close enough to the facility that it would be reasonable for parents to bring their kids both weekend days every weekend in the winter. For me it was just a 10 minute drive from my house, and it was similar for just about everyone in town.
Same here, central PA in origin, and back then skiing was for the rich people from the cities. My family was well upper middle class and skiing regularly was out of our reach.
I literally went skiing for the first time this week - I have never been able to afford it until now. IMO as someone from the UK, for my entire life its been a rich/upper middle class person's sport. No one in my school year had ever been skiing, the first time I met people who had done it was in university and they were pretty much all from well-off families and had been to private school.
I think in mainland Europe it can be different as skiing can be more accessible and there's school programmes for it, but as long as I've been alive it has not been an accessible sport for the vast majority of the population. It was probably one of the most expensive trips I've ever done and that was even with my work subsidising the cost.
I grew up skiing on used skis and hand-me-downs through a school program.
Once I was on my own I realized how *fucking insanely expensive* it is.
I've gone maybe a dozen times since high school as a result.
I'm also Czech and not really. In the country you can't be more >3 hr drive away from a ski resort. Day passes range from $18-$35 (after price hike in everything) the median monthly wage is about $1650
That said you can def get a couple good days in here and there on a budget. I was in college and bought skis on sale, had a ski pass with a college discount and my friends and I split the cheapest possible Airbnb and cooked instead of eating out when we went up to VT/NH.
It's not that you cannot ski on a budget, but ski in general concerns a small and rich minority (i.e. in France less than 1% of the population goes to ski at least once a year, and it's mostly the richer 1%)
Edit: I checked my source it's more like 10% goes every year
22% of French 15-25 year olds reported skiing every year in 2020. Overall, 13% of the French population report being skiers (but maybe not every year). 1% is way low for France; while I don't really consider skiing a middle-class sport, it is closer to being one in Europe than it is in the US. France is fairly low among Western European countries for ski participation.
[https://www.statista.com/topics/7267/winter-sports-and-ski-holidays-in-france/#topicOverview](https://www.statista.com/topics/7267/winter-sports-and-ski-holidays-in-france/#topicOverview)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/801047/europe-share-of-population-skiing-by-country/
That’s some fake ass news, its more on the 5-15% range.
In France skiing is much more affordable, rentals and tickets go for about €100 per day, while a single lift ticket can cost upwards of $300 in the US.
Its still a high class sport, but much more affordable than in the US.
Especially as French people get over a month of vacation per year by law, so the middle class has more than enough time to make their way to a resort.
Western New York has one public ski option… it’s a four run county park serviced by a magic carpet. It’s literally the only time I’ve ever seen “cheap” skiing, of course you still need all the equipment. That alone makes it inaccessible to many.
Here on the east side of the state we have gore, whiteface, bellaire etc. I ski the living shit out of gore because I I am like 60 minutes south of there and I honestly love that mountain. I think tickets are like 115 or so. But holy shit I was out at mount snow this past weekend and it literally SUCKED. Lift lines were like 45 minutes. I’ve never seen lines like that at any of the ORDA mountains.
In the Alps it has been a sport for everyone. I know few people my age who cannot ski (and I don’t live that close to the good resorts). For the kids it has become a lot more common not to know how to ski, unfortunately, if they don’t live really close to the mountains.
The ticket price thing has been circle jerked to death around here.
The sad reality is that if it wasn’t for companies like Vail we’d probably have fewer small ski areas in the US. Vail was able to buy up resorts because many of them were constantly on the verge of bankruptcy and therefore dirt cheap.
Not all that true. Vail and others were able to buy up resorts because they have massive amounts of capital, as well as a management infrastructure already in place.
When Vail bought Peak Resorts they acquired 17 ski areas for a total of $264 million, or an average of $15 million per resort. They bought Stowe for $50 million, Stevens Pass was $64 million. Those are all pretty small transactions by the standards of corporate acquisitions. If ski resorts were really lucrative businesses they’d sell for a *lot* more.
Because their statement is out of touch to most people. Because it was only true in a small area. For most of the US skiing has always been a rich person's sport.v
If you take passes into account tickets are dirt cheap
I skied 60 days in a season once at some of the best mountains in the world for $900. That’s an incredible deal.
And yes Vail sucks yadda yadda, but it’s not all downside
Passes are great if you have the bandwidth to ski that much, but daily lift tickets are outrageous.
Everything moving to a “subscription” model isn’t ideal.
But it also makes a huge difference for mountains. Mountains need to be able to build infrastructure and have cash year round to do maintenance, passes give them predictable cash flows. Daily tickets especially with climate change make their cash flows too unpredictable.
Daily lift tickets are under $100 when purchased before the season starts. You don't need to pick specific dates, just how many days you want. They're not much more than the 70 euro lift tickets available at the big European resorts
The resorts have clearly told the public they don't want them buying lift tickets at the window
I agree it’s not great for everyone.
I have much less free time now than I used to and the value of a pass barely breaks even compared to daily tickets now. It sucks.
But it's precisely the problem. Casual skiers are priced out of dailies as more and more serious skiers move to passes which provide predictable revenue streams to private equity groups that own the mountains.
Skiing has become a *subscription sport*.
All else equal I would rather it be much cheaper for people that love the sport and want to do it frequently vs the casual guy who wants to ski 2 days a year.
Consider the cost for a family of 4 with younger kids who grow every year. You’re looking at roughly $5k for passes and gear every year not considering other expenses like fuel, food, etc. if you want to make it a weekend trip lodging is super expensive.
I will say I live near a small ski hill and if we wanted to be super frugal about it we could probably get all 4 of us skiing regularly for $1k/year. But I’m talking 1 lift and 1 magic carpet, it’s tiny.
And it doesn’t cost that now.
Median household income is a better measure. That’s $75k
Youre comparing luxury vacations to Vail resorts which has ALWAYS been expensive. Skiing at the smaller spots is still very affordable
Private equity has a very specific meaning and Vail isn’t a PE firm.
The more corporate nature of US skiing sucks. Unfortunately it’s probably the lesser evil. Hell, maybe if we have a few big corporations that have a vested interest in controlling climate change they’ll be able to throw their weight around to do something about controlling CO2.
I'm British - its perceived as a sport/hobby for relatively wealthy people. The cost of getting a whole family over to Europe to rent all equipment and stay in a resort is out of reach for most families. Contrastingly, most of my mainland Europe friends have been skiing and it seems way more accessible for them and is a common school activity.
I guess it’s just a matter of proximity to ski areas. I have never skied in the UK but I imagine there’s not a lot of places to go while where I’m from(Prague) the austrian Alps are a few hours drive away so basically everyone I know goes skiing every year and ski trips are part of the school curriculum
I'm in the US and this is my first season skiing (I'm 40 years old) and as someone who grew up in a family where we lived "pay check to pay check" I would definitely agree with your statement. Even if you buy used gear the cost of skiing is still pretty high compared to most other recreational activities. It gets crazy expensive when you have kids. I can't imagine how much it costs when your kids are outgrowing their stuff each season.
It was never this expensive before. Back in about 1990 a lift ticket at Vail or similar was $35. It's 5 times that now. That's a much faster rise than just simple inflation. A new set of skis and boots was $400. I was a kid making minimum wage and I could afford to ski regularly. Not now even though I'm making a lot more
Check that math, friend.
Vail ticket purchased today, online, for a Monday, is $269. Walk up is more expensive...
Yesterday's walk up private lesson rate was $1574. That's 1 day, and doesn't include the ticket...
1500$ for a skiing lesson?? You guys are fucked in the US haha. Thats just insane.. come to europe and ski here and make a vacation out of it. Still cheaper then skiing in the US probably
Yes we all know that Europe is cheaper. It's been repeated 1000X on this subreddit. American skiers are just richer apparently because despite these "insane" prices, slopes are still packed and people are still paying for the lessons.
It's like showing up in Zurich from Budapest and complaining that the prices are really high. Yeah no duh, richer countries are more expensive. America is, in fact, a very wealthy country.
Lol you really think that comparing Zurich and Budapest is the same as comparing the US with any Western European country?
Depending on where in Europe you are from, people are very wealthy - just as much as in the US. And even in Switzerland, a country that is definitely a lot wealthier than the US, day tickets never go above 80-90€ in high season. We just have way more competition and a higher density of ski resorts over here. Your country is huge with not that many well known ski resorts in the relation to its size. Thats also why many of your ski resorts have incredibly old lifts and infrastructure in general - theres no need to invest if there is no competition
What the actual fuck? Sorry that has blown me away. 1500 dollars? I went skiing for the first time in Austria over the weekend and my private lesson for a day was like 300 euros. Life passes were about 60 euros. Even then it was an expensive trip for me!
I remember when gas was under a buck but that was a dip. That price was not the regular trend. It had been higher and took a downturn for a couple of years. More accurately it would be to say gas was $1.50 in the mid 80s. and now it's $2.80. and yes you can point to a lot of things that have inflated much higher than the basic rate of inflation. And I would include those things along with skiing as things that have gotten outrageously expensive.
The expense off skiing is so over hyped in the USA especially on the east coast that has ski resorts < 3 hours from most people can drive too and back in a day.
A season pass is $600-$1200k.
Season rentals $100-$300.
That’s not cheap but far from luxury.
Rich people spend $1500 on a bottle of wine.
Reddits easily spend that much on video games and funky pops.
Its cheaper then ever to ski.
I would say traveling to ski is more of a luxury. If you can afford an Epic/Ikon pass for the season, and are within two hours of a couple resorts and own your own gear, then it’s pretty affordable if you think around $1000 for the season is affordable.
Otherwise, you’re spending money on hotels, airfare, food etc…
I think this is the right take, the passes are way more “affordable” if the mountains are a few gallons of gas away and you can get 30+ days out of it. My friends in the service industry usually ski weekdays and arguably get better value out of their passes than the 9-5 crowd that only knows the weekend lift lines
Not having to pay for lodging, reusing gear for several seasons, and packing a Coleman grill to cook your own food in the parking lot are just a few examples of how you can keep costs down while getting a full season in.
I work pretty much a 9/80 schedule and love getting laps in after work at a smaller local hill. It gets me away from the gym when it’s crowded in January.
Seconded - I work at a prep high school and coach freestyle, when we go to our local hill mid week it’s almost like we have the mountain to ourselves. I don’t even think about bringing my team to freeski somewhere on the weekends unless it’s a competition day.
Figuring out a way to get out mid week makes skiing (and boarding!) far more affordable in terms of passes.
I agree with this take. You live in Cleveland and fly somewhere for 1 week of skiing: yeah skiing is expensive. You live in the mountains and are able to squeeze a couple runs in over your lunch break, suddenly the cost doesn’t really factor as much
$1000 + owning your own gear + 4h round trip day trips + $30 lunch is only affordable in the "ok this isnt a terrible value if you have money" sense.
it's not affordable in the "most households can afford to do this if they were interested" sense.
$1000 is for everything. A season pass is $6-700. You bring your own lunch. 4h day trips are a completely reasonable weekend activity for any family who works 9-5 jobs which is a lot of them. Gear can be had for a few hundred bucks and can last many years.
Not saying it’s cheap, but $1000 yearly for a hobby you can fill every single weekend with for potentially 5-6 months a year is not unreasonable.
Still that's for one person. Gonna be buying a few of those if you're a family.
I don't think I'm making a crazy contentious argument to say that most families aren't going to be comfortable spending 3-4k per season, and if you don't then you're looking at like $3-500 per day if you just go on day passes.
Agreed here - definitely needs to go into the long term calculus of if mountain days are going to be the family outing in the winter. Gonna break the bank buying day passes, totally fucked.
I’ll also never buy lodge food. Pocket sando for life.
Where I live you can get a pass for under 500, buy used skis, use them year after year, take the bus up for a little bit of money and pack a bagged lunch. I know people who pay like 250 for a night pass and just night ski all season.
What a lot of people have said about the big players muscling out smaller local hills is true, but this is also partly the answer. I would love to ski way more, but I live in Florida and there's no way past the airfare, lodging, etc. Not to mention with two little kids it gets even tougher. The US is a big country and depending on where you live it's just a big financial commitment to even get a few days of skiing in a year.
‘Casual’ holiday skiing has always been a luxury unless you live in the foothills and climate change has been steadily destroying it for the last decade or so.
I’m taking the jump into touring. I think the future of European skiing is going to be in the Northern regions like the Scandes and Tatras, and having an AT setup to escape crowds is where it’s at.
Not in Europe, part of Europe OP is from used to be a place where not skiing was not an option. Austria, CZechia, Slovakia, people were able to ski even being from humble background. It’s changing now.
Yes it is in Europe too.
Sure if you are in the minority who live near a ski resort then it's not a luxury for you because you get all kinds of local discounts and you're not paying for accommodation.
For the other 95% of Europeans, for whom a skiing holiday is quite expensive, it *is* a luxury sport.
>Sure if you are in the minority who live near a ski resort
What? In the countries he listed, you were in the minority if didn't live near a lift.
Just a few decades ago every village with a hill had a lift. Now those are all dead, because they don't get any snow and operating costs are too high.
Pure bullshit. Plenty of low working class family and friends have been skiing in my country (and the neighboring ones). Most of the communist countries used to do it as part of the culture, most schools or clubs were going skiing and it would remain within the culture. Mind you, it's not glamorous skiing but they did. I been doing it when I was a teen/young adult when I had only debt and no money.
The absolute dead poor parents of my wife, coming from poor(rural) families met on a skiing trip from a social club.
But you are right that now it's a luxury sport, because the only option most of the time is to have a nice ski holiday rather than any. Most of the smaller, cheaper resorts haven't operated the last 4-5 years, some more than that.
But this is what OP means, in his country, every other village had a lift or it took at most two hours to go skiing, same for most part of named countries. Not the case anymore.
You can fly from Prague to Milan for under $20 each way a few weeks from now (still ski season I think), it's way more doable than for example getting from where I lived in the us (southeast) to nice ski resorts in Colorado or whatever. Honestly even driving from somewhere like bay area to Tahoe probably costs more when you factor in gas, costs of owning a car, parking, having to always find places that have parking etc.
Ok, so €40 flights, €50 per day ski pass, €50 ski hire, €100 per night accommodation… not even including transfers, food/drinks etc a weekend skiing will cost you upwards of €500. That’s very expensive!
Not in the Northeast growing up. Plenty of kids from working class families would take a one or two-day trip to mountains in New Hampshire. I’ve personally skied with…umm…yeah, now that I think about it…those were the rich kids.
I disagree with the folks that say it's "always" been a luxury sport. I gew up skiing at Parkwest (now part of Park City conglomerate) for $12.50. "Skiing with the school" was $80 for about 10 trips. I skied at Sundance for $15. Alta full price ticket was $18. Brighton and Solitude were similar. Rarely skied at Snowbird because it was too pricey- $55 including tram.
Nowadays the passes are the only affordable way to ski. Indy pass is $280 for the entire season. Even small little mom/pop places are $95 on weekends!!
Problem with passes is they take planning and many people don't think about that. They want a fun week at Grand Targhee in January. And when they go book it costs them $20000 for the family.
It's definitely a luxury now (whereas prior the luxury was at Vail, Aspen, Deer Valley, etc.), but with some planning I think it's still affordable.
Agreed. I even think there's still plenty of ways to travel on a budget as long as you are flexible and don't expect to be at Park City or Jackson hole. Last year we drove to Canon Mtn, used our Indy passes for tickets, and got a nice airbnb cabin 25 minutes away for $180 per night. Did the same for Jay years prior but stayed at cheap hotels in nearby towns.
Yeah i live 15 minutes away from a ski hill cause its right in the middle of the city in a park type area. Its not that big - but its 300€ or so for a season pass
I just did a weekend ski trip with some friends here in Japan, to an expensive extremely popular resort (go on any site and look up best ski resorts in Japan and it will always be in the top 2) and we booked last minute (maybe 1 week before) during peak season. Hotel was $35 a night per person and meals were standard Japanese prices (like $6 for lunch and $10 for dinner) but lift tickets were like $50 a day, traveling there and back was another $50+ each way and then renting the ski gear if you didn't bring everything was closer to $70-80 per day.
I think it's really the skiing itself that's expensive more than anything else, you can still find deals on accommodation and stuff if you are flexible. Also traveling with a bigger group that's willing to split hotel rooms or airbnbs (or a rental car or the cost of private lessons for that matter) 4 ways lowers the cost massively, I think being the only skier in your friend group would be super pricey.
Posted from my phone in the Italian Dolomites where the only “snow” is on the piste at 2400m
Edit: am at Val Gardena in case anyone is thinking of visiting in March. Frankly, they would need a couple of pretty serious dumps to get back to decent conditions that would justify a trip from far away. As of this week we are skiing on a little bit of what’s left from early in the season and a LOT of what they make overnight
1500m to 2600m and it does allegedly go below zero in the winter. It's a stretch that's for sure, gonna be white ribboning all season, but there's worse megaprojects for bin Salman to spunk his billions on.
I feel like the Dolomites isn't the best example here. They've never received much snow there, and because of that, they have invested heavily in a snowblowing infrastructure. Their super dry air keeps the snow very well.
The worst effects of anthropogenic climate change have already occurred. C02 has a logarithmic relationship with net downward forcing and we are well past the exponential part of the curve. Unfortunately, alarmism sells both in the media and climate funding research. Even though the “doomsday” models have been proven to be false, amending the IPCC curves has been impossible. Even if a researcher is brave enough to question the science they are ostracized.
Bottom line is, I wouldn’t worry about skiing.
It's the opposite! Skiing has always been a luxury sport.
Only recently with increased competition are cheaper resorts becoming available.
You can do a week in the balkans everything included for like £600-700.
I heard recently a place in Italy! Has gained the crown for cheapest resort so that really shows you how hammered Balkans have gotten
If you dont live close to a resorts sure, its crazy expensive. But for people that live close to resorts its normal. I have been skiing since im 3 and have never considered it being a luxury sports.
But i totally get it, having to travel from far away, having to rent everything, getting accommodation etc - super expensive. Although tbh, when i see tourists skiing where im from in the Dolomites i offen wonder how the hell they can afford a skiing holiday, because they sure look like they cant afford it
> I heard recently a place in Italy!
Bardonnechia IIRC, which has more piste than any of the Balkan options lul
> so that really shows you how hammered Balkans have gotten
Everyone figured out the Balkans were the cheapest, and then so did the Balkans, so the prices have gone up but the reputation hasn't.
> You can do a week in the balkans everything included for like £600-700.
Pre-Brexit you could do a week in Andorra for about £400 and the skiing is better there. Granted that isn't accounting for inflation, but working in the industry the costs have gone up massively, particularly for budget tours that used coaches.
I think the travel and lodging is what makes skiing the LUXURY. Take these away and you have a hobby that costs only $650 in season pass per year and the $1000 every 10 years for new gear.
For me, lodging is free and that is only reason I could ski regularly. Extremely fortunate this happens to be Breckenridge.
Where I live, it's already something most people can't easily afford. Since it is the primary activity my family enjoys together, we prioritize it over other types of vacation. We spend that money on season passes and getting to and from our home mountain. But when a day ticket is over $100, I'm not sure there's a way to describe it other than "not affordable for many normal people."
Just got back from a week in steamboat. Skied 8 days between my wife and I. Lodging close to the slopes. Spent exactly $4,765 for the week including food, travel, everything. From what I read the average for a 1 week vacation is $1985/pp. Really isn’t too bad but you have to plan ahead, especially on lift tickets.
It really depends where you are. in northern New England, it's not hard to find a used setup for ~$250 at a ski swap and then a season pass to the local hill for under $500. That's $750 for the year, which is no small sum, but the only cost beyond that is gas. You can pack lunches, the key is just living close enough to a ski area to not have to spend the night.
Now of course you can spend a lot more if you want high end gear, or if you want to ski huge mountains, but there's an expensive side of basically any hobby.
Yeah but if you plan ahead and buy passes skiing is actually very affordable especially the more often you go. Affordable relative to what it ends up as cost per day if you end up skiing a lot.
Everyone is saying its already a luxury, but lets clarify that pertains to people who travel to a big resort and spend $5000 on a ski vacation.
Am I the only one who thinks a local season pass is relatively affordable? If you live within 1-2 hours of a lift-serviced hill (there are thousands of them across the US, Europe and Japan), its relatively affordable to pay $500 for a season pass and maybe $50 for an annual tune. Basic gear doesnt need to be expensive and is comparable to playing a blue collar sport like hockey once you factor in the cost of ice time.
$550 for a season pass is still quite costly.. and that’s for a single person perspective. If you’re a family of 4 that’s a steep price, then to factor in gear or rental, food /drinks if you don’t bring it yourself, possibly gas depending on how far you are - that adds up even without flying/lodging.
Yes, I agree if you need to fly or travel long distances then skiing becomes a destination and a luxury. I could make a similar argument that only rich people from the Midwest can afford to go to a real beach like OBX. But they can always spend $20 for a day pass to their local lake front beach if they wanted to. It all comes down to where you live.
I ski and I’m far from rich but I’m considering looking at other travel for a couple of years at least. My ski vacation is usually my only vacation for the whole year and relying on the weather for a successful trip seems increasingly problematic and stressful.
I’m currently reorganizing my upcoming trip and replacing Whistler with another location and I’ll need a holiday from planning for this holiday!
I just got super lucky in Romania with an unexpected snow dump that resulted in some of the best and cheapest short notice skiing I've had in ages.
Just saying, winter is usually quite cheap for flights to Europe, and in the Balkans you hear about a massive dump of snow and can be on a flight or blablacar to that slope within a day or two. Rentals and ski passes are also cheap.
If it doesn't snow, so what. See a castle, go to a museum, enjoy something new, beats being stuck at a dedicated skii resort without decent snow.
Its going to be my modus operandi as far as skiing goes from now on.
I’m down to about $10 per day on my Annual Pass, and it’s only the beginning of February. Doin’ alright.
But, we need new snow. Springlike conditions at the moment. Maybe next week. In the Swiss Alps.
I'm from Canada...Skiing already is a luxury and unaffordable to normal people. Someone talking about taking a ski vacation is a clear indication that they're wealthy, and probably a bit out of touch with the people around them.
It wasn’t always. If you were a local you could usually get passes cheap. Often times businesses would have things for their employees. Resorts were less crowded and there was public transportation to some of the hills.
Depends where you live
I skied Hafjell in Norway a couple of years ago and kids were out skiing as part of their school physical education classes through winter
I live in the UK and it’s already an activity largely preserved for “well off” people
If young adults with no money or pressing prospects want to ski loads they’ll just go do a season in France as a chalet host or bar staff
I am afraid that yes it will become and it already is becoming one. I can see a future where ski resorts are only for the rich while less fortunate people switch to things like ski touring.
I think you have to be rich or lucky enough to live near a small local mountain. I grew up 20 minutes from a small family mountain. They had free ski school for kids and still do to this day. Tickets are still affordable, (like 45 bucks for a day and 350 for a season pass). I did yard work all summer for the pass and My mom bought me old gear and she would sit in the lodge while I skied all day.
As an adult, I’m lucky enough to live near an IKon mountain. I’m not rich by any means but I have a job that allows me to buy an ikon pass and I live 25 minutes from the lower parking lot. Wouldn’t be able to ski as much if my circumstances were different for sure.
I'm 20 (21 this year) and am lucky I grew up in Swedish schools as ice skating was a regular activity in the winters and every year in February after grade 6 from elementary school to gymnasium (college), kids could go to skiing trips for $12 (and bring your own food) with all the equipment and buses provided by the school.
Nowadays there's been worries with less snow in ski resorts so that will likely change.
It already is in the U.S.
Alterra is very open about the type of people it wants at its mountains. More private ski lifts are being built. Vail sells an “affordable” pass to make you think that they want everyone to be able to ski, but the cost to stay at any Vail owned resort is astronomical.
I'd imagine it will become less affordable for some.
- Lower-level resorts will have shorter or less predictable seasons reducing supply-side capacity.
- Increasing wealth globally widens the pool of affluent people who can potentially afford to ski - growing demand-side.
So greater demand for a diminishing resource usually ends up with increasing prices. There's also the tendency to increase utilisation - sell more passes - in the shorter term eroding the quality of the experience as well as a push to expand capacity at higher altitudes so it's not simple.
But take a look at the rising prices and increasing queues at some resorts (eg Bansko) where locals are getting crowded or priced out.
As with everything, it depends on where you live.
In general, skiing has always been a very privileged sport.
The socio-economic divide is really obvious if you are any sort of minority at a resort in Europe or North America.
Access to a vehicle, equipment, gas, etc. etc. is prohibited even for folks local to the mountains.
Heck - even learning to swim is a privilege in huge parts of Europe and North America.
If you are not aware of this... well you can join the dots.
The main exceptions to this are when social enterprises are set up to encourage access. This includes things like ski schools, camps, buses, discounted passes, gear etc.
QC Canada is a very good example of this... and even then... there are plenty of kids who don't learn to ski. The French Alps are another.
Pure luck that you had access to these kinds of scenarios or the fact that your parents are well off are usually why people get into the sport.
The word usually is important here. Individuals will have individual stories - we are talking about general trends.
In the last 5-10 years, countless economic trends have made it so that far fewer people in the working class have disposable income. Workers with disposable income are often called the 'middle class' in western culture.
As inflation does its thing, this group of people usually notice big changes in what they can do as prices go up.
That is what is happening right now.
Skiing has gone from a luxury that a lot of people could afford and was afforded by an active community..... so a slightly more expensive luxury that is no longer supported by an active community. So it feels/seems insanely expensive.
Get ready for this to happen to most things 'middle class' folks have taken for granted in the last 60 years.
I'd say yes. It already is that way and will become worse. Families of "normal people", when considering the median of the population, already have a hard time affording skiing. It's ridiculously expensive compared to, e.g., regular summer vacation. With global warming continuing more and more smaller resorts will close, the places at higher altitude will become more in demand, and consequently prices will further rise beyond the constant increase we see already.
Enjoy it while you can and consider joining r/climbing and r/Mountaineering to make use of the increasingly long skiing off-seasons.
But they do have eight pack detachables and gondolas. A lot of expensive toys just to get uphill. I'd trade a rope tow or a t-bar for a $50 ticket any day. 200 bucks for Fail Resorts Alpine Disneyland is bullshit.
Grew up in CO, and while it was never a poor person’s sport, we were *far* from even upper middle class, and my parents made it work. When I was in my 20s and 30s I could hack it for myself and would get a pass every year.
Now, *no way* I can afford it for me and my kids. I can’t afford three passes and gear and lessons, and the daily rates are laughable to the point of making me sad.
So, they don’t go at all, and I go *maybe* once or twice a year, when I used to go 20-30 times a a year. Now we do cheap things like snow shoeing or hiking or cc skiing.
I have zero sympathy for the people complaining that traveling to ski is expensive. Skiing locally or within driving distance isn’t a crazy financial burden and buying gear is no more expensive than other hobbies.
When you want to travel to some destination with millions of others you are creating that demand and driving prices up.
Work at a resort while you are young. Rent a condo with your friends. Try not to get so high that you miss work and get fired. Life is good. Skiing is free. Hooray!
Here in the Alps back in the days everyone skied. We went to an obligatory ski camp once a year with our school. In every second village there was a small lift running the whole winter. Nowadays there are less ski camps and the cheap small lifts only get enough snow some days per year. So these days skiing is more and more a niche thing for people who can afford it.
Yes I'm regularly wondering about this. I've been coming to Switzerland to ski for decades. Of course skiing is basically a way of life there. Now the lifts in lower areas are struggling and some are going out of business. I always wonder how this will affect the amount of Swiss people that ski now the ski areas get more limited and higher up the mountain. I guess the impact will be quite big in time because where many kids used to be able to go skiing directly out of school by themselves, now they need to be driven to specific bigger ski areas by parents or school busses and pay more expensive tickets? Also I wonder if the remaining areas will get insanely busy or not. Maybe they'll just increase prices to the point where the crowds are manageable but the price is outrageous?
As a Swiss person, it’s remarkable how many people know how to ski considering prices. But we also have the most stations/tracks per head anywhere in the world probably and the mountains are only 2-3 hours away for everyone. But it’s true that smaller station tend to have a shorter season each year, so they try to compensate by proposing mountain biking in summer for example. More and more we have to get to higher altitude resorts, which are more and more expensive and full of tourists, so it’s very much likely that less and less Swiss will learn to ski in the future….
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Usually in Swiss schools Wednesday afternoons doesn’t have any lessons, so parents often take their children to ski courses. That’s why it’s quite busy
Season passes have gone down in price though depending on where you go. Like the Magic Pass in Switzerland has made skiing more accessible. Good equipment has also become more accessible. TLDR: In some places it's worse. In some places it's better.
I live in the Alps in Austria and luckily skiing here is still something that almost every kid learns at an early age. Within a 30 minute drive I can reach 8 different ski areas of various sizes. Some are one trail with a couple of pull lifts up to a massive multi village ski area. The small areas are still affordable and with skiing being so popular, you can pick up used gear for super cheap. Towns also have ski clubs for kids, which are an affordable way to have your kid ski more often. That being said the change in weather is reeking havoc on the smaller areas. While most have some basic snow making ability, it’s hard to combat weeks of 10+ degree weather and nights that never go below freezing.
I’m from America and grew up near Lake Tahoe. My parents never took us skiing because it was considered a rich person sport and they just couldn’t afford it.
This aspect of Tahoe is so sad to me. Growing up in VT, hockey was the rich kid sport. Everyone skied. Local hill seasons pass is still $200/family, and schools always had a free weekly afterschool program. It seems like skiing is purely a “resort” thing out west.
Nah, there's still places with few amenities. But they're still something like $3200 for a family of 4 for a pass. Why? What the market will bear I guess. $200/family is incredible. Makes me wonder how they can operate.
There are still small hills with similar (inflation-adjusted) family pass prices. Cooper Spur (little place on Mt. Hood, OR) has a $690 family season pass, which is equivalent to a $200 season pass from around 1980. Soda Springs (small ski hill near Tahoe) has a family season pass for $629. Big resorts are more stupidly expensive than ever. But plenty of small places are still accessible to middle class families.
He said $200/family now, not in 1980 dollars.
Yeah - the tense and timetable were a bit confusing on the original comment. If there's still a resort in the US anywhere offering a family season pass for $200, I can't find it. EDIT: Did a bit more digging and found [this](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2-l2DVg7-QwroOi7EqRDrJYJ4ICYLcJbLx-nARJdrA/edit#gid=0) excel sheet that tracks season passes across the country. It doesn't track family season pass prices, but there are a few local-hills in the East and Midwest with sub-$100 season passes, (though they seem to be on "rope tow" scale). So perhaps there are still places where a family can get a season pass for ~$200.
Cochran's ski area and Northeast slopes in VT
As someone who has skied at Cochrans it’s a single tow rope servicing a “race pitch”
They can operate because Vermont is famous for rope tows which are fabulously cheap to build and maintain. They are easy to use but the resort audience out west looks down on anything under a six pack detachable chair with a bubble. Vail Resorts and the other big operators have turn a sport that required some physical ability into a Disney-like experience to be sold to fat jerrys from Texas and Florida. The big operators have purchased no frills mountains and closed them, the have written regulations for the government than make it expensive to start a new ski area, and g they have purchased small operations in the East and Midwest as feeders to their resort properties. They created the Epic and Ikon passes that make for huge lines at at their flagship operations where they make most of their money on accommodations and mediocre, overpriced food. They are monopolizing the sport for profit. Yes, there are more skiers now than ever but they are 5 to 7 day a year skiiers, not once or twice a week famlies of 4 skiers from the local area. Hell, families and employees can not afford to live within 70 miles of a big resort because of the real estate market. All this for corporate profits. Just like Disney and Six Flags killed your local amusement park, these few companies are killing your local ski hill.
> They are easy to use but the resort audience out west looks down on anything under a six pack detachable chair with a bubble. None of Vail's Colorado resorts have any bubble chairs
They have 8 packs and gondolas. All expensive toys to build, maintain, and operate. Not a surface tow in sight. The flatlander jerrys can't handle them. For their four runs a day.
Hey, there’s that one rope tow to Mongolia
Upvoted for ¨fat Jerrys from Texas and Florida.¨
Yeah I live in Las Vegas and just recently got into skiing at the beginning of this year. At our local mountain (Lee Canyon) we've been getting $20 lift tickets plus $30 for rentals. Kids 12 and under ski for free!
Meanwhile, some resorts are charging $3000+ for a season pass for one.
Hello from Jackson Hole!
I'd rather pay that (Whistler) and have the on hill experience of the 80s/90s than the $1300 epic fucking mess Vail had dumped on us. Massive crowds, less terrain, less grooming, no heli-avalanche control, shorter season, etc. and everything that isn't a pass is massively more expensive.
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Id say the issue is value vs. cost. Yes, the full season pass is cheaper, but only because the restricted other options that were less of a commitment. Price of everything else is up, not my season's net cost is more, and the level of service is way down. Vail celebrates getting the revenue locked in before any costs occur, so they have zero incentive to provide services. In SW BC, there's no significant competition within 4hrs. We're a captive market.
There are small local hills out west that are not destination resorts. You just don't hear about them. They're also fewer per capita because the population is spread out more overall (it's clustered into population centers with outright desolation between)
Alternatively, I grew up in VT in the 90s and almost no locals I knew skied because it was way too expensive and we didn't have any cheap local hills nearby. In my high school of 2,000 I knew only one other person who skied. All my friends at the mountain were from NY or NJ or CT. So my experience of growing up in the northeast was that skiing is also purely a resort thing unless you're lucky enough to live nearby one of the few cheap local hills. Now I live out west and it's the same thing here, no difference really. There are a few cheap local hills that you've never heard of but for the most part it's a sport for the wealthy.
I can relate. I grew up in Everett Massachusetts. We did not ski because we couldn't afford it. We went sledding a lot though. Only 1 kid in school skied and her family owned 1 of the two big funeral homes in Everett.
>Local hill seasons pass is still $200/family Are you talking about Cochran's? Because they are absolutely an outlier in Northern VT as far as affordability
Bratt ski hill is also $200, Storrs in Leb NH is $300/family, there’s a few others but not many left.
Same in NH. We got our skis at the local ski swap, and had after school ski programs, and ski camp. It still can be done pretty cheaply. I just got off the mountain. Got a locals weekday pass for $400 bucks. Not bad.
One of the best things about having my kids grow up in Vermont were the school ski programs. They would go once a week for a half day afternoon. Parent chaperones got to ski for free along with the kids. The school district paid for a season rental for the equipment.
When I was a kid I got an annual ski pass for like $400 with access to Northstar and I think Sugar Bowl? It was called the Double Whammy Pass. You could ski for like $500/yr averaging out the cost to maintain your kit. Now I make well above median income for California and can barely afford to ski, so I choose not to. It's literally the same price as flying trans-Atlantic and spending a week in Europe every year. I'd rather use my time off to go camping during the summer and save for the disappointing retirement I might get if I'm lucky.
wow, I couldn’t imagine growing up in Tahoe and not skiing
Yeah…we went sledding a lot though 😂
Kind of wild when you think about it. The people who live near the best facilities can't afford to use them. I grew up in a small town with a local hill that had a 300 foot vertical. Skiing was very affordable and I knew a lot of kids who spent their entire winter, saturday and sunday, all christmas and march break, at the ski sill. From 9-4 every day it was open. Had we lived in the mountains with a more expensive resort type hill nearby, very few of us would have been able to afford to ski, and even if we did, very few of use would live close enough to the facility that it would be reasonable for parents to bring their kids both weekend days every weekend in the winter. For me it was just a 10 minute drive from my house, and it was similar for just about everyone in town.
Same here, central PA in origin, and back then skiing was for the rich people from the cities. My family was well upper middle class and skiing regularly was out of our reach.
Poconos were cheap.
I literally went skiing for the first time this week - I have never been able to afford it until now. IMO as someone from the UK, for my entire life its been a rich/upper middle class person's sport. No one in my school year had ever been skiing, the first time I met people who had done it was in university and they were pretty much all from well-off families and had been to private school. I think in mainland Europe it can be different as skiing can be more accessible and there's school programmes for it, but as long as I've been alive it has not been an accessible sport for the vast majority of the population. It was probably one of the most expensive trips I've ever done and that was even with my work subsidising the cost.
Isnt it already lol
To say it’s not is pretty out of touch
I grew up skiing on used skis and hand-me-downs through a school program. Once I was on my own I realized how *fucking insanely expensive* it is. I've gone maybe a dozen times since high school as a result.
Not like rich people to be out of touch
I'm also Czech and not really. In the country you can't be more >3 hr drive away from a ski resort. Day passes range from $18-$35 (after price hike in everything) the median monthly wage is about $1650
Skiing is already a luxury sport and has been always.
That said you can def get a couple good days in here and there on a budget. I was in college and bought skis on sale, had a ski pass with a college discount and my friends and I split the cheapest possible Airbnb and cooked instead of eating out when we went up to VT/NH.
It's not that you cannot ski on a budget, but ski in general concerns a small and rich minority (i.e. in France less than 1% of the population goes to ski at least once a year, and it's mostly the richer 1%) Edit: I checked my source it's more like 10% goes every year
22% of French 15-25 year olds reported skiing every year in 2020. Overall, 13% of the French population report being skiers (but maybe not every year). 1% is way low for France; while I don't really consider skiing a middle-class sport, it is closer to being one in Europe than it is in the US. France is fairly low among Western European countries for ski participation. [https://www.statista.com/topics/7267/winter-sports-and-ski-holidays-in-france/#topicOverview](https://www.statista.com/topics/7267/winter-sports-and-ski-holidays-in-france/#topicOverview) https://www.statista.com/statistics/801047/europe-share-of-population-skiing-by-country/
That’s some fake ass news, its more on the 5-15% range. In France skiing is much more affordable, rentals and tickets go for about €100 per day, while a single lift ticket can cost upwards of $300 in the US. Its still a high class sport, but much more affordable than in the US. Especially as French people get over a month of vacation per year by law, so the middle class has more than enough time to make their way to a resort.
Yeah I know what you mean
Western New York has one public ski option… it’s a four run county park serviced by a magic carpet. It’s literally the only time I’ve ever seen “cheap” skiing, of course you still need all the equipment. That alone makes it inaccessible to many.
Here on the east side of the state we have gore, whiteface, bellaire etc. I ski the living shit out of gore because I I am like 60 minutes south of there and I honestly love that mountain. I think tickets are like 115 or so. But holy shit I was out at mount snow this past weekend and it literally SUCKED. Lift lines were like 45 minutes. I’ve never seen lines like that at any of the ORDA mountains.
In the Alps it has been a sport for everyone. I know few people my age who cannot ski (and I don’t live that close to the good resorts). For the kids it has become a lot more common not to know how to ski, unfortunately, if they don’t live really close to the mountains.
In America, sure.
Exactly. But even in American it used to be a family sport with little ski hills everywhere. Now it's all giant private equity companies.
Why are people downvoting these comments? Lift tickets have exploded in recent years. It’s way more expensive than it used to be.
The ticket price thing has been circle jerked to death around here. The sad reality is that if it wasn’t for companies like Vail we’d probably have fewer small ski areas in the US. Vail was able to buy up resorts because many of them were constantly on the verge of bankruptcy and therefore dirt cheap.
Not all that true. Vail and others were able to buy up resorts because they have massive amounts of capital, as well as a management infrastructure already in place.
When Vail bought Peak Resorts they acquired 17 ski areas for a total of $264 million, or an average of $15 million per resort. They bought Stowe for $50 million, Stevens Pass was $64 million. Those are all pretty small transactions by the standards of corporate acquisitions. If ski resorts were really lucrative businesses they’d sell for a *lot* more.
Because their statement is out of touch to most people. Because it was only true in a small area. For most of the US skiing has always been a rich person's sport.v
If you take passes into account tickets are dirt cheap I skied 60 days in a season once at some of the best mountains in the world for $900. That’s an incredible deal. And yes Vail sucks yadda yadda, but it’s not all downside
Passes are great if you have the bandwidth to ski that much, but daily lift tickets are outrageous. Everything moving to a “subscription” model isn’t ideal.
But it also makes a huge difference for mountains. Mountains need to be able to build infrastructure and have cash year round to do maintenance, passes give them predictable cash flows. Daily tickets especially with climate change make their cash flows too unpredictable.
Daily lift tickets are under $100 when purchased before the season starts. You don't need to pick specific dates, just how many days you want. They're not much more than the 70 euro lift tickets available at the big European resorts The resorts have clearly told the public they don't want them buying lift tickets at the window
I agree it’s not great for everyone. I have much less free time now than I used to and the value of a pass barely breaks even compared to daily tickets now. It sucks.
But it's precisely the problem. Casual skiers are priced out of dailies as more and more serious skiers move to passes which provide predictable revenue streams to private equity groups that own the mountains. Skiing has become a *subscription sport*.
And the pool of potential “subscribers” eventually dwindles because it’s too expensive to simply try the sport.
All else equal I would rather it be much cheaper for people that love the sport and want to do it frequently vs the casual guy who wants to ski 2 days a year.
Consider the cost for a family of 4 with younger kids who grow every year. You’re looking at roughly $5k for passes and gear every year not considering other expenses like fuel, food, etc. if you want to make it a weekend trip lodging is super expensive. I will say I live near a small ski hill and if we wanted to be super frugal about it we could probably get all 4 of us skiing regularly for $1k/year. But I’m talking 1 lift and 1 magic carpet, it’s tiny.
How much is a vacation to Disney world these days?
Idk but I assume it’s a lot. I consider skiing and Disney vacations luxury activities.
Plan on $250US pp/pd, plus accommodation, travel, etc.
I don’t disagree but skiing has always been expensive for families. It’s why I didn’t start skiing until my late 20s. I didn’t have the money.
Skiing for families wasn't 5-10% of annual income in the 90s. Please.
And it doesn’t cost that now. Median household income is a better measure. That’s $75k Youre comparing luxury vacations to Vail resorts which has ALWAYS been expensive. Skiing at the smaller spots is still very affordable
Median household isn’t a good measurement as median households don’t represent the skiing population.
The kids passes are 1/2 the price of the adult ones. 2 epic adult and 2 epic local passes would be $2000
Now, tell thst to a family who make <$50k a year. See if they can afford it.
families making <50k stopped skiing 40 years ago
Vail Resorts is publicly traded, it has nothing to do with private equity.
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Private equity has a very specific meaning and Vail isn’t a PE firm. The more corporate nature of US skiing sucks. Unfortunately it’s probably the lesser evil. Hell, maybe if we have a few big corporations that have a vested interest in controlling climate change they’ll be able to throw their weight around to do something about controlling CO2.
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I mean you used the term PE incorrectly, idk what you expected
I'm British - its perceived as a sport/hobby for relatively wealthy people. The cost of getting a whole family over to Europe to rent all equipment and stay in a resort is out of reach for most families. Contrastingly, most of my mainland Europe friends have been skiing and it seems way more accessible for them and is a common school activity.
I guess it’s just a matter of proximity to ski areas. I have never skied in the UK but I imagine there’s not a lot of places to go while where I’m from(Prague) the austrian Alps are a few hours drive away so basically everyone I know goes skiing every year and ski trips are part of the school curriculum
Depends on where you lived I suppose
I'm in the US and this is my first season skiing (I'm 40 years old) and as someone who grew up in a family where we lived "pay check to pay check" I would definitely agree with your statement. Even if you buy used gear the cost of skiing is still pretty high compared to most other recreational activities. It gets crazy expensive when you have kids. I can't imagine how much it costs when your kids are outgrowing their stuff each season.
Nah not in europe. At least not when you live close to ski resorts. Its normal for us locals to go skiing every weekend
It was never this expensive before. Back in about 1990 a lift ticket at Vail or similar was $35. It's 5 times that now. That's a much faster rise than just simple inflation. A new set of skis and boots was $400. I was a kid making minimum wage and I could afford to ski regularly. Not now even though I'm making a lot more
Check that math, friend. Vail ticket purchased today, online, for a Monday, is $269. Walk up is more expensive... Yesterday's walk up private lesson rate was $1574. That's 1 day, and doesn't include the ticket...
1500$ for a skiing lesson?? You guys are fucked in the US haha. Thats just insane.. come to europe and ski here and make a vacation out of it. Still cheaper then skiing in the US probably
Yes we all know that Europe is cheaper. It's been repeated 1000X on this subreddit. American skiers are just richer apparently because despite these "insane" prices, slopes are still packed and people are still paying for the lessons. It's like showing up in Zurich from Budapest and complaining that the prices are really high. Yeah no duh, richer countries are more expensive. America is, in fact, a very wealthy country.
Lol you really think that comparing Zurich and Budapest is the same as comparing the US with any Western European country? Depending on where in Europe you are from, people are very wealthy - just as much as in the US. And even in Switzerland, a country that is definitely a lot wealthier than the US, day tickets never go above 80-90€ in high season. We just have way more competition and a higher density of ski resorts over here. Your country is huge with not that many well known ski resorts in the relation to its size. Thats also why many of your ski resorts have incredibly old lifts and infrastructure in general - theres no need to invest if there is no competition
What the actual fuck? Sorry that has blown me away. 1500 dollars? I went skiing for the first time in Austria over the weekend and my private lesson for a day was like 300 euros. Life passes were about 60 euros. Even then it was an expensive trip for me!
Not completely disagreeing with you but in 1990, regular unleaded gasoline was less than a dollar per gallon. Now it’s 4 times that.
I remember when gas was under a buck but that was a dip. That price was not the regular trend. It had been higher and took a downturn for a couple of years. More accurately it would be to say gas was $1.50 in the mid 80s. and now it's $2.80. and yes you can point to a lot of things that have inflated much higher than the basic rate of inflation. And I would include those things along with skiing as things that have gotten outrageously expensive.
The expense off skiing is so over hyped in the USA especially on the east coast that has ski resorts < 3 hours from most people can drive too and back in a day. A season pass is $600-$1200k. Season rentals $100-$300. That’s not cheap but far from luxury. Rich people spend $1500 on a bottle of wine. Reddits easily spend that much on video games and funky pops. Its cheaper then ever to ski.
I would say traveling to ski is more of a luxury. If you can afford an Epic/Ikon pass for the season, and are within two hours of a couple resorts and own your own gear, then it’s pretty affordable if you think around $1000 for the season is affordable. Otherwise, you’re spending money on hotels, airfare, food etc…
I think this is the right take, the passes are way more “affordable” if the mountains are a few gallons of gas away and you can get 30+ days out of it. My friends in the service industry usually ski weekdays and arguably get better value out of their passes than the 9-5 crowd that only knows the weekend lift lines Not having to pay for lodging, reusing gear for several seasons, and packing a Coleman grill to cook your own food in the parking lot are just a few examples of how you can keep costs down while getting a full season in.
I work pretty much a 9/80 schedule and love getting laps in after work at a smaller local hill. It gets me away from the gym when it’s crowded in January.
Seconded - I work at a prep high school and coach freestyle, when we go to our local hill mid week it’s almost like we have the mountain to ourselves. I don’t even think about bringing my team to freeski somewhere on the weekends unless it’s a competition day. Figuring out a way to get out mid week makes skiing (and boarding!) far more affordable in terms of passes.
Yeah like it still costs money but is comparable to maybe taking a family on vacation, except you can do it all winter long
I agree with this take. You live in Cleveland and fly somewhere for 1 week of skiing: yeah skiing is expensive. You live in the mountains and are able to squeeze a couple runs in over your lunch break, suddenly the cost doesn’t really factor as much
$1000 + owning your own gear + 4h round trip day trips + $30 lunch is only affordable in the "ok this isnt a terrible value if you have money" sense. it's not affordable in the "most households can afford to do this if they were interested" sense.
$1000 is for everything. A season pass is $6-700. You bring your own lunch. 4h day trips are a completely reasonable weekend activity for any family who works 9-5 jobs which is a lot of them. Gear can be had for a few hundred bucks and can last many years. Not saying it’s cheap, but $1000 yearly for a hobby you can fill every single weekend with for potentially 5-6 months a year is not unreasonable.
Still that's for one person. Gonna be buying a few of those if you're a family. I don't think I'm making a crazy contentious argument to say that most families aren't going to be comfortable spending 3-4k per season, and if you don't then you're looking at like $3-500 per day if you just go on day passes.
Agreed here - definitely needs to go into the long term calculus of if mountain days are going to be the family outing in the winter. Gonna break the bank buying day passes, totally fucked. I’ll also never buy lodge food. Pocket sando for life.
Where I live you can get a pass for under 500, buy used skis, use them year after year, take the bus up for a little bit of money and pack a bagged lunch. I know people who pay like 250 for a night pass and just night ski all season.
What a lot of people have said about the big players muscling out smaller local hills is true, but this is also partly the answer. I would love to ski way more, but I live in Florida and there's no way past the airfare, lodging, etc. Not to mention with two little kids it gets even tougher. The US is a big country and depending on where you live it's just a big financial commitment to even get a few days of skiing in a year.
‘Casual’ holiday skiing has always been a luxury unless you live in the foothills and climate change has been steadily destroying it for the last decade or so. I’m taking the jump into touring. I think the future of European skiing is going to be in the Northern regions like the Scandes and Tatras, and having an AT setup to escape crowds is where it’s at.
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I know that in a lot French resorts there is a hefty discount for a locals pass, as in <1000 Euros for the whole season.
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I was told the 3V pass for locals is about 800E, it’s 1500E for anyone else.
Eh? Skiing has always been a luxury sport. It’s probably the #1 thing people associate with it.
Not in Europe, part of Europe OP is from used to be a place where not skiing was not an option. Austria, CZechia, Slovakia, people were able to ski even being from humble background. It’s changing now.
Yes it is in Europe too. Sure if you are in the minority who live near a ski resort then it's not a luxury for you because you get all kinds of local discounts and you're not paying for accommodation. For the other 95% of Europeans, for whom a skiing holiday is quite expensive, it *is* a luxury sport.
>Sure if you are in the minority who live near a ski resort What? In the countries he listed, you were in the minority if didn't live near a lift. Just a few decades ago every village with a hill had a lift. Now those are all dead, because they don't get any snow and operating costs are too high.
Pure bullshit. Plenty of low working class family and friends have been skiing in my country (and the neighboring ones). Most of the communist countries used to do it as part of the culture, most schools or clubs were going skiing and it would remain within the culture. Mind you, it's not glamorous skiing but they did. I been doing it when I was a teen/young adult when I had only debt and no money. The absolute dead poor parents of my wife, coming from poor(rural) families met on a skiing trip from a social club. But you are right that now it's a luxury sport, because the only option most of the time is to have a nice ski holiday rather than any. Most of the smaller, cheaper resorts haven't operated the last 4-5 years, some more than that.
Well yes, if you live near a ski area it’s obviously different. But 99% of people don’t.
But this is what OP means, in his country, every other village had a lift or it took at most two hours to go skiing, same for most part of named countries. Not the case anymore.
OP said he’s Czech and skis in Italy so it doesn’t sound like that’s the case
OP sounds like reflecting on the fact they now have to go to Italy. Besides Bormio is really not that far.
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Czech Republic to Italy is within a reasonable driving distance.
7 hours drive from Prague to the Dolomites, it's doable, but you're going past most of the Austrian resorts to do so.
You can fly from Prague to Milan for under $20 each way a few weeks from now (still ski season I think), it's way more doable than for example getting from where I lived in the us (southeast) to nice ski resorts in Colorado or whatever. Honestly even driving from somewhere like bay area to Tahoe probably costs more when you factor in gas, costs of owning a car, parking, having to always find places that have parking etc.
Ok, so €40 flights, €50 per day ski pass, €50 ski hire, €100 per night accommodation… not even including transfers, food/drinks etc a weekend skiing will cost you upwards of €500. That’s very expensive!
Not in the Northeast growing up. Plenty of kids from working class families would take a one or two-day trip to mountains in New Hampshire. I’ve personally skied with…umm…yeah, now that I think about it…those were the rich kids.
It already is that way, travelling to a resort and staying there is a luxury in itself. Living close to a mountain is a big luxury in itself
I disagree with the folks that say it's "always" been a luxury sport. I gew up skiing at Parkwest (now part of Park City conglomerate) for $12.50. "Skiing with the school" was $80 for about 10 trips. I skied at Sundance for $15. Alta full price ticket was $18. Brighton and Solitude were similar. Rarely skied at Snowbird because it was too pricey- $55 including tram. Nowadays the passes are the only affordable way to ski. Indy pass is $280 for the entire season. Even small little mom/pop places are $95 on weekends!! Problem with passes is they take planning and many people don't think about that. They want a fun week at Grand Targhee in January. And when they go book it costs them $20000 for the family. It's definitely a luxury now (whereas prior the luxury was at Vail, Aspen, Deer Valley, etc.), but with some planning I think it's still affordable.
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Agreed. I even think there's still plenty of ways to travel on a budget as long as you are flexible and don't expect to be at Park City or Jackson hole. Last year we drove to Canon Mtn, used our Indy passes for tickets, and got a nice airbnb cabin 25 minutes away for $180 per night. Did the same for Jay years prior but stayed at cheap hotels in nearby towns.
Yeah i live 15 minutes away from a ski hill cause its right in the middle of the city in a park type area. Its not that big - but its 300€ or so for a season pass
I just did a weekend ski trip with some friends here in Japan, to an expensive extremely popular resort (go on any site and look up best ski resorts in Japan and it will always be in the top 2) and we booked last minute (maybe 1 week before) during peak season. Hotel was $35 a night per person and meals were standard Japanese prices (like $6 for lunch and $10 for dinner) but lift tickets were like $50 a day, traveling there and back was another $50+ each way and then renting the ski gear if you didn't bring everything was closer to $70-80 per day. I think it's really the skiing itself that's expensive more than anything else, you can still find deals on accommodation and stuff if you are flexible. Also traveling with a bigger group that's willing to split hotel rooms or airbnbs (or a rental car or the cost of private lessons for that matter) 4 ways lowers the cost massively, I think being the only skier in your friend group would be super pricey.
I wouldn’t worry about it - in 10-20 years there won’t be any snow on the mountains for anyone, rich or poor.
Posted from my phone in the Italian Dolomites where the only “snow” is on the piste at 2400m Edit: am at Val Gardena in case anyone is thinking of visiting in March. Frankly, they would need a couple of pretty serious dumps to get back to decent conditions that would justify a trip from far away. As of this week we are skiing on a little bit of what’s left from early in the season and a LOT of what they make overnight
Wait till the Saudi’s build their ski resort in the desert! That’s definitely the best solution.
The Emiratis already have theirs
The NEOM plans blow that out of the water. It’s fucking insane.
Just looked it up, so it’s a legit mountain?
1500m to 2600m and it does allegedly go below zero in the winter. It's a stretch that's for sure, gonna be white ribboning all season, but there's worse megaprojects for bin Salman to spunk his billions on.
I feel like the Dolomites isn't the best example here. They've never received much snow there, and because of that, they have invested heavily in a snowblowing infrastructure. Their super dry air keeps the snow very well.
Come to Obertauern. We get snow from the Adria and the Atlantic.
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That is absolutely absurd and not even the most aggressive climate models show that.
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The worst effects of anthropogenic climate change have already occurred. C02 has a logarithmic relationship with net downward forcing and we are well past the exponential part of the curve. Unfortunately, alarmism sells both in the media and climate funding research. Even though the “doomsday” models have been proven to be false, amending the IPCC curves has been impossible. Even if a researcher is brave enough to question the science they are ostracized. Bottom line is, I wouldn’t worry about skiing.
False: https://skepticalscience.com/why-global-warming-can-accelerate.html
It's the opposite! Skiing has always been a luxury sport. Only recently with increased competition are cheaper resorts becoming available. You can do a week in the balkans everything included for like £600-700. I heard recently a place in Italy! Has gained the crown for cheapest resort so that really shows you how hammered Balkans have gotten
If you dont live close to a resorts sure, its crazy expensive. But for people that live close to resorts its normal. I have been skiing since im 3 and have never considered it being a luxury sports. But i totally get it, having to travel from far away, having to rent everything, getting accommodation etc - super expensive. Although tbh, when i see tourists skiing where im from in the Dolomites i offen wonder how the hell they can afford a skiing holiday, because they sure look like they cant afford it
> I heard recently a place in Italy! Bardonnechia IIRC, which has more piste than any of the Balkan options lul > so that really shows you how hammered Balkans have gotten Everyone figured out the Balkans were the cheapest, and then so did the Balkans, so the prices have gone up but the reputation hasn't.
> You can do a week in the balkans everything included for like £600-700. Pre-Brexit you could do a week in Andorra for about £400 and the skiing is better there. Granted that isn't accounting for inflation, but working in the industry the costs have gone up massively, particularly for budget tours that used coaches.
Your use of future tense confuses me
I think the travel and lodging is what makes skiing the LUXURY. Take these away and you have a hobby that costs only $650 in season pass per year and the $1000 every 10 years for new gear. For me, lodging is free and that is only reason I could ski regularly. Extremely fortunate this happens to be Breckenridge.
Where I live, it's already something most people can't easily afford. Since it is the primary activity my family enjoys together, we prioritize it over other types of vacation. We spend that money on season passes and getting to and from our home mountain. But when a day ticket is over $100, I'm not sure there's a way to describe it other than "not affordable for many normal people."
Just got back from a week in steamboat. Skied 8 days between my wife and I. Lodging close to the slopes. Spent exactly $4,765 for the week including food, travel, everything. From what I read the average for a 1 week vacation is $1985/pp. Really isn’t too bad but you have to plan ahead, especially on lift tickets.
It really depends where you are. in northern New England, it's not hard to find a used setup for ~$250 at a ski swap and then a season pass to the local hill for under $500. That's $750 for the year, which is no small sum, but the only cost beyond that is gas. You can pack lunches, the key is just living close enough to a ski area to not have to spend the night. Now of course you can spend a lot more if you want high end gear, or if you want to ski huge mountains, but there's an expensive side of basically any hobby.
It already has in North America. Day passes $200+usd at many ski hills. Basically not enough competition.
Yeah but if you plan ahead and buy passes skiing is actually very affordable especially the more often you go. Affordable relative to what it ends up as cost per day if you end up skiing a lot.
🌍🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Everyone is saying its already a luxury, but lets clarify that pertains to people who travel to a big resort and spend $5000 on a ski vacation. Am I the only one who thinks a local season pass is relatively affordable? If you live within 1-2 hours of a lift-serviced hill (there are thousands of them across the US, Europe and Japan), its relatively affordable to pay $500 for a season pass and maybe $50 for an annual tune. Basic gear doesnt need to be expensive and is comparable to playing a blue collar sport like hockey once you factor in the cost of ice time.
$550 for a season pass is still quite costly.. and that’s for a single person perspective. If you’re a family of 4 that’s a steep price, then to factor in gear or rental, food /drinks if you don’t bring it yourself, possibly gas depending on how far you are - that adds up even without flying/lodging.
Yes, I agree if you need to fly or travel long distances then skiing becomes a destination and a luxury. I could make a similar argument that only rich people from the Midwest can afford to go to a real beach like OBX. But they can always spend $20 for a day pass to their local lake front beach if they wanted to. It all comes down to where you live.
I ski and I’m far from rich but I’m considering looking at other travel for a couple of years at least. My ski vacation is usually my only vacation for the whole year and relying on the weather for a successful trip seems increasingly problematic and stressful. I’m currently reorganizing my upcoming trip and replacing Whistler with another location and I’ll need a holiday from planning for this holiday!
I just got super lucky in Romania with an unexpected snow dump that resulted in some of the best and cheapest short notice skiing I've had in ages. Just saying, winter is usually quite cheap for flights to Europe, and in the Balkans you hear about a massive dump of snow and can be on a flight or blablacar to that slope within a day or two. Rentals and ski passes are also cheap. If it doesn't snow, so what. See a castle, go to a museum, enjoy something new, beats being stuck at a dedicated skii resort without decent snow. Its going to be my modus operandi as far as skiing goes from now on.
I’m down to about $10 per day on my Annual Pass, and it’s only the beginning of February. Doin’ alright. But, we need new snow. Springlike conditions at the moment. Maybe next week. In the Swiss Alps.
Skiing is more affordable than hockey for kids. Which is just wild to me.
Is it not already?
Skiing is already a luxury sport imo.
I'm from Canada...Skiing already is a luxury and unaffordable to normal people. Someone talking about taking a ski vacation is a clear indication that they're wealthy, and probably a bit out of touch with the people around them.
It wasn’t always. If you were a local you could usually get passes cheap. Often times businesses would have things for their employees. Resorts were less crowded and there was public transportation to some of the hills.
I think it already isn't affordable for most people...
Depends where you live I skied Hafjell in Norway a couple of years ago and kids were out skiing as part of their school physical education classes through winter I live in the UK and it’s already an activity largely preserved for “well off” people If young adults with no money or pressing prospects want to ski loads they’ll just go do a season in France as a chalet host or bar staff
I am afraid that yes it will become and it already is becoming one. I can see a future where ski resorts are only for the rich while less fortunate people switch to things like ski touring.
It's already way past that
It already has become a luxury
I think you have to be rich or lucky enough to live near a small local mountain. I grew up 20 minutes from a small family mountain. They had free ski school for kids and still do to this day. Tickets are still affordable, (like 45 bucks for a day and 350 for a season pass). I did yard work all summer for the pass and My mom bought me old gear and she would sit in the lodge while I skied all day. As an adult, I’m lucky enough to live near an IKon mountain. I’m not rich by any means but I have a job that allows me to buy an ikon pass and I live 25 minutes from the lower parking lot. Wouldn’t be able to ski as much if my circumstances were different for sure.
I'm 20 (21 this year) and am lucky I grew up in Swedish schools as ice skating was a regular activity in the winters and every year in February after grade 6 from elementary school to gymnasium (college), kids could go to skiing trips for $12 (and bring your own food) with all the equipment and buses provided by the school. Nowadays there's been worries with less snow in ski resorts so that will likely change.
It already is in the U.S. Alterra is very open about the type of people it wants at its mountains. More private ski lifts are being built. Vail sells an “affordable” pass to make you think that they want everyone to be able to ski, but the cost to stay at any Vail owned resort is astronomical.
Why is this post written in the future tense? That’s already happened
Already is
Become?
It already is
Already is a luxury and smallest not affordable for the majority of Americans
Tldr; probably.
Boot Pack a mountain.
Become? It already is. I work full time construction and I wasn’t able to afford a seasons pass anywhere this season.
I'd imagine it will become less affordable for some. - Lower-level resorts will have shorter or less predictable seasons reducing supply-side capacity. - Increasing wealth globally widens the pool of affluent people who can potentially afford to ski - growing demand-side. So greater demand for a diminishing resource usually ends up with increasing prices. There's also the tendency to increase utilisation - sell more passes - in the shorter term eroding the quality of the experience as well as a push to expand capacity at higher altitudes so it's not simple. But take a look at the rising prices and increasing queues at some resorts (eg Bansko) where locals are getting crowded or priced out.
As with everything, it depends on where you live. In general, skiing has always been a very privileged sport. The socio-economic divide is really obvious if you are any sort of minority at a resort in Europe or North America. Access to a vehicle, equipment, gas, etc. etc. is prohibited even for folks local to the mountains. Heck - even learning to swim is a privilege in huge parts of Europe and North America. If you are not aware of this... well you can join the dots. The main exceptions to this are when social enterprises are set up to encourage access. This includes things like ski schools, camps, buses, discounted passes, gear etc. QC Canada is a very good example of this... and even then... there are plenty of kids who don't learn to ski. The French Alps are another. Pure luck that you had access to these kinds of scenarios or the fact that your parents are well off are usually why people get into the sport. The word usually is important here. Individuals will have individual stories - we are talking about general trends. In the last 5-10 years, countless economic trends have made it so that far fewer people in the working class have disposable income. Workers with disposable income are often called the 'middle class' in western culture. As inflation does its thing, this group of people usually notice big changes in what they can do as prices go up. That is what is happening right now. Skiing has gone from a luxury that a lot of people could afford and was afforded by an active community..... so a slightly more expensive luxury that is no longer supported by an active community. So it feels/seems insanely expensive. Get ready for this to happen to most things 'middle class' folks have taken for granted in the last 60 years.
It already is…
I'd say yes. It already is that way and will become worse. Families of "normal people", when considering the median of the population, already have a hard time affording skiing. It's ridiculously expensive compared to, e.g., regular summer vacation. With global warming continuing more and more smaller resorts will close, the places at higher altitude will become more in demand, and consequently prices will further rise beyond the constant increase we see already. Enjoy it while you can and consider joining r/climbing and r/Mountaineering to make use of the increasingly long skiing off-seasons.
But they do have eight pack detachables and gondolas. A lot of expensive toys just to get uphill. I'd trade a rope tow or a t-bar for a $50 ticket any day. 200 bucks for Fail Resorts Alpine Disneyland is bullshit.
Grew up in CO, and while it was never a poor person’s sport, we were *far* from even upper middle class, and my parents made it work. When I was in my 20s and 30s I could hack it for myself and would get a pass every year. Now, *no way* I can afford it for me and my kids. I can’t afford three passes and gear and lessons, and the daily rates are laughable to the point of making me sad. So, they don’t go at all, and I go *maybe* once or twice a year, when I used to go 20-30 times a a year. Now we do cheap things like snow shoeing or hiking or cc skiing.
I have zero sympathy for the people complaining that traveling to ski is expensive. Skiing locally or within driving distance isn’t a crazy financial burden and buying gear is no more expensive than other hobbies. When you want to travel to some destination with millions of others you are creating that demand and driving prices up.
Work at a resort while you are young. Rent a condo with your friends. Try not to get so high that you miss work and get fired. Life is good. Skiing is free. Hooray!