There's no doubt that the multi-mountain passes offer an incredible value for a certain demographic of people that is certainly well represented here at SnowJournal and probably even more so on other skiing forums. But I feel like as a group of passionate skiers, we can be in a bubble sometimes and not be understanding of the many skiers who just want to ski a handful of days a year. Most skiers I know just ski a few weekend trips a year. And from the Storm Skiing Podcast interviews, I definitely think various mountain leaders are in a bubble, thinking that every person in the country can be converted to a passholder if only they understand how 'good of a deal it is.'
There have been various Doug Fish
quotes that the average passholder skis 10 days while the average non-passholder (comprising 75% of skiers in the U.S.) skis four days. Now of course Doug Fish may have an agenda with the numbers. But if they are true and it wouldn't surprise me at all, we can almost certainly assume that the median passholder skis even fewer than ten days because we know some skiers will use their pass 50 days and really skew the average.
Let's say the median passholder skis eight days and the average non-passholder skis four days. There's no way you can say that skiing has not become quite a bit more expensive, unless you ski a lot, you're lucky enough to live near a hill with reasonable prices, or you get an Indy Pass, which thank goodness is helping.
