Powder Mountain granting season pass holders exclusive access on February weekends
Plan generates pushback online as some say they'll 'find a new place' to ski
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- Corky Corcoran makes one of the first runs down Powder Mountain on Monday, Dec. 14, 2015. Corcoran was on the first chair of the season.
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- A helicopter drops in a piece for a new lift at the Powder Mountain ski resort in this undated photo.
EDEN — Powder Mountain is set to roll out a major perk for its season pass holders, but not everybody is cheering the move.
In a press release last week, Powder Mountain officials announced that season pass holders will receive exclusive access to the resort’s slopes during the day on weekends in February.
“When we say ‘Escape the Masses,’ we mean it,” Powder Mountain CEO Reed Hastings was quoted as saying in the press release. “This new offering is about preserving the core value of the Powder experience, providing passholders with unique access to the mountain on the very best days. Our team continues to look at novel ways of creating exceptional value for our passholders. We started by investing heavily in our public lift infrastructure, and now we’re ensuring the experience on those new lifts is exactly what our passholders have come to expect: lap after lap of incredible skiing, while other resorts are ants-on-a-sugar-cube on those weekends.”
Depending on the age of the skier, season passes at Powder Mountain sell for between $799 and $1,649.
Day tickets (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.), which are now on sale, will not be available for Feb. 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 16, 22 and 23. The release adds that Ski Utah Passport redemptions also will not be available on these days, but Ogden Valley Adaptive Sports Lessons (and corresponding day tickets) will continue as normal. Night tickets (4-9 p.m.) remain available to the public, including on weekends in February.
Ashton Stronks, director of communications for Powder Mountain, told the Standard-Examiner in an email Tuesday that the new program is about providing something different for the restort’s season pass holders.
“We’re pretty unconstrained in terms of how we’re able to think about our resort relative to the rest of the industry,” Stronks said. “It gives us a chance to innovate, and in this case, provide a benefit to our season passholder that’s valuable and unique.”
Stronks said she is unaware of any other resorts, either regionally or nationally, that offer a similar experience.
“At its core, this new offering is about preserving what makes Powder, Powder while innovating in a way that brings value to our passholders and stays true to who we are,” she said. “Any time you do something outside the norm, you’re hoping that the idea connects with the audience. If uncrowded lift lines on massive skiable acreage are your thing — we’ve got that.”
However, the change is also generating some controversy.
Several people took to social media to decry the pass-holder-exclusive weekends on Powder Mountain’s Facebook post announcing the program.
“This is a real bummer to those who have supported local businesses by traveling to Powder Mountain for a week long ski trip,” one commenter said. “Guess it’s time to find a new place.”
“Wow, now I have to cancel friends who were coming from back east for President’s Day weekend,” another commenter wrote. “I guess everyone is going to go to another mountain and spend their money there instead.”
Stronks said it’s understandable there would be some pushback.
“We understand the move to give our passholders unique access to the mountain on peak days will impact those who don’t choose to purchase a pass,” she said. “At the same time, we’re doubling down on our commitment to enhancing the season passholder experience and to keep Powder uncrowded with a unique benefit that provides exceptional value.”
Stronks added that the comments don’t tell the whole story and added that there are no plans to back away from the pass holder weekends.
“The comment section may not reflect it, but the overall response from our passholder base has been really positive,” they said. “We’re always listening and open to ways that we can improve, but there are no plans to change course at this time. To sum it up, we’re giving up peak-season day ticket revenue in an effort to make the Powder season pass an incredible value, and the response from our passholders has been really positive on that front.”
