![]() But is it a sustainable strategy, or a bubble bound to pop? Not just another small-mountain season passĭespite an ever-growing roster, communications with more than a dozen current or former Ski Cooper reciprocal partners suggest a brewing mutiny. Gigantors, Ski Cooper currently offers the best multi-mountain value ski pass in North America. Whether Ski Cooper’s intention was to create a fifth national ski pass or not is beside the point: with the Indy Pass off sale, the Ikon Pass priced higher each year, the Epic Pass chronically oversold, and the Mountain Collective hyper-focused on Mt. ski industry: this little mountain crammed between Vail, Beaver Creek, Copper Mountain, and Breckenridge simultaneously offers one of the best single-mountain season pass deals and one of the best multi-mountain pass deals in the country. Ski Cooper has hacked out an improbable niche in the U.S. Neither the nationwide network nor the low price nor the fact that Cooper keeps all of the revenue has pushed many longtime partners away. Partners, sensing a one-way deal, are growing suspicious and, in some cases, fleeing the pass.īut Ski Cooper has also created a compelling product, a complement to the Epic or Ikoners’ pass quiver, or an exploratory passport for the wintertime rambler who’s burned out on octopus lifts and parking lots the size of Mars. The mountain has pushed the bounds of what reciprocal agreements are and who they’re for. Ski Cooper has created a product that directly competes with Indy Pass, but without the revenue-sharing (each time an Indy passholder redeems a ticket, the ski area receives a payout Indy Pass keeps 15 percent of passholder revenue to cover operating and marketing costs and distributes the other 85 percent among its partners, paying them a percentage of their window rates for each visit). Or what passes for war in the normally congenial ski industry (Ski Cooper did not respond to repeated requests for comment). “The Ski Cooper pass is intentionally gaming reciprocal agreements to the detriment of all independent operators.” “We need to start talking about the gorilla in the room,” said Indy Pass owner Erik Mogensen. We can ski here and we can go out there.’ But honestly that's not the objective.”īut as Ski Cooper’s network has grown larger than even the Epic or Ikon passes – the ski area now hosts the largest group of reciprocal partners in skiing, with one of the lowest season pass prices in America – the Indy Pass has begun viewing Ski Cooper’s de-facto megapass as a threat both to its business and to its partners. “‘We're just going to buy the Cooper pass. “There are a handful of people, if they're in an area that's concentrated with our partners, that might get our pass,” Ski Cooper GM Dan Torsell told me in 2021. Ski Cooper officials have been careful not to frame their season pass as a national multi-mountain product. ![]() That gives Ski Cooper passholders access to 74 ski areas next season, for just $379: The mountain will also remain on the Freedom Pass, and will retain all but a handful of its independent 2022-23 partnerships. Last week, Ski Cooper supercharged its offering by joining the Powder Alliance for the 2023-24 ski season, instantly adding 15 new, mostly high-powered partners to its roster, including Sierra-at-Tahoe, Timberline Lodge, Silver Mountain, White Pass, and Marmot Basin. By 2022, that partner roster had jumped to 59 ski areas (and the price had ticked up to $329). I’d framed it as a sort of Indy Lite, a ridiculously inexpensive pass to a surrounded-by-giants Colorado fighter that came loaded with three days each at 48 partner mountains across every ski region of America. ![]() Fitzgerald read about the Ski Cooper pass in this newsletter. I’ll take part of the credit and part of the blame here. But not one dollar of those Cooper passes went to any of the local ski areas. Fitzgerald skied 10 days total, for a per-visit cost of less than $30.Ī great deal for skiers. But the Ski Cooper pass, which included three days at each of those ski areas with no blackouts, sold for just $299. Local season pass prices for that year had topped out at $675 for Seven Springs, $522 for Hidden Valley, $507 for Laurel, $570 for Tussey, and $1,103 for Holiday Valley. They spent the season instead cashing in the reciprocal days available to Ski Cooper passholders at Seven Springs, Laurel, Hidden Valley, and Tussey in Pennsylvania and at Holiday Valley in New York.įitzgerald and his neighbors had found a hack. Not one of the families ever went anywhere near Ski Cooper that winter. Three other families on his block also purchased several passes apiece. Two years ago, Patrick Fitzgerald, a father of four who lives near Pittsburgh, bought four Ski Cooper, Colorado season passes for his family. ![]()
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