I get it, skiing is an expensive sport. By the time you buy or rent gear and book accommodations, you still haven’t even paid for a day pass—which is typically no less than $100 per person.
I ran into a financial dilemma during ski season in Utah. Wanting to ski at least twice a week, a season pass was the only option, but those started at $800, and I could only ski at that one resort. If my friends didn’t have that same season pass, I’d be solo, which defeats one of the primary purposes of skiing for me.
Three years ago, we all signed up for the Ikon Pass—one pass that gets you into more than 50 ski resorts throughout the world at a similar price to a season pass at a single resort. With six locations right in our state, it was a no-brainer.
California has four locations on the Ikon Pass: Palisades Tahoe, Mammoth Mountain, Big Bear Mountain Resort, and June Mountain. They all offer unlimited days at each resort, except on blackout dates that are usually during the holiday season, according to Ikon’s website.
Darryl Buck is the trip officer of SLO Skiers Inc. and said that 80 percent of the club members have an Ikon Pass, and the club regularly plans trips together, like its upcoming trip to Steamboat Ski Resort in February and Solitude Mountain Resort in March.
“And when you buy it through your ski club, you get an additional discount. So, people should always join a ski club,” he said.
As an avid skier with a trip to ski Ikon destinations in Japan close on the horizon, Buck said the Ikon is ideal.
“There’s no better deal out there by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “You can ski to your heart’s content on those mountains.”
Big Bear Mountain Resort just became available on Ikon this 2024-25 ski season, and Advertising and PR Director Justin Kanton said the pass has brought skiers back to its smaller mountain because they can so easily ski with the pass.
“From a budget standpoint, they didn’t really have the flexibility to, you know, come over to the mountains here and then take a trip to Mammoth or vice versa. So we think it’s helped in terms of bringing some of those people back to us, either early season, when people are looking to get their legs underneath them,” he said, “or if they have kids, maybe put them in a lesson so that they’re a little bit more acclimated before they do take their big trips up to, you know, Utah, Colorado, Mammoth, Tahoe.”
The Ikon Pass is offered by Denver-based Alterra Mountain Company, which curates family destinations using recreation, real-estate development, and retail, according to its website.
Palisades Tahoe PR Manager Patrick Lacey said the additional means of money helped the resort to improve its facilities and operations.
“Upgrading snowmaking, upgrading our food and beverage operations, as well as our base-to-base gondola that connects Palisades to Alpine, you know, that probably would have never been possible if it wasn’t joining forces with Ikon as well as Alterra Mountain Company,” he said.
More skier access means more people on the mountain, and Lacey said Palisades Tahoe has seen an uptick in skiers and traffic, resulting in the resort installing a parking program where skiers register for parking the week prior or are encouraged to carpool.
“We’re not trying to increase traffic. We’re just trying to increase visits, so we are trying to change people’s behavior coming to the resort,” Lacey said. “We’ve definitely seen a huge difference between people carpooling, less traffic flowing in and out of the valley.”
When it comes to traffic, SLO Skiers’ Buck said that’s just a part of the deal.
“Of course, there’s traffic. That’s just the way it is,” Buck said. “It probably has contributed to lots of traffic on Fridays and lots of people showing up and skiing Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and lots of traffic leaving on Sunday. But that’s what they want. They want the mountains full. They’re very capable of handling more and more people.”
According to its website (ikonpass.com), the pass is no longer for sale for the 2024-25 ski season, but it typically goes back on sale in early spring.
This article appears in Get Outside – Winter/Spring 2025.