I’ve tried to keep you up to date on the fast changing landscape of multi-mountain season passes through a patchwork of recent updates, but now that all the information for the 2018-19 Epic Pass is finally out, it’s time to nail down all the details.
UPDATE: 3 more major resorts just joined the Epic Pass for next winter - Crested Butte, CO; Okemo, VT and Mount Sunapee, NH (the closest big time mountain to Boston) will each give all
Epic, Epic Local and Epic Australia pass holders seven free days of skiing and snowboarding for a total of 21 more days with no blackout dates.
The Epic Pass was introduced 10 years ago and totally changed the economics and landscape of ski travel. Before that, you had to pay more for a season pass good at just one mountain, or buy single or multi-day lift tickets when you went on vacation. Vail Resorts, a massive global player in the ski resort business, came up with the idea of a single pass that would be good at all its mountains, so people could have a season pass at home and then enjoy free skiing on a once or more annual vacation to another region. That was the basic idea, but in the past decade, the pass and its benefits have been expanded repeatedly including partner (non-Vail operated) resorts and various scaled down cheaper versions of the pass. Last year Vail Resorts sold a record number of its passes, close to 700,000 and for good reasons: pricing has been set so that if you can use the pass for a full week or more, it beats buying tickets any other way, and for a huge variety of Americans across the country, from avid to occasional skiers, it’s a great deal.
For years Vail’s only competition was from some minor regional passes and the Mountain Collective, a group of resorts that got together to combat the Epic Pass by selling a few days at each combined into a discounted package. The Mountain Collective made sense for driving road trippers in parts of the American West, but in general could not go toe to toe with the Epic Pass for most buyers. But this year, a new much more direct competitor emerged, the Ikon Pass, basically a copy of the Epic Pass backed in part by one of Vail Resorts’ fiercest competitors, the Aspen Skiing Company and its new resort group Alterra Mountain Company. I covered the new Ikon Pass in detail here very recently, so read this article to get the Ikon Pass lowdown, and this one to see more detail of it how it stands up against the Epic Pass. The Ikon Pass officially goes on sale today, and the only significant change since I wrote about it was the move of California’s Mammoth Mountain to the unlimited use side of the ledger for the cheaper Ikon Base Pass (with Holiday restrictions).
The Epic Pass, on the other hand, has had many improvements since I wrote the Ikon vs. Epic comparison just a week ago. Most significantly, they finally announced the 2018-19 pricing: $899 for the full-blown top of the line Epic Pass, exactly the same as the Ikon Pass’ early season starting price. A children’s version (ages 5-12) is $469. You can buy the pass starting right now, with a $49 deposit and the balance due this fall. There will also be some scaled down versions including Epic Local Pass for $669 (unlimited and unrestricted skiing or snowboarding at Breckenridge, Keystone, Arapahoe Basin, Wilmot, Afton Alps and Mt. Brighton with limited restrictions at Park City, Heavenly, Northstar, Kirkwood, and Stowe, plus a combined total of 10 days at Vail, Beaver Creek, and Whistler Blackcomb with holiday restrictions, plus 5-days with no blackout dates at Hakuba Valley’s nine ski resorts in Japan). The Epic 7-Day Pass is $669, and gives seven unrestricted days at Whistler Blackcomb, Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Park City, Heavenly, Northstar, Kirkwood, Stowe, Telluride, the six members of Resorts of the Canadian Rockies and Arapahoe Basin, plus seven additional free days at Afton Alps, Mt. Brighton or Wilmot Mountain. There is also a scaled down Epic 4-Day for $439.
The Epic Pass remains the only product of its kind that is good beyond North America, with access to resorts across Europe and Japan and summer skiing at the largest resort in the southern Hemisphere, Australia’s Perisher. The way Vail resorts counts, which I view as slightly inflated, the full Epic Pass gives unlimited, unrestricted access to 15 resorts and limited access to 46 more. Unlimited access is to the 14 Vail Resorts mountains across the US, Canada, and Australia (the biggies are Utah’s largest, Park City, Colorado’s Vail, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Beaver Creek, Tahoe’s Heavenly, Kirkwood and Northstar, Canada’s Whistler/Blackcomb and Vermont’s Stowe) plus Arapahoe Basin, as well as 7-days at Colorado’s Telluride, and free days at six massive European mega resorts in Italy, France, Austria and Switzerland, including three of the world’s four largest and totaling about 30 different mountains. As explained below, it now also includes 15 more resorts in Japan and Canada (in addition to unlimited and unrestricted skiing at the biggest Whistler/Blackcomb). The Epic Pass is also good for many summer activities such as lift served mountain biking.
These are the big changes in the past week, and with pricing and on sale date now announced, likely the last upgrades for next winter:
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Epic Pass, Vail Resorts and Vail's founders from the 10th Mountain Division, the company is honoring epic service of the and men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces (as well as Canadian and Australian military service members) with the introduction of a special new $99 Military Epic Pass, available beginning today, March 6. It is for both active and retired military, and it is a deal that is simply unbeatable in skiing and ski travel. If you are a vet or currently enlisted and you ski or snowboard, just buy this pass, it is a no brainer and costs far less than a single day at almost any notable mountain in the nation. (Additionally, for every pass sold, a $1 donation will be made to Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), a nonprofit organization that offers a variety of programs, services and events for wounded veterans of the military).
Vail Resorts also added several new international Epic Pass partners: Hakuba Valley, in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, is comprised of nine resorts and hosted the 1998 Olympic Winter Games. The Epic Pass will offer five free days here with no blackout dates. In Canada, they added 7-days at Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, which operates half a dozen mountains across eastern and Western Canada, the most notable of which are Fernie and Kicking Horse.
If your home mountain of choice is on the Epic Pass (for those in the Midwest that means Afton Alps, MN; Wilmot, WI and Mt. Brighton, MI while easterners have Stowe, VT) it’s too good to pass up, especially since you can also take ski vacations to many of the nation’s and world’s best resorts with free lift tickets. But with single day ticket prices at top resorts well north of $150 per day, the Epic Pass can also pay for itself in a single vacation of 6-7 days, while the 7-day version can get you in the black in as little as four days.
