Powder Mountain Owner Speaks on Nixing Lift Tickets on Peak Weekends

It’s been a busy 18 months in the news cycle for Utah’s formerly sleepy Powder Mountain ski area: New owners, a push toward a hybrid privatization model, the end of season pass sales caps, and now February weekends reserved entirely for season pass holders, with no daily lift tickets on offer.

The weekends of February 1-2, 8-9, 15-16, and 22-23 will only be accessible to Powder Mountain season pass holders. Ski Utah Passport holders and people taking lessons through the resort’s ski and snowboard school will also be permitted, and night-skiing tickets will still be sold to the public for $19 apiece.

A little backstory, if you haven’t followed Powder’s unique trajectory: It all started in April of 2023 when former Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings became a majority shareholder in the financially struggling resort. Hastings, a passionate snowboarder, and his wife have owned property at the mountain for the last 10 years and built a house there in 2021. He’d always loved the resort’s low-key vibe, adventurous terrain, and incredible lack of crowds in spite of the sport’s tremendous growth over the last several decades.

Since the purchase, Hastings has been frank about the ski area’s financial struggles and the goal to bring it to profitability under his leadership. Accordingly, he and his team have had to make some difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions, including privatizing a portion of the slopes for homeowners and introducing paid parking this season.

On the flip side, they’ve also begun to seriously invest in the ski area’s aging infrastructure, including adding a new lift in the formerly hike-to and cat-served Lightning Ridge area and upgrading two older lifts with high-speed express chairs—all open to the public and debuting this season. (They’re also adding or upgrading three lifts serving slopes reserved for the private homeowner community.)

For Hastings, it’s all about preserving Powder Mountain’s most important attribute: its lack of crowds.

“Being uncrowded is our core value; that’s what makes Powder unique,” he said during a sit-down with SKI earlier this week. “It’s a great mountain in Utah, but there are other great mountains in Utah. Alta and Snowbird are intensely crowded and there’s intense traffic to get there. We’re low on the traffic, with easy access, and low on the on-slope number of skiers and boarders, so that’s the thing that people love about Powder.”

His dilemma is how to preserve this destination-defining core value while still becoming profitable.

“One answer would have been to go Epic or Ikon,” Hastings explained. “Big crowds, but pleasing a lot of people. I decided to try to be a strong independent, but there were going to have to be some changes.”

One of the more controversial changes is removing the longtime season pass sales cap, a tactic put in place years ago and lauded by local skiers for keeping crowds low. Although it might seem counterintuitive to keep crowds in check, Hastings and team are hoping to sell more season passes, but unlike the high-value Epic and Ikon pass, the $1,649 price tag for single-resort access will naturally deter some folks. The February weekends are intended as a pass benefit to reward current pass holders and to attract new ones.

“It’s a little shocking because we’re giving up a bunch of day ticket revenue in those big February weekends,” Hastings admitted. “But we think it’s worth it to make the experience for the pass holders a little bit better as we shift into becoming a season pass-oriented business to compete more effectively with Epic and Ikon.”

Public feedback has been mixed. Hastings said that the response from season pass holders has been very positive, and acknowledges that while it’ll be more difficult for day skiers hoping to enjoy some weekend turns in February, he reasoned that “it’s only eight days, it’s not that radical.”

       Related: Can Powder Mountain Maintain Its Old-School Spirit as a Semi-Private Resort?

Powder’s own social media tells a different story, with the majority of Pow Mow followers—including many pass holders—expressing frustration and disappointment in the ski area. Several locals lamented the late date of the announcement, saying that they’d made plans and might now lose money or have to pivot to a different ski area.

“We’ve already booked our lodging for February, and now finding out that some of our group can’t ski on the weekends is unacceptable,” said one user via Instagram. “Please consider making provisions for season pass holders like me who plan these trips a year in advance to enjoy Powder Mountain with our extended family.”

Others took issue with the general direction that Hastings is taking the ski area.

“Ten years ago that place was amazing. Best value on the snow,” said another skier via Instagram. “Ten years from now it will be a private version of Deer Valley.”

For his part, Hastings is sensitive to the optics around the ski area’s broad moves, including the private slopes and the exclusive pass holder weekends, but argues that he’s fighting a battle to keep Pow Mow in business—and keep it independent and uncrowded.

“The industry with Epic and Ikon has gotten more low cost, more open to people coming in,” he responded. “We’re a little counter-position niche, we’re not going to transform the ski industry. We’re struggling to find a way to keep our resort independent, so it’s a more narrow aim that we stay independent and uncrowded.”

Maybe the real question here is whether “independent” and “uncrowded” can ever be cordial bedfellows, or is exclusivity their de facto offspring? We’d hate to see that be the case, but only time will tell.

Summed up one longtime Pow Mow skier: “I remember when it was a reasonable idea to have family and friends visit me from out of state in February and be able to get affordable day tickets at Powder Mountain.”