When Holli Jones heard that major ski resorts would be charging $300 or more for a single day lift ticket this winter, her reaction was swift and visceral.
"You kidding me?" Jones exclaimed in disbelief.
The co-owner of the Meadowlark Ski Area and Lodge between Ten Sleep and Buffalo in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming channeled the collective reaction of many skiers with her disgust.
"That's insane,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “How can the normal person take their family? You can't. Your average family cannot afford to ski and rent skis and stay in a condo or motel. There's just no way."
The numbers are enough to make dedicated ski bums reconsider their life choices.
Deer Valley Resort in Utah will charge up to $329 for peak-day lift tickets this season, while Colorado resorts Vail and Beaver Creek have also hit the $329 mark.
Utah’s Park City joins the $300-plus club at $299 for peak days. Back in 1972, a day at Vail cost $9. That represents a 3,600% increase over a couple generations of skiers.
Jones and her husband Wayne have owned and operated the small Wyoming ski resort since 2009, and they've made it their mission to keep skiing accessible for local families.
While mega-resorts push into uncharted pricing territory, Meadowlark maintains $70 daily passes and $10 cheeseburgers.
The Share Winter Foundation helps put kids who can’t afford to ski in Jackson on the slopes. (Share Winter/Coombs Foundation) 
Meadowlark Ski Area and Lodge — a refuge from lift tickets north of $300. (Meadowlark)
Rising Costs
But even for operators committed to affordability, the math is getting harder to justify.
"Every year you have to have a lot of inspections done on all the lifts, making sure it's safe for the public," Jones said. "The food costs go up. Employee pay has gone up. Everything has gone up. But we still try to maintain a $70 ticket a day."
This summer, Jones invested in a new fleet of rental skis to keep offering quality equipment at reasonable rates — $35 a day. It's a stark contrast to the pricing at destination resorts, where one of Jones' friends recently paid $18 for a can of Budweiser.
The commitment to reasonable pricing has attracted a loyal following of budget-conscious skiers who arrive at Meadowlark's parking lot in RVs, many holding the Indy Pass that provides access to dozens of independent ski areas across the country.
"People come there one time and they just can't believe what they've been missing. Absolutely wonderful skiing. No lift lines,” she said.
In Wyoming, four ski areas honor the Indy Pass: Snow King and White Pine near Jackson, plus Meadowlark and Antelope Butte.
Pass prices start at $449 and the Indy network extends into South Dakota with Great Bear Ski Valley and Terry Peak Ski Area, creating a circuit of affordable skiing across the northern Rockies and Great Plains.
With two lifts serving 15 to 20 runs through the trees and about 1,000 feet of vertical, Meadowlark bills itself as an intimate alternative to crowded destination mountains.
"People just doing small ski resorts — they're just done with those high-dollar resorts," Jones said.
At Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, single-day lift tickets for the 2025-2026 season range from $110 to $255 a day depending on the day of the week and the month. That's with discounts up to 45% offered through promotions for the resort's 60th anniversary, according to its website.
At Grand Targhee Resort in Alta, Wyoming, single-day lift tickets for the upcoming season range from $125 to $175.
Industry Consolidation
The pricey, major players now control a significant share of top U.S. ski resorts.
Vail Resorts, for example, owns 41 resorts, including Vail, Breckenridge and Park City. Vail’s monopoly of so many brand-name resorts allows it to charge premium prices, especially at flagship destinations, according to industry analysts.
This time of year, as many Wyoming skiers scramble to take advantage of early-bird prices on passes, the ski industry's overall financial trajectory reflects robust growth alongside mounting concerns about rampant, morale-killing inflation.
According to Future Market Insights' March 2025 report, the U.S. ski market is projected to more than double from $3.6 billion in 2025 to $8.1 billion by 2035, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 8.4%.
That shows there’s still lots of stoke around skiing and snowboarding, but the price of admission keeps accelerating uphill.
“The trajectory of ski prices suggests no slowdown,” reported the ski industry website unofficialnetworks.com.
“With resorts investing in high-tech snowmaking, expanded terrain, and luxury amenities, costs will likely continue to climb. Climate change also poses a challenge, as shorter seasons and unpredictable snow could push resorts to raise prices to offset losses. Meanwhile, the dominance of mega-passes may continue to shift the industry toward rewarding loyal, high-spending customers while pricing out casual skiers.”
Economic Squeeze
This boom in premium experiences has created a two-tiered market that access advocates say is leaving middle-class families behind.
"The ski industry model has changed significantly over the past decade," said Constance Beverley, CEO of the Share Winter Foundation, a nonprofit that funds youth skiing and snowboarding programs across the country — including one in Jackson.
Beverley, a former Wall Street lawyer who transitioned to nonprofit work after discovering snowboarding later in life, breaks down the economics that are squeezing out casual skiers.
"If you listen to any of the conglomerates, and (Vail CEO) Rob Katz has really explained this quite well — he's not really been hiding the ball on it — the move is toward a season pass," she explained.
The strategy is designed to capture customers early with passes that seem affordable compared to daily rates, but it creates a barrier for families who might only ski a few times per year.
"If you look at a daily ticket at $300, but you can get a season pass for the whole season for $1,200. If you plan on going a couple of days, the season pass becomes a no-brainer," Beverley said. "Where that does swing and miss is for families that want to go once or twice to their local mountains."
This pricing structure undermines what Beverley calls the industry's own conversion model.
"All the industry data says if you go four times a year, you're going to constantly keep progressing and you're going to feel that progress," she noted, referencing industry studies. "They build all the beginner skier conversion models based on people going at least four times a year."
At current prices, that four-visit threshold now costs $1,200 — if families can even afford it.
"We're kind of pushing out the families who maybe would only go two or three times, even four times," Beverley said. "That maybe would have been $400 a couple years ago when tickets were only $100 a day.”
The Share Winter Foundation distributes more than $1 million in cash grants annually, plus about $2.5 million in donated equipment including "jackets, skis, ski pants, mittens, helmets, goggles." But Beverley estimates they need to be "giving away $5 million every year" to adequately address the access problem.
Wyoming Connections
Beverley's foundation continues to support Wyoming initiatives, including the Doug Coombs Foundation in Jackson, which provides skiing opportunities for local youth whose families might otherwise be priced out of the sport in one of America's most expensive ski destinations.
"Youth whose families otherwise cannot afford to send them skiing and riding, but are able to wake up every day and see those beautiful mountains," Beverley explained.
The foundation previously funded programs at Antelope Butte Ski Area near Shell, a nonprofit operation that has since made skiing free for anyone 18 and under.
These community-focused operations represent what Beverley sees as a rebel underground fighting against the commodification of skiing.
"There's a craving for places that feel like skiing used to feel," she said. "It's not just the ski area — it's your backyard, it's your neighborhood, it’s your public park."
Future Stakes
The stakes extend beyond individual families to the sport's long-term viability.
"If you start skipping generations, that's why you have entire generations and communities that don't ski," Beverley warned.
Her own journey illustrates both the barriers and possibilities. Growing up in Ohio with a single mother and two siblings, skiing was financially out of reach.
"It wasn't just the cost of going, but we didn't have a second parent that could supervise, health insurance, injury risks," she recalled.
Beverley would cut discounted lift ticket coupons from the newspaper to ski at Boston Mills-Brandywine near Akron, Ohio, sometimes getting on the slopes for just $15. She didn’t buy her first season pass until she was 29.
"It took me over a decade to have the buy-in where I could justify my $900 purchase in my young adult life," she said. "My fear is losing the people in the middle."
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
