SAM Magazine—Granby, Colo., July 1, 2024—After adding 10 new ski areas to its roster for the 2024-25 season, Indy Pass will release a limited number of passes starting July 1.  “With the addition of these great new partners, we are excited to release additional passes during this short window,” said Indy founder Doug Fish, adding that “...

SAM Magazine—Denver, June 28, 2024—Alterra Mountain Company’s planned acquisition of Arapahoe Basin, Colo., is reportedly being reviewed by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has issued a civil investigative demand to the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) and RRC Associates seeking data from the association’s annual surveys on ski a...

• Lift Operations News

SAM Magazine—South Lake Tahoe, Calif., June 27, 2024—The 2024 Ski California Lift Maintenance and Operations Education (LMOE) conference set a record for attendance, with 368 ski industry professionals descending upon South Lake Tahoe, June 4-6, for education, training, and networking. The event moved from Palisades Tahoe to a new location thi...

• Lift Operations News

SAM Magazine—Tooele, Utah, June 25, 2024—Leitner-Poma of America (LPOA) opened a new $27 million, 130,000-square-foot Skytrac manufacturing facility last week in Tooele, outside of Salt Lake City.  The new campus will serve primarily as the headquarters and sole manufacturing base for ropeway company Skytrac, an LPOA subsidiary, as well as pr...

SAM Magazine—Red Lodge, Mont., June 25, 2024—The 2024 Intermountain Ski Areas Association (ISAA) Conference, held June 10-12 in Red Lodge, Mont., attracted a record attendance of 246 ski industry business professionals. Red Lodge Mountain GM Jeff Schmidt accepts the Outstanding Contribution Award at the ISAA Conference.The event provided a plat...

SAM Magazine—Dawson City, Yukon, June 20, 2024—Liftblog.com creator Peter Landsman completed his mission to visit every ski area in North America last night when he stopped in at Moose Mountain in Canada’s Yukon territory to grab a picture of the municipal hill’s T-bar. Landsman has been documenting lifts in North America for more than two ...

SAM Magazine—Montpelier, Vt., June 20, 2024—Despite a slow start to the season and inconsistent weather, Ski Vermont reported that the state’s alpine ski areas welcomed 4.1 million skier visits for 2023-24, down less than half a percentage point from the 2022-23 season.  Visitation was 4 percent above Vermont’s 10-year average and outpace...

SAM Magazine—Ruidoso, N.M, June 19, 2024—Approximately 8,000 people have been forced to evacuate in central New Mexico as the South Fork / Salt Fire complex spreads across Lincoln County and the Mescalero Apache Reservation, home to the ski town of Ruidoso. Ski Apache, the local mountain resort, has closed its summer operations until further no...

SAM Magazine—Jay, Vt., June 19, 2024—Jay Peak Resort unveiled plans to freeze or reduce pricing on a variety of its products for both this summer and the upcoming 2024-25 winter season. The initiative, dubbed Mission Affordability, will freeze rates on day tickets and reduce pricing on the Mission Affordable 4-pack, as well as certain menu item...

SAM Magazine—Boulder, Colo., June 19, 2024—The Outdoor Foundation (OF) and Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) report that the outdoor recreation participation base grew 4.1 percent in 2023 to a record 175.8 million participants.  According to the 2024 Outdoor Participation Trends Report, 57.3 percent of Americans aged 6 and older are particip...

SAM Magazine—Broomfield, Colo., June 19, 2024—Just how far can season pass sales take a resort? That's surely a question that many areas have been asking themselves. And it was a topic that was explored in some depth during the Vail Resorts conference call with analysts following the company's presentation of its Q3 results June 6. Quarterly a...

SAM Magazine—Winter Park, Colo., June 14, 2024—A very small tweak downward in aggregated rates over the past 30 days created an appreciable uptick in occupancy for most of the summer months (May through October) at Western mountain destinations. This positive pattern shift from the previous six months, for both lodging properties and consumers,...

SAM Magazine—Broomfield, Colo., June 6, 2024—Vail Resorts (VR) has reported results for the third quarter of fiscal 2024 ended April 30, 2024, along with early season pass sales and almost-complete-season results. While lift, ski school, and dining revenues were up all up, total skier visits for the quarter were down 3.2 percent year-over-ye...

SAM Magazine—North Conway, N.H., June 7, 2024—Alpine ski areas in the Granite State recorded approximately 2.17 million skier visits during the 2023-24 winter season, according to estimates from Ski New Hampshire. Alpine visits were down 4 percent year-over-year from 2.2 million visits in 2022-23. “Given the challenging weather conditions th...

SAM Magazine—Denver, June 6, 2024—Colorado Ski Country USA (CSCUSA) is projecting that the state saw 14 million skier visits during the 2023-24 season. The projected total is a decrease of approximately 5 percent from last season’s record-breaking total of 14.8 million, but still represents the second highest skier visit total on record for t...