5 priorities for Alterra's next CEO. And 5 things to continue with Ikon and Alterra's owned resorts. Apr 27, 2026 The Alterra Mountain Company is a remarkable thing. Its 2017 formation was both elusive and inevitable. Someone was going to have to stand up to Vail Resorts, which over the previous decade had transformed from a regional operator into a national power running 14 ski areas, including four of the five largest in North America, three urban-adjacent Midwest feeders, and, most recently, Stowe, one of the crown jewels of New England skiing. Something was going to have to compete with the Epic Pass, which wrapped all of those amazing places onto one low-cost season pass. It just wasn't clear who that someone or something would be. Plenty of operators seemed positioned to challenge Vail's dominance. Missouri-based Peak Resorts matched Vail in number of ski areas, but it lacked a western anchor resort. Boyne, the quiet, stubborn, family-run survivor, owned 11. Park City-based Powdr, still sore from Vail's hostile takeover of its hometown resort, ran 10. Once-mighty Intrawest had sold off Whistler, Panorama, Copper, Mammoth, June, and Mountain Creek, but was still hanging around with seven ski areas. A spirit of cooperation and experimentation prevailed. The previous year, Peak had united its 14 ski areas under the Peak Pass (generating what may be the greatest tagline in the history of ski passes: "How The East Was One"). The year before that, Boyne, Powdr, and Intrawest had launched the M.A.X. Pass, with five days at each of their mountains plus several independents. And nearly two dozen large independent and conglomerate-owned destination resorts had joined the Aspen-sponsored Mountain Collective, which launched in 2012. Copper, Winter Park, and Steamboat had shared a menu of season passes, alternately under shared and competing ownership groups, since the late 1990s. All good products. All just a little too demographically specific to compete nationally with Vail's blockbuster Epic Pass, which had sold 650,000 units for the 2016-17 ski season. Unbeknownst to skiers, nearly everyone not named Vail had huddled in conspiracy. A skiing Manhattan Project, massive and urgent, was underway. In April 2017, the coalition took shape in a motley, yet-to-be-named company sewn from the ghosts of failed and struggling conglomerates past: Intrawest's seven remaining properties (Steamboat, Winter Park, Stratton, Snowshoe, Silver Creek, Tremblant, Blue in Ontario), re-combined, 11 years after selling them, with Mammoth and June, which had three years earlier acquired Snow Summit and sister property Bear Mountain, which had been grinding through the conglomerate mill for 30 years as is was bought and sold, in turn, by S-K-I (1988), Fibreboard (1995), Booth Creek (1996), and Snow Summit Ski Corp (2002-2014). Funding this union were the twin ski powers Henry Crown and Company (owners of Aspen's four ski mountains, which would ultimately remain separate), and KSL, owner of Tahoe titans Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows (the latter had once been owned by Powdr). Six months later, the still-yet-to-be-named entity bought Deer Valley, which had itself three years earlier purchased nearby Solitude. Three months after that, in January 2018, the 14-mountain coalition became Alterra Mountain Company. Three weeks later, Alterra dropped its atom bomb: the Ikon Pass would join the company's entire portfolio on one product that would also include access to top destinations operated by Boyne (Big Sky, Sunday River, Sugarloaf) and Powdr (Snowbird, Copper, Killington), along with A-list independents Jackson Hole, Alta, and Aspen-Snowmass. In the leadup to the 2018-19 ski season, Alterra kept buying (Solitude in June; Crystal, Washington in September), and independents (Revelstoke, Sugarbush, Taos), kept joining. In total, Ikon delivered access to 50 ski areas for the 2018-19 ski season at the incredible price of $599 for Ikon Base and $899 for the full Ikon. Finally, skiing had a true national challenger to Vail, whose Epic Passes were priced that spring at $669 for Epic Local and $899 for full Epic. The consumer response was immediate, total, overwhelming. Snow hammered the West that winter, and exasperated locals raised their pitchforks against Ikon in Jackson, Aspen, and Big Sky. The protests backfired, as the whining only increased Ikon's visibility and popularity (though Aspen and Jackson would eventually move off Ikon Base and Big Sky would remove tram access from Ikon). Skiers, long challenged to sort through the statistics and logistics of researching, choosing, and accessing remote ski resorts on their own, rapidly understood that they could simply select from one of two destination menus: Epic or Ikon. Once that bomb detonated, there was no reassembling it for safe storage. The Ikon Pass altered the lift-served ski landscape instantly and permanently. For ski areas, it normalized the idea that an independent mountain could participate in a larger pass coalition - 242 U.S. ski areas (and 59 percent - 232 of 390 - chairlift-served ski areas), are scheduled to participate in the Epic, Ikon, Indy, or Mountain Collective passes for winter 2026-27. For skiers, Ikon, positioned as a choice against Epic, reset their understanding of what a season pass was and who was allowed to own one, creating a sense of belonging that had been more elusive with a lift ticket dangling from their jacket zipper. The number of skier visits attributed to season pass holders exploded, and within a couple of years had passed the 50 percent mark for the first time. The Ikon Pass was, on the whole, one of skiing's best ideas. It is probably not a coincidence that American ski areas have recorded top-10 seasons for aggregate skier visits every winter since Ikon's debut save the truncated 2019-20 campaign, or that capital investment has ramped up enormously since 2018. It is probably also not a coincidence that consolidation has slowed - and in some cases reversed - as independent ski areas benefit from Epic and Ikon in two ways: affiliation with a national pass product provides a large, reliable revenue stream, reducing the imperative to join a larger company; and skier visit spillover to non-pass-affiliated independents as locals grow frustrated with the tourist patchwork infiltrating the larger mountains. This all seems so obvious now that it's hard to appreciate how long this dynamic took to gel, and how recently it formed. There was nothing inevitable about Alterra or Ikon, and there's nothing inevitable about their continued existence. Vail, after riding the Epic rocket into the stratosphere for 15 years, has struggled post-Covid with shrinking Epic Pass unit sales and skier visits. We don't have matching figures on privately held Alterra, but the company is in a delicate spot as it seeks a replacement for CEO Jared Smith following an unceremonious ejection last month. A lot of what Alterra is doing has worked really well, but some of it hasn't, and whoever gets this job next has to take care not to break things that are working as they fix what's broken. If I were Alterra's next CEO, these are five priorities I would start with, as well as five things I wouldn't dare change: Below the paid subscriber jump: I attempt to piss off the 20 percent of Utah that doesn't already hate me, Ikon Session still sucks, no you don't have to buy a Mercedes for your fourth cousin when you go Platinum, why parts of Ikon are brilliant as-is, and more. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism.

POWDR reaches settlement with ski resort customer who sued over Copper Mountain's 'resort surcharge' Neither the ski resort customer who filed the lawsuit nor Copper Mountain or POWDR, which owns the resort, responded to inquiries about the terms of the settlement. A settlement has been reached in a Summit County lawsuit that questioned the legality of a resort surcharge imposed on purchases at Copper Mountain. The settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed in legal filings, was announced in a joint filing by attorneys for Gary Chaney, the customer who sued the resort, and POWDR Corp., which owns Copper, on Nov. 26. In statements, POWDR Vice President of Communications Stacey Hutchinson and Mirko Kruse, a partner at the law firm representing Chaney, both said, "the lawsuit was resolved to the satisfaction of both parties." Neither provided information about the details of the settlement. Hutchinson had previously called the lawsuit "baseless." Chaney originally filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of himself and other Copper Mountain customers on May 12, claiming that the resort surcharge imposed on purchases violated the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. The lawsuit, which sought monetary damages and asked a court to end what Chaney called "deceptive trade practices," named the resort and POWDR as defendants in the case. "POWDR has a practice of advertising goods and services at prices lower than what it charges at the register," the complaint filed in the case stated. "When the customer goes to pay, POWDR charges up to 9% more than the price advertised, plus 6.375% in tax. This practice is deceptive and unlawful." The complaint included photos of Copper Mountain's menus, which it stated do not disclose the surcharge, and of receipts, which the lawsuit claimed were usually only provided upon request, showing the surcharge costs on top of the listed price. In most instances, the surcharge is listed as 7%, but the complaint also included an instance during the spring break season in March when the surcharge was listed on a receipt as 9%. Spring break is one of the busiest times of year for Colorado ski resorts. In one case, a burger listed on the menu at the Aerie Food Court for $20 cost an additional $1.40 due to the resort surcharge. In another example, the complaint stated that Downhill Dukes - an outdoor bar and restaurant in Copper's Center Village - did not list the surcharge on its menu, but that the surcharge added an additional $1.19 on top of the listed $17 cost for large pretzel bites. The complaint claimed that POWDR is engaging in "deceptive trade practices" by advertising goods while intending not to sell them as advertised and making false statements about the prices of items. The complaint stated that the surcharge "induces consumers into purchasing goods and services by falsely advertising goods and services at lower prices than what is charged at the register." "Unlike Summit County and/or Colorado State Sale Tax, the Copper Mountain Resort Surcharge is not a government-mandated tax, nor is it a government imposed fee," the complaint stated. "... The Copper Mountain Resort Surcharge is an additional revenue source POWDR uses to support its business operations and satisfy its private contractual obligations with affiliated entities and business partners." The parties anticipate filing a joint stipulation to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning Chaney cannot refile the case later on, within the next four weeks, according to court documents filed in the case.

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