Snow storms pummeled the Mountain West this past week, signaling the unofficial kickoff to the 2024-25 ski and snowboard season. A handful of resorts have opened in Colorado, including the mainstays of the early season: Arapahoe Basin and Wolf Creek Ski Area. Chairlifts are beginning to spin across the Rockies and beyondā€”, 18 ski areas have opened across the United States. The nascent ski season sparkedĀ an important debate within the ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų editorial community: do you prefer opening day or closing day? Luckily, two editors who are both dedicated skiers are here to argue the point.

Fred Dreier: OK Adam, Iā€™m envisioning the opening day scene at Arapahoe Basin. The temperature is in high-twenties Fahrenheit and the wind is howling. A long line of snowboarders and skiers stretches from the base of the Black Mountain Express lift halfway up High Noon. Everyone is frothingĀ to get that first run. It’s so competitive to get first chair that some skiers have camped out for days under the lift. The crusty man-made snow crunches beneath every boot step. The roar of snow guns is deafening. How accurate is this depiction?

Adam Roy: Five years ago it would have been dead-on. This year I missed opening day, but I was there on day 2 and the snow was fantastic. Crowds were smallā€”I think it helped that nearby Keystone Resort opened on the same weekend. In the past I would bring an audiobook with me on opening day because I spent so much time waiting in lift lines, but on day 2 this year I barely experienced any downtime.

Fred: OK, so I’m going to call our argument a draw regarding the 2024-25 opening day, since you technically weren’t there for it. But still, my general feeling on opening day is that the snow sucks, the lines are long, and it’s cold. How on earth is this better than the scene on closing day?

Adam: Hard disagree. For starters, the snow on opening day is usually twice as good as it is on closing day, and youā€™re half as likely to hit a rock. But skiing opening day is also an emotional experience. Here are my feelings as I ski opening day: It’s day one, you know that youā€™ve got the whole ski season ahead of you, and conditions are only going to get better. Meanwhile, on closing day, youā€™re looking at a solid five months with no turns. Another year in the books, another one of your precious few winters on Earth thatā€™s just memories now. Thatā€™s heavy! At least for me.

Fred: I suppose we’re just going to have to disagree on whether or not the snow is better or worse on opening day versus closing day. And I hear you on the emotions that you feel in anticipation of another season. But my primary argument for closing day is vibesā€”I think the chill and carefree mood on closing day rules! Back in 2018 my wife and I hit closing day at Copper Mountain, and I want to set the scene for you. It was a bluebird sunny day and temperatures soared into the fifties. After an icy morning, the sunshine softened the snow in the afternoon, and we spent a few hours surfing the slush before our quads turned to jelly. It was so balmy that we ditched our jackets and just skied in short-sleeve shirts and vests. And hereā€™s the real kickerā€“when we descended to the base area there was a concert going on. When we walked up to the stage we realized it was theĀ Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

Adam: That sounds like a sweet day. Or at least thatā€™s The Impression That I Get.

Fred: They were gray-haired dudes in their fifties kind of shimmy-dancing around. But I kid you not, they still kicked ass. And the whole scene immediately transported me back to 1996, and yes, I did start skanking.

Adam: Skanking is the kind of thing you can only do on closing day when you hit your mid-thirtiesā€”too much risk of blowing your ACL and ending your season early otherwise.

Fred: So back to our debate: how would you compare the vibe of opening day vs. closing day? I can tell you that on closing day, people are laid-back, slightly inebriated, and not at all concerned with the actual skiing. Like, nobody cares how many runs you did, whether or not you found good snow, or even if you actually made it onto a chairlift. The only thing anyone cares about is whether or not youā€™re having funā€”skiing be-damned.

Adam: On opening day, people are ready to slay. Theyā€™re laying into their turns and hucking themselves off kickers onto landings that are straight ice. There is a party scene, for sure, but it’s different than on closing day. Nobodyā€™s really committing to aprĆ©s that hard. Instead, the partyā€™s on the slope, or in the lift line. While youā€™re waiting for first chair somebodyā€™s always passing out bratwurst or donuts or swag or beers or whatever.

Fred: OK, my final argument in favor of closing day: your body. By April, your leg muscles and joints are already accustomed to skiing or boarding, so you can slog your way through the slush and not worry too much about tweaking your knee or being too sore the next day to go to work. The exception to this rule, of course, is injury caused by partying and/or excessive stoke, which I have witnessed. At the Copper Mountain closing, one of the pond-skim skiers got too rowdy and careened off of a jump and into the crowd. My guess is he was in a walking boot until the next seasonā€™s opening day.

Adam: That’s trueā€”you gotta prep for opening day, man. In my opinion, that’s half the fun! For a few weeks prior, you hang out in your gym or garage or wherever doing squats and mountain climbers with a Warren Miller film on the TV. You’ve gotta psych yourself up to get your body ready. You get your gear together, wax the planks, maybe pile up the scrapings on your workbench and take a big snort of that beginning-of-season scent like you’re Al Pacino in Scarface. I love that anticipation. Itā€™s like Christmas Eve.

Fred: Aha, so it sounds like a big part of your love of opening day is the entire process of getting stoked for ski seasonā€”the training, gear prep, and even the wait for that first chair. This whole process gets you amped to ski for the next few months. And when you arrive, you are ready to charge, to hit the slopes hard, and to start the season off with the emotional momentum that will prompt you to get up early, brave traffic, and drive up to the slopes again and again for the next few months. I get it now. Fans of opening day are looking for that oomph to carry you through a long season of ups and downs.

Still, I’m sticking with closing day, Adam. The older I get, the less I feel like I have to prove with how many days I ski, whether or not I got blower powder, or if I topped out on my vertical. I just want to have some laughs, drink a beer or two, and enjoy the sunshine. Thus, I’ll keep an eye out for you on closing day. Iā€™ll save you a spot in front of whichever nineties band is playing.

Adam: Iā€™ll make sure to bring my checkered suspenders.

The post Would You Rather Ski on Opening Day or Closing Day? appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

On Friday, March 22, skiers in Colorado were greeted by eye-popping news. Arapahoe Basin, a ski area that has long cultivated an anti-corporate and renegade reputation, has enacted a paid parking reservation system for the 2024-25 season. Visitors driving to the mountain on peak days next year will need to pay $20 and reserve a parking spot prior to arrival, while some customers will be able to buy a season-long parking pass for $150. Carpools with four or more visitors can reserve a spot for free.

The news came just weeks after international ski resort conglomerate Alterra Mountain Company (of Ikon Pass fame)Ā announced plans to acquire A-Basin.Ā 

The news, which was , did not go over well. Within two days, the post had generated nearly 500 commentsā€”almost all of them negative. Longtime A-Basin skiers Adam Roy,editor-in-chief of Backpacker, and Fred Dreier, articles editor at ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų, discuss this brewing kerfuffle.

Fred Dreier: OK Adam, I want you to close your eyes and imagine that youā€™ve been magically transformed into A-Basin’s social media manager. On most days, your job entails uploading photos of skiers hucking off the cliffs below Pallavacini or weaving through the rocks on the East Wall. Your online commenters love you, because A-Basin skiers have a preternatural affection for their resort and its punk rock vibes.

Now, imagine one day your manager emails you the following copy and tells you to punch it into Instagram: For the 2024-25 season, we will require parking reservations for weekends and holidays from mid-December through early May. On those days, each vehicle arriving before 1 P.M. will need a reservation, which must be made online in advance. Daily general parking reservations will be available for $20 per vehicle.Ā 

Do you flee? Roll over and play dead? Pop a Xanax? Or just, like, strap on some body armor and prepare for the coming comments-section onslaught?

Adam Roy: Iā€™d call in sick and let my boss deal with it. The part you left off is that they made this announcement the same day that passes for the 2024-25 season went on saleā€”no warning, no advance notice, just, ā€œTime to buy your passes and also hereā€™s this massive increase in fees we didnā€™t tell you about in advance!ā€ Thatā€™s a pretty terrible position to be in as a social media manager, but to be fair itā€™s also a pretty rough position to be in as an A-Basin skier. If you want a pass youā€™ve got to decide in the next few months before they raise the price, but it sounds like theyā€™re not going to reveal some really key details about this plan until the fall. How many parking passes is a ā€˜limited numberā€™? Are they ā€˜limitedā€™ the way season passes are limited, where youā€™ll get one as long as you donā€™t sleep on it, or ā€˜limitedā€™ like Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets were limited?

¹ó¶Ł:ĢżThese are good questions. I actually called up A-Basin’s general manager, Al Henceroth, and he told me that obtaining one of the $150 season passes is likely to be less difficult to get that Taylor Swift tickets, but also something you won’t want to sleep on. “People will need to pay attention when they go on sale,” is what he said.

Henceroth told me that A-Basin staffers anticipated blowback, but I’m not sure they anticipated backlash like this. After three days there are about more than 5 times their average number of comments, and boy oh boy is there a lot of rage. Which ones most adequately capture your feelings?

AR: Iā€™m torn between tim.saladponyā€™s ā€œReservations are annoying but understandable given the parking challenges at A Basin. But the $20 charge is insulting and feels like a money grab,ā€ and kykwyzerā€™s ā€œYou have to pay $20 for parkingā€¦ok Vail.ā€

¹ó¶Ł:ĢżAccording to Henceroth, A-Basin did this to cut down on traffic jams. He said that the lots fill up almost every Saturday and Sunday, and the resort has had to turn people away on eight separate occasions this year.

Still, I think it’s worth unpacking the emotional response that A-Basin skiers like you have toward this. Adam, you’re a current A-Basin pass holder. Why did this news make you want to rip your hair out and scream into the void?

“”øé:Ģż It feels like a kick in the gut to the exact kind of skier theyā€™ve built their reputation off, Front Range skiers in particular. If youā€™re a New Yorker or a Chicagoan coming into town for a weeklong ski vacation, itā€™s a relatively reasonable expense to eat on top of your airfare, lodging, and lift tickets; you drop $40 on parking for the weekend and the other five weekdays you ski, you park for free. But if youā€™re a skier in the Denver metro area or I-70 corridor with a 9-to-5 job who skis every weekend, that adds up really fast.

¹ó¶Ł:ĢżHenceroth says the ultimate goal is to convince more people to carpool. Do you think this will do that?

AR: I appreciate that they make an exception for carpools of four or more people, but thatā€™s a wildly high bar, both in terms of being able to find a consistent group and having a car that will fit all of themĀ and their gear. And getting there without driving is harder still: Your only choice is the Snowstang, a $25-a-pop, once-a-day bus that only picks up in two spots. The ski industry as a whole puts tourists with money over local skiers. For a while, A-Basin was the exception, and they got a lot of great press and goodwill from it, and now it feels like theyā€™ve decided to cash it in at skiersā€™ expense.

FD: Yeah, I can totally see how a $20 surcharge for every ski session throws a pretty big financial monkey wrench into your plans. Letā€™s say you ski every Saturday from December through March. Thatā€™s $320. Iā€™m sorry, amigo. Iā€™m going to pour one out for your checking account.

What made me personally want to eat broken glass was that this parking pass comes after A-Basin has maintained the renegade image for decades. I grew up in Colorado and lionized the place because of the vibes. The resort famously bailed out of the Epic Pass in 2019, saying it was putting customers first. The general sentiment was that A-Basin puts its skiers ahead of corporate greed, as was illustrated in this that called it the ā€œanti-resort.ā€ This parking pass feels like A-Basin has crossed some imaginary line in the sand separating mega resorts from local ski areas. Paid parking is ubiquitous at Vail, Aspen, and Breckenridge, while small ski areas like Loveland or Granby Ranch let you park for free.

So Adam, does A-Basin’s argument that parking reservations will cut down on traffic jams convince you?

AR: Not really. Theyā€™re not wrong that parking there is chaoticā€”Iā€™ve shown up around when the lifts opened and ended up barely getting a spotā€”and I sympathize with the desire to make sure that people arenā€™t driving all the way there and then turning around because they couldnā€™t park. I get that not everyone wants to wake up at 5:30 A.M. to go skiing like I do, and if they think reserved parking is the way to make peopleā€™s visits better, so be it. But if that were the main goal, there are other ways to set up a parking reservation system without wringing $20 a pop out of skiers.

¹ó¶Ł:ĢżHenceroth says the $20 fee will prevent no-shows.

AR: Yeah, well, there are ways to accomplish that without charging passholders hundreds of dollars extra on top of their pass. They could have gone the way national parks have and charged a lower price for reservations, $5 or so, which is enough to prevent people from booking a dozen reservations they probably wonā€™t use but not so much that itā€™s a drain on regular skiers. They could have charged $20 to make the reservation and refunded most or all of it as long as you came, or even restricted your ability to make new reservations if you no-show, which is a strategy with. They could have guaranteed passholders a chance to buy a parking pass when they renewed instead of kicking the can months down the line, or at least given them a certain amount of free parking reservations before they started charging.

FD: Hereā€™s some back-of-the-napkin math. A-Basin has 1,750 parking spots, so thatā€™s $35,000 in parking revenue each day. Henceroth estimated that the parking passes will be enforced on 50 days per season. Thatā€™s $1,750,000, not including fees from parking violations. Henceroth told me that this revenue will cover the cost of the infrastructure required to operate the parking permits.

Iā€™m going to hold my nose, take a big gulp of Kool-Aide, and attempt to justify this parking pass to you. Here goes.

AR: Good luck, Iā€™m not going to help you.

¹ó¶Ł:ĢżAdam, the population of Coloradoā€™s Front Range has exploded over the past decade. By my estimation, some eleventy zillion skiers now flock to the mountains every weekend. Arapahoe Basin, with its awesome terrain, is simply overwhelmed by them all. The lift lines are too big. The parking lot fills up too quickly. The ski area is a victim of its own success, and now management needs to step in and save its customers from themselves. Rather than enact a cap on ticket sales, management has wisely launched a parking reservation system, which will cap capacity and make a day at the slopes way chiller.

AR: I hear you, but overcrowding was a crisis-level problem with Epic Pass customers in the years leading up to 2019, and they never charged for parking then. Anyone who skis at A-Basin now would agree that the crowds are smaller now than back before 2019. Back then Iā€™d bring an audiobook to listen to while I waited in line; I think I got through most of The Witcher series that way.

¹ó¶Ł:ĢżFair. OK, here’s my next stab at it. Ski areas are complex businesses with astronomical overhead costs, an embattled labor force, a finicky customer base, and seasonal revenue streams that are tied to the mysteries of Mother Nature. A few bad snow years and a kickass resort like A-Basin could crater. Survival amid these pressures requires businesses to constantly seek out new revenue sources. Arapahoe Basin is just following the financial playbook of other ski areas, and perhaps also the airline industry. Charge for parking. Charge to eat a bag of peanuts. Charge for oxygen.

“”øé:ĢżFrom what we know, this resort is not in dire financial straits. In fact, that same 5280 article noted that February and March 2022 were the two most profitable months in Arapahoe Basinā€™s history; that year, its profits were up 20 percent overall despite skier numbers being down 40 percent. So the ā€œtheyā€™re charging for parking because ski resort employees have to eat tooā€ argument doesnā€™t really convince me. And thatā€™s not the rationale the resort is holding up.

And look, Iā€™ll tell you something Iā€™ve said before: I would pay more to ski at Arapahoe Basin. A season pass with no blackouts for a return customer costs just $559. For all that Iā€™m complaining about them here, Iā€™ve been a season pass holder for something like seven years while my friends were all skiing on their Ikon (base price $849) and Epic ($982) passes. My two most regular partners arenā€™t renewing their A-Basin passes, and I am because I just love the place that much. If they had added $150 to my pass price this year and told me that I had to reserve my parking in advance now, I wouldnā€™t have blinked. But the fact that I have to pay for an ā€œunlimitedā€ season pass, then hustle for a limited number of parking passes in a couple of months, then maybe open my wallet again every time I visit is so frustrating.

FD: Oh well, I tried. Before we bail, here’s my best pop-culture comparison: A-Basin charging for parking is like Kurt Cobain announcing a Nivana Christmas album.

AR: Finding out your Deadhead friend from college went into private equity.

FD: Martin Scorsese directing the latest Avengers sequel

AR: Theyā€™re going the way of Burning Man. Soon weā€™ll see Jeff Bezos on the slopes.

¹ó¶Ł:ĢżSo long as they don’t start charging for first chair, I’ll still love A-Basin.

The post Let Us Debate the Latest Controversy over Ski Resort Parking appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.