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Overcrowding at Epic and Ikon resorts

Jilly

Moderator
Staff member
Crystal may still offer a local pass. We have that at Tremblant, but there are blackout dates with it.
 

Christy

Angel Diva
Crystal doesn't appear to be offering anything but IKON--that's all that's on their website. Interesting that other resorts do! They reference a Crystal pass for last year but that's because Alterra only bought them last year and so many already had their passes.
 

Jilly

Moderator
Staff member
Tremblant didn't offer the Tonnik till later. They obviously want you to buy the full passes.
 

mustski

Angel Diva
The B/O dates are minimal - Dec 26-31, MLK weekend, and Presidents' Weekend. We had the base pass this year and it's fine. At $649 - and it includes spring skiing at Squaw and Mammoth - it's a steal.
 

JO-ski

Certified Ski Diva
Is there anything like official over capacity status on hills that are measured by how many people are lifted to the top? Blue Mountain in Ontario is part of IKON and today was the worst I've ever seen in terms of crowds. I stopped on the side mid-hill and looked up and a swath of people were behind me like there was an apocalypse coming. I hated it. And then... of course, I got hit from behind today by a snowboarder kid. Scary and maddening. Skiing in crowds makes me feel like I'm the one not in control because people are zipping by so close and so fast. Uhghhhghh! This is the main reason why I like night skiing waaaay more. :brick:
 

snowysnow

Certified Ski Diva
14,600 skier visits.....all time record! Plus all the new snow the week before.

Yes... the snow was amazing! Powder at Tremblant? Plus, I was skiing pretty well that day.

Upon reflection, I wouldn't necessarily blame the Ikon pass 100% for the overcrowding. I also noticed a significant decline in the attitude and work ethic of the employees who work the lift areas. I think this is a reaction to the voluminous crowds, however, management needs to motivate and press the employees to make the lifts more efficient. That day (Family Day weekend Saturday) there were too many chairs (on almost all the lifts) that had only 2 people on them, or were completely empty.

If Steamboat is able to have helpful, friendly staff that ensure the gondola and lifts are running at capacity when there's a crowd at the bottom, I don't see why other mountains can't.
 

rhymeandreason

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I don’t get it though - supposedly the number of skier visits have remained stable for the past twenty years, at around 50 million ski visits. And although some skis areas have shut down, my guess is that the overall figure of “skiers:acre” has gone down due to expanded skiable and lift serviced areas. So why does everyone say it’s more crowded? When you speak to skiers who skied in the 70’s and early 80’s, they recall massively long lift lines. Their number of runs were limited by how much time they spent waiting for fixed grip doubles and triples.

If the trails are indeed more crowded today than prior years with statistically the same number of skier visits, then one or more of the following must be true:
1. People are skiing more hours per visit
2. The vastly increased upload lift capacity means that the ratio of time spent skiing to time spent waiting/riding lifts is much higher. This means more people are skiing on the trails at any one time.
3. People are clustering at certain resorts making them more crowded than normal. This must mean other ski resorts are emptier than usual.
4. People are clustering on certain days which means the other days are emptier than usual.
5. A significant number of ski resorts have shut down, causing skiers to crowd the other resorts.

I feel like option 3 is the obvious choice due to Ikon and Epic, but option 2 has got to have a big influence as well. Old timers tell me that they would only be able to ski 10-12 runs in a day due to lines and slow lifts. And now you can ski 10-12 in 3-4 hours because of higher capacity detachable lifts. Is there anybody here skied in the 70’s/80’s and can chime in?
 

rhymeandreason

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
ETA: The more I think about it, I think option 2 is a major influence. For example, Alterra is about to replace the old Sunnyside triple with a 6-pack at Winter Park. The new lift will take half the time as the old lift and can carry twice as many people. It will increase upload capacity by 800 skiers/hour. Imagine that! With the old triple, the upload capacity was 1800/hour. The new 6-pack will be 2600/hour. Say that every hour, 2600 people show up at the bottom of the lift. With the old lift, there are about 1800 on the trails at any one time, and with the new lift, there will be 2600 people on the trails. Let's say it takes 10 min to ski down. With the old lift, a lap would take 18 minutes plus waiting time, and with the new lift it would take only 14 minutes with a shorter waiting time. Nearly every ski area has drastically upgraded their lifts and upload capacity and as a result, even if there are the same number of people on the mountain, there is a higher percentage of them on the slopes at any one time.
 

Belgiangirl

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
If the trails are indeed more crowded today than prior years with statistically the same number of skier visits, then one or more of the following must be true:
1. People are skiing more hours per visit
2. The vastly increased upload lift capacity means that the ratio of time spent skiing to time spent waiting/riding lifts is much higher. This means more people are skiing on the trails at any one time.
3. People are clustering at certain resorts making them more crowded than normal. This must mean other ski resorts are emptier than usual.
4. People are clustering on certain days which means the other days are emptier than usual.
5. A significant number of ski resorts have shut down, causing skiers to crowd the other resorts.

I feel like option 3 is the obvious choice due to Ikon and Epic, but option 2 has got to have a big influence as well. Old timers tell me that they would only be able to ski 10-12 runs in a day due to lines and slow lifts. And now you can ski 10-12 in 3-4 hours because of higher capacity detachable lifts. Is there anybody here skied in the 70’s/80’s and can chime in?

ETA: The more I think about it, I think option 2 is a major influence. For example, Alterra is about to replace the old Sunnyside triple with a 6-pack at Winter Park. The new lift will take half the time as the old lift and can carry twice as many people. It will increase upload capacity by 800 skiers/hour. Imagine that! With the old triple, the upload capacity was 1800/hour. The new 6-pack will be 2600/hour. Say that every hour, 2600 people show up at the bottom of the lift. With the old lift, there are about 1800 on the trails at any one time, and with the new lift, there will be 2600 people on the trails. Let's say it takes 10 min to ski down. With the old lift, a lap would take 18 minutes plus waiting time, and with the new lift it would take only 14 minutes with a shorter waiting time. Nearly every ski area has drastically upgraded their lifts and upload capacity and as a result, even if there are the same number of people on the mountain, there is a higher percentage of them on the slopes at any one time.

Well, I just went completely down the rabbit hole of looking up and comparing stats and numbers so if that doesn't interest you, just skip this :becky: All numbers come from the internet so don't hesitate to correct them if they're wrong. Not an oldtimer by any means, but you piqued my interest and I looked up some numbers. I replied way in the beginning of this topic because I was genuinely baffled by some of the lift lines quoted, even if not a daily occurrence. Longest time I've ever waited was 15-20 min during one of the busiest weeks of the year at Les Trois Vallées in France. Slopes were crazy crowded and I couldn't imagine doubling the amount of visitors without skiing arm to arm on every single run on the hill.

But then there's your 'option 2' that comes into play. I looked up the stats for Les Trois Vallées, the 'biggest resort in the world' that felt overcrowded to me when I went up there this winter. 3V has 139 lifts with a total capacity of 248 827 passengers per hour. That's a quarter million passenger cap, per hour. Can't seem to find any visitor numbers per day, but the total resort area has about 147 000 beds available. The resort has 600 km slopes + the offpiste terrain, when accessible (note that wasn't really the case when I went there this winter).

Now if I check the stats on some of the busy resorts mentioned on the first page...
Mt. Tremblant: 11 lifts, 25300 cap/h, record number of 14600 visitors/day, 78.4 km slopes
Taos: 14 lifts, 18500 cap/h, record number of 15000 visitors/day, 113 km slopes

Now both 3V and Mt. Tremblant hit about 60% of their max lift capacity when the resort is 'full' (that's counting around 150 000 people per day in 3V) (Taos hits 80%). So they should be comparable. But if you look at the absolute numbers, its a whole other story. Mt. Tremblant has a 10 000 people 'margin' over all of their lifts, whereas 3V has a margin of 100 000 people. We all know not all lifts are created equal (or lead to the terrain we want to ski), I can see why bottlenecks in lift lines are a lot more likely to happen in your resorts.

3V at full cap probably gets around 150 000 visitors, spread out over 139 lifts and 600 km of slopes, so about 250 people per km of slope. Tremblant's equivalent is 186 people per km of slope, so significantly less. The concept of inbounds vs outbounds is also different over here which I feel leads to less people skiing off the trails in the EU(even ungroomed sections between groomed slopes are technically out of bounds). While you already have less people per km of slope on the whole, I also think they're spread out across the mountain more evenly.

I think that's something to consider. Your waiting time seems to be concentrated around the lift lines. Our lift lines aren't necessarily long, but slopes can get really crowded. A lot of the bigger resorts over here have invested pretty heavily in new infrastructure and it seems to work - they're moving more people up the hill and a lot faster than they used to, too. But then you have all these people all at once who try to get down the mountain and it can become too much of a good thing too :smile:
 

Christy

Angel Diva
I don’t get it though - supposedly the number of skier visits have remained stable for the past twenty years, at around 50 million ski visits. And although some skis areas have shut down, my guess is that the overall figure of “skiers:acre” has gone down due to expanded skiable and lift serviced areas. So why does everyone say it’s more crowded? When you speak to skiers who skied in the 70’s and early 80’s, they recall massively long lift lines. Their number of runs were limited by how much time they spent waiting for fixed grip doubles and triples.

If the trails are indeed more crowded today than prior years with statistically the same number of skier visits, then one or more of the following must be true:
1. People are skiing more hours per visit
2. The vastly increased upload lift capacity means that the ratio of time spent skiing to time spent waiting/riding lifts is much higher. This means more people are skiing on the trails at any one time.
3. People are clustering at certain resorts making them more crowded than normal. This must mean other ski resorts are emptier than usual.
4. People are clustering on certain days which means the other days are emptier than usual.
5. A significant number of ski resorts have shut down, causing skiers to crowd the other resorts.

I feel like option 3 is the obvious choice due to Ikon and Epic, but option 2 has got to have a big influence as well. Old timers tell me that they would only be able to ski 10-12 runs in a day due to lines and slow lifts. And now you can ski 10-12 in 3-4 hours because of higher capacity detachable lifts. Is there anybody here skied in the 70’s/80’s and can chime in?

We talk about it here.
https://www.theskidiva.com/forums/i...crowded-if-skiing-is-losing-popularity.23250/

A lot of us live in western cities that have grown tremendously in recent years. For us, the slopes are just attracting way more people than ever. And a lot of us ski at places that are now on these passes. Skier numbers may be flat overall, but they aren't flat at ski areas near western cities.
 

rhymeandreason

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
We talk about it here.
https://www.theskidiva.com/forums/i...crowded-if-skiing-is-losing-popularity.23250/

A lot of us live in western cities that have grown tremendously in recent years. For us, the slopes are just attracting way more people than ever. And a lot of us ski at places that are now on these passes. Skier numbers may be flat overall, but they aren't flat at ski areas near western cities.

It is not just western resorts - East Coasters are noticing more people at Okemo and Tremblant. I’m still waiting to hear back from anyone who skied in the 70’s/80’s about actual time spent skiing vs waiting for a chair. I went out to PCMR on a powder day and managed to get 9 runs in within 2 hours before my 11 am meeting. It was solely due to the presence of high speed and high capacity lifts. Fifteen years ago, I bet I wouldn’t have been able to only 4-5 runs, even with fewer people on the mountain.
 

canannie

Certified Ski Diva
Skied Revelstoke for 5 days on my IKON pass and it was fabulous ! It was a bit busy on Saturday. Other than that it was no wait lines. Of course they have not had fresh snow for maybe 5 weeks but the conditions are fine from an ONTARIO skier LOL
 

Little Lightning

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
No issues at Copper yesterday. CDOT mitigated avalanches kept I-70 blocked for hours. No one could get here. Traffic was a mess. Made it to Copper before they closed I-70 in Officer's Gulch. Worried we wouldn't get back home though. Finally reopened around 3 pm. Traffic around Silverthorne/Dillon was a mess but we were able to avoid most of it to get back to the condo.
 

vickie

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Interesting letter ... "Potential measures include eliminating some promotions, raising pricing of Mountain Collective and Ikon and limiting complimentary and discounted tickets."

Pricing MCP and IKON to reduce traffic at JH means raising the price enough to discourage people from buying those passes. It seems they'd have to raise it enough to make the EPIC pass look like a better deal. Currently, the full IKON pass is $10 more than the comparable EPIC pass ($949 and $939, respectively). The base IKON is $50 less than the EPIC local ($649 and $699, respectively). Will we see price increases for the purpose of skier-dumping? And how much would they have to increase IKON prices to achieve the reduction in pass sales and traffic? $100 per pass? More?

This is just one of the potential solutions mentioned, but I find it interesting ... they attribute the crowding to their having a record snow year and believe IKON has only increased traffic by 8% ... but the thought is already there to increase IKON/MCP prices.

I also found this interesting ... "Jackson Hole Mountain Resort will continue to closely monitor volumes and industry trends with the objective of improving the experience we offer to our loyal guests." Loyal guests ... hmmmm.
 

mustski

Angel Diva
JH is just a partner. They can’t raise consumer prices on the Ikon; they can demand grater % payments from Alterra. It’s possible Alterra woukd just drop them, particularly because the local attitude towards Ikon has been particularly bad. I have to be honest, but diva trip or no, I’m leaning towards voting with my wallet and just saying no to JH.
 

Skisailor

Angel Diva
The IKON has definitely changed the experience at Big Sky. But I think the ability of our vast terrain to absorb additional skiers has helped to mitigate some of the problems. There has been grumbling and ill will amongst the local and long-time Big Sky skiers and some problems with Big Sky staff - enough that it prompted an employee-wide email letter from our general manager (essentially - be nice to IKON skiers).

As someone who is on that mountain almost every day, I must say the biggest concern is not really the additional skier traffic. But there HAS been an effect on our overall "skier culture". And I think that this change has prompted more of the ill-will than just the increase in numbers. We have had a pretty laid back skier culture at BS. But the IKON explosion has brought in many more people rushing around (perhaps more used to crowded ski areas), crashing through lift lines, skiing recklessly in difficult terrain or in slow skier areas, more injuries, on mountain drunkenness, trash under lifts, etc. etc. - things that we generally weren't used to seeing alot of at Big Sky. And it has certainly not engendered good will among the locals to the newcomers. I'm not sure how this situation can be improved . . . . Of course, I hate to paint with such a broad brush. I'm sure there are many wonderful new IKON pass holders who are perfectly blending in. But my observations are undeniably real.

I also think our management was taken completely by surprise at the big increase in numbers. They need to do aLOT better at handling this next year. More staff, more parking lot trams, more restaurant options, etc. etc. etc. We were not ready for this!
 

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