I wrote about many of these same issues in my blog last June (The Consolidation Conumdrum: What Does It Mean For Skiers), and I agree. It is a good deal for some people, but if it drives out the smaller ski areas, it's not a good deal at all.
14,600 skier visits.....all time record! Plus all the new snow the week before.
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.
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.