Is Powder Mountain Actively Destroying Itself?

Powder Mountain has historically been known for its down-to-earth vibe and uncrowded slopes—but new management has made some significant changes.

Over the past five years, the Utah ski scene has gotten more commercial than ever. But until recently, one major ski resort had been able to fend off the corporate influence—Powder Mountain. With extremely limited ticket and pass sales, a down-to-earth atmosphere, and a sizable footprint, the resort was something different from the polished, high-profile corporate mega-resorts. 

But lately, Powder Mountain has actually been captured by a very corporate individual: the Netflix co-founder, Reed Hastings. Under his ownership, the resort has been making headlines with a flurry of controversial updates—and while there have been some significant improvements, other changes have been some of the most anti-consumer we’ve ever seen at a ski resort. One might jump directly to greed in some of the decision-making we’re seeing from Powder Mountain’s leadership, but some of the decisions have been so perplexing that we’re left wondering if the people in charge have truly thought through the implications of exactly what they’re doing.

So, what exactly are the changes going on at Powder Mountain, and why are they so baffling to those who’ve been following the ski industry for years? Well, let’s break it all down.

Powder Mountain’s new “residents only” lifts are depicted in purple on their 2024-25 trail map.

Removing Public Access To Several Terrain Areas (And Reserving Them for Homeowners Only)

Let’s start with the first controversial change Powder Mountain has made—its decision to designate several lifts and terrain areas exclusively for private homeowners. On its own, this decision is already unprecedented in the ski world, with no other ski resort in modern memory taking away previously-public terrain to make it private. Unsurprisingly, the decision has sparked significant blowback.

The resort is now reserving the Village lift, Mary’s lift, and a new lift in the Raintree area for property owners only, effectively excluding the public from these key sections of the mountain. Now, there are still plenty of enjoyable terrain areas open to regular ticket and passholders, but these newly private areas encompass some really fun beginner and intermediate runs and woods, plus some great advanced glade terrain in Raintree. It is worth noting that guests can still hike the Raintree terrain, as they could in years’ past, but they can’t use the lift to get to it.

Powder Mountain has staffed a team of “homeowner patrollers” to make sure that the public can’t sneak into the newly-private terrain.

Okay, but if you’ve been to Powder Mountain before, you might think you know the mountain well enough to sneak past whatever ropes or access gates they might have put in to stop the public from getting into Village and Mary’s. But not so fast—Powder Mountain has staffed what might be the first group of “homeowner patrollers” we’ve ever seen at a ski resort, putting employees at each resident-only entrance to make sure nobody else can sneak in. If you try to mess with them, good luck not immediately getting banned from the resort.

The reasoning behind this move, according to the resort, is the need to "pay its bills." However, this justification feels hollow when weighed against the broader implications of this policy. Powder Mountain has traditionally been a place that prided itself on its size and down-to-earth spirit, and this move cuts squarely against both of these qualities. More broadly, Powder Mountain has always prided itself on being a low-traffic resort. The affected lifts rarely saw significant wait times, even during peak periods.

Ultimately, this restriction creates a divide between those who can afford to own property on the mountain and those who can't, turning what was once a communal experience into an exclusive privilege for the very wealthy few. Sure, Powder Mountain is a business and it needs to make money. But hundreds of other ski resorts have been able to do this in the past—and continue to do so today—without excluding anyone.

Powder Mountain now charges $12 to park on weekends and holidays—even if you’re a season passholder.

Paid Parking on Weekends and Holidays

And if you thought the terrain restrictions weren’t enough, the next strange decision that raises questions about Powder Mountain’s intentions is the resort’s choice to implement a paid parking policy. In an effort to, in their words, “mitigate crowding and to incentivize carpooling”, Powder Mountain is charging $12 per vehicle before 1pm on weekends and holidays. Carpools of three or more people are exempt from the policy. The resort is coupling this change with additional parking on premise.

But wait a minute—Powder Mountain has already historically capped its lift ticket sales to control crowds—and the resort claims it still does so today. This means parking has never really been an issue. So what “crowding” does it need to mitigate?

If a season passholder decides to ski or ride Powder Mountain every weekend and holiday this winter, they could theoretically incur up to $576 in parking fees.

This decision raises three possibilities: (1) the resort is attempting to capitalize on a growing trend seen at many Utah ski destinations, (2) they anticipate significantly higher visitor numbers this season, which would suggest an increase in lift ticket sales, or (3) they suddenly care a lot more about the environmental impacts of vehicle pollution.

Since PowMow seems to have expanded its parking capacity this season, it seems more likely that this change is a revenue-driven move rather than a response to anticipated crowding. However, this shift also raises concerns about whether the resort will try to dramatically increase its ticket sales. Powder Mountain might be the only ski resort we’ve visited in North America where lift lines are truly non-existent outside of mechanical issues, and it’s poignant to think that might change this winter. However, as we’ll discuss later in this piece, a couple of other factors have led us to believe that a huge uptick in crowds is unlikely to occur.

For frequent visitors, the new policy creates additional financial burdens. Individuals, couples, or small groups traveling together now face yet another hidden cost, on top of lift tickets, lodging, and gear expenses. This is particularly frustrating because Powder Mountain’s unique selling point has always been its commitment to simplicity and accessibility—qualities that are eroded by nickel-and-dime strategies like this one.

And to add insult to injury, season passholders aren’t even exempted from these paid parking fees. Instead, you get a free UTA bus pass. For those who want to ski or ride Powder Mountain every weekend and holiday this winter and don’t want to deal with the bus, this could introduce parking fees of up to $576 across the season—or a 33% tax on the original $1,700 price tag. Unfortunately, these parking policies were announced after the vast majority of passholders made their purchases, and the resort isn’t offering refunds for disgruntled customers. For many loyal customers, this feels like a cruel bait and switch—especially when so much of the value proposition of a Powder Mountain season pass has historically been the crowd-free weekend and holiday access.

Powder Mountain is now reserving February weekends for passholders only, with no lift ticket sales on Saturdays and Sundays for the entire month.

February Passholder-Only Days

But even though Powder Mountain’s season passholders have to pay for peak-time parking along with everyone else, at least passholders can still at least access the resort on February weekends. Wait, what?

Yep, that’s right—a few months back, Powder Mountain announced that weekends in February would be for passholders only, with no lift tickets or other forms of access available during that time. At first glance, this decision might actually sound like a win for passholders—fewer crowds, more exclusivity. But dig a little deeper, and the decision starts to fall apart.

For one, imagine you’re a Powder Mountain passholder who enjoys skiing with friends and family who don’t have season passes. This new policy makes that impossible on Saturdays and Sundays in February. To add insult to injury, passholders will still be excluded from homeowner-only terrain during this time, and the paid parking policies are still in effect. It’s almost a cruel irony that season passholders, who might otherwise be able to fill their carpools with friends or family to achieve the paid parking exemption, are now more likely to have to pay the $12 fee—all because they can’t fill their cars with eligible guests during that time period.

So what about non-passholders who already booked trips? This announcement’s mid-October timing is particularly callous. Many folks had already planned their vacations well ahead of that timeframe, coordinating time off work and securing lodging, and now the literal only way to ski or ride Powder Mountain during this time frame is to buy a $1,700 season pass—which, mind you, is still on sale as of early January 2025. In fact, Powder Mountain even suggested so for people facing this problem in an FAQ section of their policy announcement. In our view, this is an incredibly tone-deaf move, given these guests are now being asked to spend even more money by a management that’s totally upended their plans.

Powder Mountain has lifted its infamous season pass cap—and the $1,700 pass is still on sale as of mid-January 2025.

Source: Powder Mountain

Lifting of Season Pass Cap

Now’s probably a good time to cover a circumstance we hinted at earlier—Powder Mountain has officially lifted the season pass cap that both made it so desirable and infamous for years. In years’ past, the resort had never sold more than 3,000 season passes, and some claimed they had to wait on yearslong waitlists to be able to grab one. As one of the only large ski resorts in the United States where season pass sales are still available to purchase, this circumstance is squarely no longer the case. Some of us are left wondering whether this is a permanent decision, or whether the resort is left trying to recuperate costs after blowback from its other controversial changes.

Since Powder Mountain has departed the Indy Pass, the only way to access the resort is now by purchasing an expensive lift ticket.

Departure from Indy Pass and Skyrocketing Lift Ticket Prices

In addition to this, Powder Mountain has recently dropped out of the Indy Pass program—of which it was a founding member. While on the surface, this might be a much more forgivable decision than many of the other initiatives that dropped this winter, it’s another sign that the new resort leadership is biting the hand that’s historically fed it. The decision to part ways with the program, instead of sticking with the incredibly restrictive blackout dates and reservation system that Indy Pass holders already had to contend with, highlights the resort’s growing focus on profit over inclusivity across income brackets.

Now, the only way to visit Powder Mountain is through a season pass product or lift ticket. We will give the resort a little bit of credit—it did offer somewhat reasonably-priced off-peak weekday tickets of just over $100 through December of last year. But weekday tickets now start at a much less palatable $177, and if you want to buy any weekend or holiday ticket—assuming you’re going in a month you can actually visit on one of these dates without a pass—you’ll be forking over more than $200 for a single day, even if you buy well in advance. This is a huge price increase from a few years ago, when you could buy a holiday ticket for $140 even at the window, and makes it such that there is basically no economically reasonable way for any rational person who isn’t a regular season passholder to visit the resort anymore.

For context, every other ski resort that regularly charges over $200 for lift tickets also offers multi-resort pass product access that can be had for much cheaper if purchased in the summer or fall, and the vast majority of visitors to these resorts use one of these pass products—which, in many cases, are available to purchase as flexible ticket-like products rather than true season passes. Vail Resorts, which includes all of its mountains on the Epic Pass and is responsible for several of the mountains that charge $200-plus lift tickets these days, cites that 75% of its visitors use an Epic Pass product to visit its mountains rather than a traditional ticket.

In other words, Powder Mountain is kind of missing the point with its absurdly-priced lift tickets—while other resorts are purposely inflating their ticket prices to get people to lock in revenue through a much more economically-priced pass before weather can influence their decision, Powder Mountain doesn’t really have one of those options—and no, their four-figure season passes don’t count. (To play devil's advocate, one could argue that the early-bird off-peak-weekday tickets were this form of discounted access. But given how few people have the opportunity to plan their vacations during these times, and the fact that the Epic and Ikon passes offer discounted access for weekends and holidays, that doesn't really come across as a feasible alternative to these pass products.)

So it’s entirely possible that Powder Mountain is still achieving the empty slopes they advertise—but less because it’s capping ticket and pass sales, and more because it’s just such a terrible deal for skiers and riders of any remotely budget-conscious nature.

Misleading Marketing Efforts

Powder Mountain is advertising that it was “recently named” the #1 resort in the West by Ski Magazine—but the ad neglects to mention that the resort was excluded from Ski Mag’s latest rankings entirely.

So how does Powder Mountain get ahead of these controversial changes? Well, the resort seems to think they can do that with compelling marketing efforts. However, Powder Mountain’s leadership seems to either think that its consumer base is quite dumb or just be running out of ideas, as their latest ads have arguably been just as deceptive as the timing of some of their policy announcements.

Lift Blog on X (Twitter) has done a particularly good job of spotting these ads and calling them out, and here are a few of the most egregious examples he’s found.

Powder Mountain is still advertising on Facebook that they offer more acres than every other U.S. ski resort. A look at the website shows that the resort is sticking with their claim of 8,000 acres of skiable terrain, which—if true—would indeed make it the largest ski resort in North America. However, this claim has always been problematic; even in previous years, nearly 40% of Powder Mountain’s footprint was only accessible via guided tours. But the claim is even more of a slap in the face now that another solid chunk is only accessible to homeowners. For the 2024-25 season, only about 2,700 of Powder Mountain’s acres are lift-served and public, which makes this area of the footprint—the part the overwhelming majority of guests will be spending all of their time on—smaller than at least five of the ten resorts it calls out in this ad.

Lift Blog also called out another ad from Powder Mountain advertising its uncrowded slopes. In the ad, Powder Mountain contrasts its so-called “crowd-free” experience with the slopes of another unnamed resort pictured at the top. However, the top picture apparently showcases a ski resort in Ukraine—which isn’t exactly a place that attracts the same demographic as Utah destination mountains. This is even more hilarious given the crowding issues that a certain Utah resort has experienced in recent weeks.

Finally, and perhaps most comically, Powder Mountain is still running ads advertising itself as the #1 ski resort in the West. But if you look closely at the ad, you’ll see a small text that states that this was a “Recently Named” award by Ski Magazine. So just how recent was this designation awarded? Well, Lift Blog correctly calls out that the mention was a holdover from their 2024 rankings (which were released in October 2023), well before any of the resort’s controversial changes went into effect. Given that the resort wasn’t even included in Ski Magazine’s top 30 resorts in the West in their 2025 rankings, this is an incredibly deceptive marketing technique. 

Despite all its controversial changes, Powder Mountain has made some significant investments into its public terrain, with three new lifts and new lift-served resort areas.

Positive Guest Experience Improvements

So all of the changes we’ve covered so far might seem pretty demoralizing as far as ski resort initiatives go. But has Powder Mountain completely dropped the ball on adding anything  universally positive to the experience? Well as it turns out, quite the contrary.

Powder Mountain has made significant investments in its infrastructure this season. First off, the resort has installed a whopping three new publicly-available lifts, including a high-speed replacement for the Paradise quad, a fixed-grip quad replacement for the aging Timberline triple, and another new fixed-grip quad to the top of Lightning Ridge, replacing the previous snowcat service there. Notably, the previous snowcat service cost over $40 with taxes and fees, so this is a huge democratization of this terrain.

The new Paradise Express cuts the ride time of Powder Mountain’s second-longest lift in half, making it much easier to spend time in this advanced-oriented area and faster to return to the nearest facilities. Upgrading Timberline to a fixed-grip quad doesn't notably increase ride speed but replaces a 52-year-old lift, significantly improving its reliability for the years to come and slightly boosting capacity as well. Lastly, the new Lightning Ridge quad is probably the most consequential of all these investments, offering two key advantages: the first-ever lift-served access to the advanced and expert chutes on Lightning Ridge and James Peak, and the resolution of a considerable missing lift link, with the new chair finally linking the main section of the resort to the beginner-friendly Sundown area with night skiing.

An inset of Powder Mountain’s trail map, with the 2024 public lift upgrades shown in dark green, and the 2025 public expansion and lift upgrade shown in light green.

But the investments aren’t stopping this season. Looking ahead, a new lift in the Wolf Canyon area is planned for 2025, opening over 1,000 acres of advanced and expert bowl, glade, and chute terrain currently reserved for guided tours. And for those who’ve missed terrain parks, they’ve returned to the Sundown and Hidden Lake areas for the first time since 2020.

Finally, it seems pretty evident that Powder Mountain cares about their staff. While it’s hard to assess this quality from a truly objective perspective, from an anecdotal point of view, all the staff we chatted with throughout our visit this past weekend were incredibly friendly and some of the least stressed we’d ever seen at a ski resort. Also, the staff at the resort had been issued some pretty sweet new jackets.

These improvements are genuinely impressive, and for certain visitors, it’s not hard to fathom they’ll outweigh the negative changes that are happening elsewhere at the resort. We argue the biggest beneficiaries will be experts, who can now both lap the technical Paradise terrain much faster and access several of the double-black Lightning Ridge trails without a lengthy hike, and night skiers, who can now make their way over to the Sundown area without having to take a bus.

Powder Mountain’s employees have been equipped with sweet new jackets this season—and they seemed in great spirits during our visit.

Final Thoughts

So, where does this leave Powder Mountain? On one hand, the new lifts, reintroduced terrain parks, and new lift-served terrain are absolutely fantastic steps forward, and they’ve greatly improved the experience at the parts of the resort that remain public—and we might even argue that as an overall package, Powder Mountain is a better mountain in 2025 than it was before closing off Village and Mary’s. It’s also clear the resort is investing heavily in the quality-of-life of their lifties, patrollers, and other mountain staff, which is especially noteworthy given the high-profile squabbles at other resorts in the state. And finally, Powder Mountain remains refreshingly empty, even on weekends.

But on the other hand, the resort seems to have pissed off just about everyone important to their bottom line. Unaffordable access for the mainstream population, restrictive policies that rub all but the wealthiest the wrong way—and that includes the non-homeowners who can still afford four-figure season passes—and hastily-announced paid parking and ticket policies have all eroded Powder Mountain’s trust as a reliable vacation spot, and that’s not a position any ski resort wants to find themselves in, let alone one that’s cited “paying their bills” as a reason for some of their most significant changes. 

Powder Mountain is still refreshingly empty—even on weekends. But is it too empty to sustain itself?

Ultimately, even though Powder Mountain has made some incredible improvements this year, their series of recent policy decisions have done a fantastic job of alienating the very people who made the resort what it is today. It’s one thing to be greedy, but to a certain extent, we’re left wondering if the people at the helm of these decisions are genuinely detached from reality. It’s especially painful to write this after witnessing how clearly the resort cares about their staff and the future of the mountain, but sadly, we don’t know how much the leadership thought through the bottom-line implications of the choices they made and the manner in which they made them.

Many of us are left wondering whether Powder Mountain is already reaping what it’s sown. The misleading ads and continued season pass sales suggest that resort may be left trying to recuperate costs after blowback from its other controversial changes. The resort is still as empty as it’s always been, but is it too empty to sustain its operations? We’ll be following the developments over the next couple of months to know for sure, but one thing’s for certain—it is quite a historic time to be a skier or rider in Utah, for better or for worse.

Considering a ski trip to Utah this winter? Check out our comprehensive Utah rankings, as well as our comprehensive Powder Mountain review (which was written last April before many of these changes went into effect). You can also check out our Powder Mountain review in video form below.