Ski Cooper Slashes Weekday Lift Tickets to $45, Including Walk-Ups

Ski Cooper, located in Central Colorado, is dropping its weekday lift tickets, with an unprecedented twist

In a shift from industry norms, Ski Cooper is making a big change to its weekday ticket price.

This small, high-alpine Colorado resort is dropping weekday lift ticket prices to just $45 for adults, offering this same rate for both advance and walk-up purchases. On Fridays and Sundays, adult tickets are priced at $95, and for Saturdays and holidays, tickets are $110 — still consistent across both purchase methods.

Located north of Leadville, CO, Ski Cooper is a nonprofit ski area situated near high-profile resorts like Vail, Beaver Creek, and Copper Mountain, where peak-day tickets surpass $250. While it lacks the expansive terrain and high-speed lifts of its neighbors, a day on the slopes at Ski Cooper offers great value.

While the low price for weekday lift tickets is certainly a big headline, it’s not unprecedented in Colorado, as other areas, such as Purgatory near Durango, have cheaper tickets, even as low as $9. What truly sets Ski Cooper apart, however, is the alignment of walk-up and advance ticket prices — a rarity in today’s market.

Ski Cooper is known for its snow quality due to its high elevation, but lacks snowmaking.

Our Take

Over the past few years, ski areas have been pushing in-advance purchases more and more, as getting revenue that isn’t weather-dependent is becoming more important as increasingly variable winters are more common. This leads to massive discounts on preseason purchases, such as season passes and ticket products like the Epic, Ikon, Mountain Collective, and Indy Passes.

But what Ski Cooper is doing is basically turning the clock back 20 years — bringing back a model that places revenue at the mercy of the weather. These days, there are very few ski areas that charges the same for in-advance and in-person tickets — at least from those that offer in-advance purchases — and Ski Cooper might be the first one we’ve ever heard of reverting back to this strategy.

Ski Cooper is one of the few ski areas with no snowmaking remaining in the country, and this decision is putting them more at the whim of Mother Nature. However, if any ski area is well situated to do this, it’s Ski Cooper, as their incredibly high elevation brings consistent snow, even on rough years.

It’s worth noting that Ski Cooper already brings in a lot of pre-season revenue through its season pass, which serves as a pseudo-multi-mountain pass due to its extensive partner mountain program (though this network has shrunk somewhat in recent years). It’s entirely possible that the ski area’s lift ticket sales have suffered in recent years due to this bargain season pass strategy, although this information is not public, and the walk-up ticket change is a strategy to recapture some of these sales. As for how this experiment in day tickets go, only time will tell, and we’ll be closely monitoring the outcome.

Considering a ski trip to Colorado? Check out of Ski Cooper review here, and check out our ranking of the major Colorado ski areas in article form here or video form below.