Powder Mountain, the Utah resort that Reed Hastings (co-founder and former CEO of Netflix) bought in 2023 for around $100 million, will start selling a lift pass this season designed for skiing almost 12 hours straight: probably the lift pass with the most hours of skiing in the world. It's the latest piece of a project that already had a seven-hour pass from midday and various time slots throughout the day.
What's behind the 12-hour lift pass
The idea fits with the way Hastings is reshaping Powder Mountain: a hybrid system in which part of the ski area is open to the public and another part is reserved for those who pay a very expensive membership, available only to owners of the slope-side homes in developments such as Raintree, Mary’s or Village. With that mix of public and private, stretching the ski hours in a day is a way of selling "more mountain" without opening more terrain.
Powder Mountain is, in fact, one of the resorts with the most skiable area in the United States, and in recent years it has announced several new lifts, most of them private. The fact that a lift pass of almost 12 hours exists says a lot about where part of North American skiing is heading: fewer people per run and a higher price per hour.
And in Europe, how many hours do we ski?
Here the day lift pass covers the lift operating hours, which at the big Spanish resorts run from 9:00 to 16:30-17:00: between seven and eight hours. What you can do to make the most of a day is have your equipment ready the evening before and not lose the first hour in the shop. That's what we do at the resorts where we have a shop: you book online, pick up the evening before and head out to the slopes when they open.
Ski Rental in Formigal · Ski Rental in Sierra Nevada · Ski Rental in Baqueira Beret · All Ski Resorts in Spain
Sources: Nevasport · The Salt Lake Tribune · SnowBrains.
