If you have never had a multi resort pass you owe it to yourself to buck up one season and make it happen. They are a great way to expand your playground beyond your local hill and while you may not hit all the resorts on your pass at least it is motivation to check off as many as you can fit in!
To be honest I will probably not be able to come close to skiing 5 days a week, every week like I did back my freshman and sophomore year of college at Montana State ever again. Perhaps when I am retired but tough to see it happening before then without doing a ski sabbatical of some sort. But one silver lining of this year is I did end up going to the most amount of resorts than I ever have had the chance to by getting to ski 6 resorts in 1 season and counting:
-Crystal Mountain WA (of course!)
-Steamboat CO
-Winterpark CO
-Boreal CA
-Mt. Bachelor OR
-Alyeska AK(2 trips)
What really made this possible was the MAX pass and the fact that it had great local PNW representation(2 WA, 1 OR, 1 BC). In a summary the really sweet part of the MAX pass was it gave you access to 5 days unrestricted at 44 resorts. The HUGE BONUS was if your home mountain(aka Crystal) happened to be one of those 44 resorts you could add it on to your home mountain seasons pass for only about $340 dollars. At $340 it didn't take long to pay this pass off in reality if you visited any of the top resorts 3 days the pass was more than paid off.
So what's the problem, the problem is that that the MAX pass is going the way of the dinosaurs and the replacement if there is one is a watered down version of the MAX pass at best! The IKON pass has been able to grab about half of the resorts that used to be on the MAX pass and if you live in Colorado to be honest this is the pass to get. If you live in the PNW however you quickly find out you went from having 4 mountains in the PNW to ZERO!
Best pass deal I can see out there is really now for just those of us that happen to live in Washington or Canada being the Whistler Edge Card. The silver lining of Vail purchasing Whistler last year was now the Whistler edge 5 day card has the ability to go to most of the Vail resorts for 2 of the 5 days.
Those Vail resorts include: Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Park City, Heavenly, Northstar, Kirkwood, Stowe, Wilmot, Afton Alps, or Mt. Brighton. If you get the Whistler 10 day edge card you then can use up to 3 of those days at the Vail resorts. With a day ticket to Vail around $160/day and the 5 day Whistler edge card costing about $350 USD go to Vail for two of your 5 days and enjoy 3 free days at Whistler! Also the Whistler edge card comes with free early season skiing basically from opening day till about Dec 14th as an added bonus.
I would say the other pass that is definetly worth taking a look at if you are looking to make some extended weekend trips and don't mind some travel is the Mountain Collective. The list of resorts is really impressive and its about half the price of the IKON or the Epic pass but you are limited to 2 days at each resort so as long as that is not a hang up that might be the bucket list pass to get. At the end of the day for me its soo long MAX pass you where an amazing deal while you lasted, now time to visit Whistler and Vail next season!
