Tom Key Understanding Ski Resort Consolidation Trends
At Powder Mountain, Utah, the snow still falls the same way it always has. Six hundred inches of crystalline powder drift down each season onto 8,464 acres of terrain, coating the slopes in what locals have long considered their private cathedral of winter. But something else has drifted in over the past decade—something that can’t be measured in inches or acres, but rather in the quiet transformation of a mountain community.
In 2023, when Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings acquired majority ownership of Powder Mountain, he didn’t just buy a ski resort. He purchased a vision of what skiing could become in modern America: exclusive, curated, and carefully controlled. Millions of dollars later, Powder Mountain stands as both a testament to improvement and a warning about preservation. New terrain, night skiing, upgraded facilities—all positive changes on paper. Yet for locals who remember when this was simply their community hill, something less tangible has been lost in the metamorphosis.
The Great Consolidation Pause
The story of Powder Mountain is, in many ways, the story of American skiing writ small. What’s happening on this one Utah mountain—this delicate dance between preservation and progress, between access and exclusivity—is playing out across the country’s snow-covered peaks, though not always in ways you might expect.
Consider 2024, when the ski industry’s decade-long consolidation spree finally caught its edge. For the first time in nearly ten years, the balance sheet of ski area acquisitions in the United States reached a curious equilibrium: zero. The great buyers—Vail Resorts, Alterra Mountain Company, Boyne Resorts—kept their powder dry, so to speak. After a period that saw 56 ski areas change hands in just three years (2017-2019), this pause feels less like a rest and more like a collective catching of breath.
The Shifting Landscape
But in this pause, something interesting emerged. While the industry giants stood still, smaller players made moves that might signal a subtle shift in skiing’s tectonic plates. In Vermont, Powdr Corporation—one of the industry’s major players—did something almost unthinkable: they sold Killington and Pico Mountain to local investors. It was as if a massive retail chain had suddenly decided to franchise its most profitable store back to the community.
This is where the story gets interesting, because while Powdr was divesting in the East, another narrative was unfolding in the West. Alterra Mountain Company, displaying the precision of a ski racer picking their line through gates, acquired Arapahoe Basin in Colorado. Meanwhile, Mountain Capital Partners looked beyond borders entirely, expanding into Chile with La Parva. It’s as if the industry couldn’t quite decide whether to consolidate or disperse, to grow or to contract.
The Corporate Pipeline
The implications of these moves ripple through the industry like tracks in fresh snow. Take Vail Resorts’ 2019 acquisition of Peak Resorts—a $264 million deal that added 17 ski areas to their portfolio. This wasn’t just about adding dots to a map; it was about creating a pipeline. By acquiring resorts near major metropolitan areas—Mount Snow in Vermont, Hunter Mountain in New York, Liberty Mountain in Pennsylvania—Vail wasn’t just buying ski areas. They were buying entry points, creating a farm system where urban skiers could progress from their local hill to Vail’s destination resorts, all while never leaving the embrace of the Epic Pass.
It’s a brilliant strategy, one that would make any business school professor proud. But it also raises questions about what we lose when skiing becomes less about community and more about vertical integration. The transformation of Wilmot Mountain near Chicago offers a perfect case study. Once a humble hill where generations of Midwesterners learned to ski, it’s now a carefully calibrated component of Vail’s larger ecosystem.
When Mountains Merge
The story of consolidation isn’t just about business strategy—it’s about identity. When Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows merged in 2011 under KSL Capital Partners (later becoming part of Alterra Mountain Company and rebranding as Palisades Tahoe), they didn’t just connect two mountains with lifts and a unified ticketing system. They merged two distinct cultures: Alpine’s laid-back, community-first vibe with Palisades’ more polished personality. The result is bigger, certainly better equipped, but different in ways that statistics can’t capture.
The Cost of Progress
This transformation of American skiing—this shift from local to corporate, from community to commodity—isn’t necessarily good or bad. It’s complex, like a double black diamond run with varying conditions. The corporate tide has brought undeniable benefits: better infrastructure, improved safety systems, expanded terrain. But it’s also changed the fundamental nature of the sport.
Take Crested Butte, acquired by Vail Resorts in 2018. The improvements are visible: upgraded lifts, better snowmaking, smoother operations. But locals say something less tangible has vanished—that indefinable quality that made Crested Butte not just a place to ski, but a place to belong.
The Future of the Sport
As we look to the future of American skiing, the questions become more pressing. The 2024 slowdown in acquisitions might be less an ending and more an intermission. The forces that drove consolidation—economies of scale, market pressure, the need for capital investment—haven’t disappeared. They’ve just paused to groom the trails they’ve already acquired.
But there are countercurrents. The Killington-Pico buyout suggests that local ownership isn’t dead—it’s just evolved. Perhaps the future of skiing isn’t a binary choice between corporate and local control, but rather a new model that somehow preserves the soul of the sport while providing the capital needed to survive in a warming world.
The snow still falls the same way it always has. But who gets to make tracks in it, and under whose banner they do so, remains the central question facing American skiing. As we stand at the top of this particular run, the path ahead isn’t entirely clear. But then again, that’s always been part of skiing’s appeal—finding your way down the mountain, even when you can’t see the bottom.
