[touron]

5th Graders Ski or Ride Free

[Jaberwock]

Suckering poor families into buying their kids $$$ equipment know that the kids will want to keep skiing (and paying for it) after 5th grade...

[MtnGoat]

you can outfit a kid pretty cheap if you pick your way through a few decent Goodwills. The real hammer is the ludicrous ticket prices

[touron]

I've always wondered....why are ticket prices so expensive? Is the lease on the F.S. land expensive?

[Schroder]

[contour5]

Seasons Passes are still a pretty good deal...

[touron]

[Randito]

Mt Baker has has a "fifth graders free" program for years. Mission Ridge has the "3-0" program -- students with a 3.0 or better GPA on their last quarter get tickets for $30 (vs $45 regular price for 10-24 year olds) Inreresting social engineering / marketing. Ski areas (at least in PNW) actually don't make that much money on ticket sales -- they kind of break even on operational costs and ticket / pass sales. The profit centers are the snack bar, the pub and real estate development near the ski area -- great example of this are the new $600K houses going in next to Summit West.

[Bedivere]

Real estate doesn't make money for ski areas in Washington because the ski areas are all on leased FS land and the companies that run the ski areas don't necessarily own whatever small patches of private land may exist nearby. Very different model than the Colorado and California areas. There is almost no private land anywhere near Stevens Pass, so Stevens has to make it's money off tickets and concession sales. One of the largest developments at Snoqualmie is owned by the guy who owns Evo Gear. And if you think tickets in WA are expensive, you've clearly never been to Jackson Hole.

[Randito]

I was wrong about the houses for sale next to summit west -- the cheapest one isn't $600K -- it's $873K -- the rest are between $1.1M and $1.35M LINK There are a bunch of private homes just east of Stevens -- Which were originally developed by the same group of investors of the Yodelin ski area Have you checked the prices of houses along Lake Wenatchee lately? Mission Ridge has a lot of ski houses along it's access road -- Mt Baker has many houses and condo/timeshare developments along HWY-542. Real Estate development is definitely a factor in the planning and development of a ski resort. In the fancier ski areas often have very high "day ticket" prices -- both to encourage people to purchase "lift and lodging" packages and to discourage "riff-raff" locals from skiing at the resort. Deer Valley is now charging $120 per day betweeb xmas and new years. At Beaver Creek its $129 per day.

[Bedivere]

Lake Wenatchee? You might as well talk about properties on Lake Sammamish too, and North Bend, and the small communities along Hiway 542... My point is the companies that own the ski areas in washington do not own and therefore do not profit directly from large real estate developments. The ONLY money these companies make in WA is from the sales of tickets and merchandise/food at their base areas. Yes, having available real estate within driving distance is what allows people to come ski there, but the area owners do not develop and profit directly from real estate development. This is distinctly different from many of the large resorts in other areas of the country that do own large tracts of real estate at the base areas and do profit directly from it's development (think Squaw, Kirkwood, Mammoth, Jackson Hole, Vail, Steamboat, Whistler, etc. and to a smaller degree other areas like Snowbird, Solitude, Alta, etc). Washington's ski areas are not "destination resorts" where you can stay right at the mountain and your hotel/condo fees go in part or all to the resort owners. Crystal is as close as it gets to this in WA, but there isn't enough property there to make it a true destination.

[Randito]

[Bedivere]

Just to be a contrarian, I'd say if you want to come and ski in WA you should schedule *at least* a week. It could very well be raining 2-3 days and snowing or clear the rest of the time. It would suck to schedule a 2-3 day trip and have it rain those three days but be nice before and after. I'm just glad I live here so I can go whenever the going's good. I always stress out about ski trips to other places since I figure I'm going to be bummed if I burn the money and vacation days to go somewhere and they have crap weather while I'm there. So far I've been pretty lucky when going out of state.

[Randito]

[Bedivere]