U.S. News

Once upon a time, in the snowy mountains of remote south-west Montana, there was a thing called “five-dollar day”.

Even then, $5 bought something rare: a full day of skiing. The deal was tempting enough to inspire my friends and me to drive 44 miles (70km) from Bozeman along a narrow, winding highway – toward what would emerge as one of the most expansive and epic ski locales in the US: Big Sky Resort.

If you want to ski the same slopes this weekend, it would cost you $285 (though prices change regularly because of the resort’s “dynamic pricing” model). Prices at other resorts across the US have similar astronomical prices. A ski pass in Vail, Colorado, this weekend would set you back $338 and one in Park City, Utah, $333.

This, of course, does not include transportation, equipment rentals, lodging, lessons, parking and on-mountain meals and beverages.

All this is to say that, in the last decades, skiing in most of the Rockies has fractured into vastly different worlds. To understand how that evolved, you have to look not just at prices – but also at skiing culture.

I took my last ski vacation with friends in college in 1999. We stayed at a hostel and were able to afford the trip on student-newspaper wages. I can't imagine how much the same trip would cost today ... likely not a lot of college kids doing such trips now.