Private Powder

The next frontier of exclusive, members-club culture? Ski mountains. We went to Netflix founder Reed Hastings’s new Powder Mountai to see how private mountains are taking over—

- MICHAEL FRIBERG

Skiing is supposed to be freedom: the cold air, sparkling mountains, and skis cutting smooth, fast arcs across freshly fallen snow. And yet if you've done it recently, you know that few places have the capacity to produce misery and rage like a crowded resort. The traffic! The parking! The lift lines! By the time you even make it to the summit, the trails are skied off and crowded, increasing the likelihood of an accident like Gwyneth Paltrow's 2016 collision with a retired optometrist on a beginner run in Deer Valley. Now add a litter of querulous children who “hate skiing!,” can't carry their own gear, let alone put it on, and won't be pacified by syrupy machine-dispensed $5 hot cocoa, and it’s a recipe for emotional collapse that’s as expensive as it is self-inflicted.

The great luxury of skiing wasn’t always quite so masochistic. But interest in the sport reached new heights following the pandemic, as remote workers became less anchored to city cubicles. Plus, in recent years, two private-equity-backed firms, Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Company, acquired 52 of America’s best ski resorts. In Utah, Vail grabbed Park City and neighbor-ing Canyons, and Alterra took Deer Valley. In Vermont, Vail has Mount Snow, and Alterra has Sugarbush. Both companies put their collection of ski hills on multi-mountain season passes, which cost about a thousand bucks for the year. At the same time, they increased the price of day passes to, in some cases, more than $300. Now, anyone who wants to ski more than a handful of times per year (and can do math) is a holder of Vail’s Epic pass or Alterra’s Ikon pass.