The best snow in the world, 2 lodges, 6 lifts, 36 runs from blues to black diamonds, and one run from mountain-to-mountain that can take up to 15 minutes to complete. DAMN! I guess I need new boots this year after all!
I used to love this place. I used to get a deal for $200: 4 lift tickets and 2 nights in a ski in-ski out condo. I prolly can’t get that deal anymore, but DAMN I used to love boarding at this place.
It’s great to see that new owners were finally able to get in and get it back running again. It looks like they’ve started to pay off the back taxes and everything, so hopefully they’re serious about keeping it open.
Those prices were from 8-10 years ago. Lift tix at Eagle Point are $45 a day this year. I don’t know about season passes, but back when it was Elk Meadows, I think they were like $360.
The snow here in the Las Vegas Valley is non-existent, although it did rain all day, so I’m sure the slopes within 600 miles all got dumped on. Utah snow is da bomb (yo). It’s like boarding on those little tiny styrofoam balls after they all got covered with silicon spray.
ETA: I see that Fernie has a capacity of nearly 14,000 lift riders per hour. One of the things I loved about Elk Meadows was that most people from Vegas would go to Bryan Head, which about 3 hours away. Elk Meadows/Eagle Point is more like 6 hours away, but on a typical weekday, there’d be maybe, oh, 20 of us on the slopes. On 2 mountains with 36 runs. We (my snowboarding buddies and I) pretty much had the entire place to ourselves. I used to know every driver, everybody in the pro shop, the people at the snack bars, the lift operators, etc. It was an awesome experience.
Yes, many resorts are having trouble. Pretty much the entire crop of New England ski areas have changed hands in the past 10 years, mostly sold by owners having money problems to larger companies who are turn around artists. Some have been sold to local groups and are trying to refocus them. Several have gone out of business - two mid-sized ski hills are closed this year (Ascutney and Tenney).
NELSAP (The New England Lost Ski Area Project) is a great site to track old ski areas and keep tabs on the ones in trouble now.
It’s great that your local hill is back, but unfortunately many go bankrupt again soon after coming back. The ones that succeed have dedicated owners with deep pockets, a realistic business plan, and the luck to open up in a good snow year.