Skiing season has begun, meaning that people are beginning to head up to the mountain to ride. Most people will be traveling to one of the more local spots, Stevens pass. Stevens is now owned by Vail, and ever since they bought the mountain in 2018 for $67 million, things started going downhill.

For starters, a day pass up at Stevens will cost you $110 if you purchase beforehand online, or you could purchase one in person on the same day and pay $129. If you compare these to Snoqualmie pass, Stevens is way more expensive, as a Snoqualmie day pass is only $78. “I have friends who want to get into skiing and that high price of entry does make it a lot harder to convince people to come up and try it,” Senior Julian Kreis said.

Another thing Vail did was raise prices of season passes by introducing the Epic pass in 2008. This pass costs $899 for a season and you can use it at any Vail resort, but though it works at every Vail resort, if you want a season pass only for Stevens you still have to purchase the epic pass for $899. When you compare this price with Snoqualmie’s season pass, you find that Snoqualmie’s is half the price of the epic pass at $449. “I think it doesn’t make much sense in my opinion either because I think they’re not giving you full access to the resort right now,” Senior Emilio Pena said.

One more thing Vail has done with Stevens is only having three out of six lifts open. This means that people are spending large amounts of money on tickets just to ride only half of the mountain. “I think that is a complete abomination. I think they should offer discounts or like, refunds out to people who bought those tickets to be out riding, they’re pretty deserving to be pretty upset about it, an abuse basically,” Pena said.