$300-a-day lift ticket?

[aclyon]

I'm convincing my friend to just "buy some boots" which by the way, you can't try on any where in the states

Why can’t he just walk into a sports store and try on boots? Maybe not in Florida but in snow country? Or aren’t they stocked in US stores at all? They are broadly available in Canadien sports stores like MEC and La Cordee.

Because in the US Nordic BC is virtually unknown. Here in South Lake Tahoe there is literally 1 store that carries the gear, they only have 2 boots (both mediocre, a Madshus and a Fischer), and the employees do not know what the hell they are talking about. I have exactly 1 ski buddy for Nordic BC. I see split boarders and AT skiers all the time, but never any Nordic BC'ers. And Xplore?? lol, not a chance of finding any of that gear or a ski shop employee who would even acknowledge its existence much less mount those bindings for you. Nordic BC needs way better marketing in the US!! I'm sure if people understood it better, it would be quite popular-- it's such a low production, low cost, simple and straight forward way of getting into the back country...

[Yamaska]

It’s not super common here but the gear is widely available at major sports stores in Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick. The selection is not good later in the season. There are 19 boots available at La Cordee Montréal today. The list might be half in February.

https://www.lacordee.com/fr/sports-d-hi ... ste?page=1

Ski hills suck a lot of oxygene out of local markets. The closer you are to a major hill, the more the selection is focus on alpine.

[Capercaillie]

"You can buy that freedom for $90 a day"



That was 1983. Inflation-adjusted, that is $271 USD today. So a resort ticket is already more expensive than cat skiing was 40 years ago.

In 1983, you could book 5 days of heli-skiing from CMH for $1,370 USD:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=MKLm4z ... st&f=false

$274 USD per day nominal, $825 inflation-adjusted. When do you think a resort ticket will hit $850 USD?

[fisheater]

I know I am late to the party. In my part of Michigan there are 3 types of Nordic skis available, XC Race skis, skate skis, and recreational XC skis that are junk.
We have decent winters some years, and other years it can be lean. Nordic skiing is somewhat limited by weather here, but the the junk equipment they sell around here offers all the excitement of the opportunity to clean horse stalls at the State Park.

[randoskier]

Simple supply and demand. My Mon-Fri season pass at my home resort (Arizona Snowbowl) cost me $199. A day ticket bought last-minute for a high season Saturday will cost over $300.

I love it when Americans make excuses for the people ripping them off!!!

There is big demand here in Europe (where BTW our main resorts have almost 2x the vertical drop of the biggest ones in the USA). Europe has much more modern lift systems more slope KMs per resort. Better lodging (also not expensive) and a better ambiance than US ski-towns that are largely like little Disneylands, or fake cowboy towns like Steamboat, or fake German towns like Vail. A full-day lift ticket at St Anton in Austria- the Ski Arlberg pass which also incudes Lech (awesome fucking place!) is 75 EUR (83 bucks) bought no notice, day of skiing, peak season. $166 bucks for a 3-day ticket and so on... That is for 85 lifts, 4,950 ft vertical drop 300 km of pistes and 200 km of open areas. That is a ticket on the expensive side for Europe!

Dolomiti Superski Pass- 85 bucks, 450 lift facilities, 1,200 KM of slopes, 15 resorts- one ticket. Essentially the whole Dolomites.

Lift skiing is rip-off in America and to make it worse it is on public US Forest Service land, the people's land, leased out to greedy monopolies or duopolies who are screwing the public.

There is no economic justification for American ski-pass prices. Simple corporate greed and complacent, easily-led consumers.