Get the Grandkids Skiing with Early Purchases of Season Passes
If you are like me, whenever I think about holiday gifts for my adult kids and grandkids, I immediately put the thought away, thinking I don’t have the time right now and will do it later. That turns out to be around December 15th, when panic sets in. Not anymore. Now, I gift my adult children season passes, so we can all ski together, including the grandkids.
It was my wife’s idea last season to give multi-resort season passes as holiday gifts. When the monetary – and monetary – shock wore off, I realized it was a wonderful, and sensible idea. After reviewing the major choices and where the kids and grandkids would ski, we decided to go with Ikon over Epic and Mountain Collective.
Given the date in mid-December when we looked into this, delaying was not an option, since sales would cease in two days. So, I went online, bought two Ikon full passes for five days at each participating resort, and then declared an early happy hour for my wife and me.
Here’s why it was great:
My son lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and three daughters, all of whom are under 7 yrs old, so their passes are relatively inexpensive, which is why I chose the adult pass as a gift. My wife and I live in Massachusetts. We’ve met to ski together in Utah twice in the past three years, and the older one, who is now 6, is now skiing greens with full confidence. The other two girls are younger, and like younger siblings everywhere, they don’t want to be left behind.
In late December, my son, his wife and the three girls were invited by friends to spend the holiday week in Steamboat Springs, an Ikon resort. In February, my son took the family to Palisades Tahoe, another Ikon resort. Later this season, their family joined us at Snowbird, where we got a couple of timeshare units into which we can squeeze everyone for 4-5 days.
The icing on the cake for our three-generation ski trip was that the kids had already skied multiple days at multiple resorts, and were more than warmed up for skiing with their grandparents.
My point is simple:
If you want to ski with adult kids and your grandkids, the little ones must be skiers. Buying a mega-pass product makes it much easier to create opportunities to ski together with the younger generations. We would have ended up buying them a lot of day tickets anyway, which would have been much more expensive, so this mega-pass situation is looking pretty, pretty good!
NOTE: We lucked out big time, because my wife made her suggestion TWO days before pass sales stopped last fall. And as anyone who’s been in this mega-pass world knows, when pass sales end THEY’RE OVER.
So, think about it. In some respects, it is literally the Christmas/Holiday gift that keeps on giving. Because what’s more fun than skiing with your adult son or daughter and his or her child or children?
Passes are on sale, do it now, you won’t regret it! Or, skip the passes for your kids and buy them for your grandkids. Do whatever works best for you, with the goal of skiing with your family.
Families and friends in a ski resort
John teaches kids, ages 6 to 13, plus women and men of all ability levels – “never-evers” to experts, and skiers 4-82 yrs old. He knows a lot about "fear" in skiing, having had more than his share during his learn-to-ski years, and loves helping his guests manage their fears on snow. His first lift was a rope tow at North Creek, the old name for what's now Gore Mtn. NY. He spent his "learn to ski" years skiing at Stratton and Stowe, caught the racing bug at 13, and raced through high school. He discovered the beauty, challenge and powder of Utah in his 20's and has returned there to ski every year since 1981.
When his two sons grew up and moved west, John began working part-time as a ski instructor. When he's not running his music business, you can find him at Stratton or Butternut. March is always Utah month.
He'll always reply to your questions! jtgelb54@gmail.com
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Thanks for the inspiring article, John. What fun!
Love that you shared this!
We’ve been doing this for all our 5 children and their kids and have has so many ski /boarding adventures with them! Since they have lived all over the US and Canada – the Epic tickets have worked for us to explore lots of areas!
Family ski trips are the best. We’re an Ikon family because my granddaughters regularly ski Eldora and Copper. I look forward to seeing their skills next week at Steamboat.
My husband and I didn’t take up skiing until our son was grown. We got 3 out of 4, so far, of his kids into skiing and snowboarding. Is there a way I could get some kind of family pass or something? We usually wind up buying day passes or buddy passes.
Hello Iris,
Great question…and my best answer is very simple: next season where will you, your son & family ski? Based on your answer to this question, you just need to do a little quick research and figure out which of the many “mega” (Epic & Ikon) pass resorts overlap with where you’ll ski together.
Knowing this, you then need to spend time reviewing “the fine print” and making a purchase.
Depending where you live perhaps it’s a smaller regional pass that works best.
One more suggestion: a guy named Stuart Winchester is the publisher of “The Storm Skiing Journal “. He has covered the proliferation of skiing passes in more depth than any writer on earth that I’m aware of.
Act now! Prices for passes start at the lowest price NOW, and companies and resorts raise prices intermittently until sometime in autumn when all of a sudden SPECIALTY RESORT SKI PASS SALES STOP!!
It feels annoying, but it’s just the way it works.
Hope this helps & good luck!
John