The economics of skiing in America

WHITE POWDER can drive many people mad. At the bottom of the Imperial chairlift in Breckenridge, a mountain resort in Colorado, at 10 o’clock in the morning on a sunny Saturday, at least 200 people are queuing to get up. The chairlift is not yet carrying people, but the crowd is patient. There is, after all, a show to watch. Up the mountain, men in red jackets are trying to set off avalanches. Explosions ring out every few minutes. Your correspondent, who was slow to arrive, joins the back of the queue as it begins to move, and a cheer goes up. By the time he gets onto a chair, the pristine powder snow below the lift has already been chopped up by a hundred tracks, and the line to get back up stretches the length of a football field.

The benefits of committing early have always been clear to skiers. Yet in the ski resorts of Colorado, being quick is now about more than just getting up the mountain first. To be allowed up there your correspondent, an unsavvy European, paid $260 for a single day’s lift ticket. Almost nobody else on the chairs with him paid as much. These days, if you want to ski in America, the wise thing to do is to buy your pass before the first snow falls. Commit before November, and you can get unlimited skiing all season for less than the cost of a few days. In the past decade or so the ski business has been transformed by clever pricing and industry consolidation. A close look delivers an insight into how the American consumer economy as a whole is changing. It shows how monopoly power can accumulate, but also spur growth.