$67 a Day for a Week of Skiing? We Put the Indy Pass to the Test.

In January, my family and I arrived at Pomerelle Mountain Resort in southern Idaho to find fresh powder, inexpensive lift tickets, no lines and bargain burgers grilling at the base. What more could a skier ask for?

Perhaps a faster chair, but we chalked that up to vintage charm.

Last fall when I purchased the Indy Pass — the small-resort answer to the Epic and Ikon passes — I’d never heard of Pomerelle, one of the resorts I now had access to.

But the Indy Pass, established in 2019 with 34 members, exists to introduce skiers to the independent, often family-owned resorts — now more than 230 of them — that individually lack the marketing power to compete with Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Company, issuers of Epic and Ikon.

Skiing is an expensive sport. Large resorts often command more than $200 for a same-day lift ticket, offering access to extensive terrain and high-speed chairlifts to maximize your run time.

In contrast, small ski resorts offer cheaper prices on everything from lift tickets to lunches, which is especially appealing to families and novices. Parking is usually free.

Designed for skiers seeking variety as well as affordability, Indy offers two days each at member resorts on three continents (the majority are in the United States). To test the payoff, I bought the Indy+ Pass for $469 last spring (this upgrade on the $349 base pass is exempt from blackout dates) and studied the Indy Pass map. Clusters of resorts in the East, Midwest and Rocky Mountains offered intriguing opportunities for ski-centric road trips.

Last month, with my husband and son, we drove roughly 1,200 miles between Salt Lake City and Missoula, Mont., skiing seven days at five resorts in Utah, Idaho and Montana. We came out ahead financially — individual tickets would have cost $547 per person for this ski trip alone — while exploring throwback lodges and learning to embrace family time on slow chairlifts.

‘Skiing the way it used to be’

Vail Resorts had just settled a strike at nearby Park City Mountain Resort when we set out from Salt Lake City for Beaver Mountain, an Indy member near Logan, Utah, about 110 miles north.

The Seeholzer family has been operating Beaver, considered the oldest, continuously run family-owned resort in the country, since 1939 (regular lift tickets cost $70).

“Our unofficial catchphrase is ‘Skiing the way it used to be,’” said Travis Seeholzer, the resort’s third-generation general manager. “There’s not a bunch of fast…