Updated: February 23, 2026
If this season feels more intense than “normal,” you’re not imagining it.
The U.S. ski industry is still massive — 60.4 million skier visits in 2023/24 — and winter 2025/26 is showing what that demand does to mountain towns: paid parking + reservations, passholder-only peak weekends, and more people spilling into the backcountry.
Example: Stevens Pass floated a paid weekend/holiday parking reservation plan for 2025/26, then adjusted course after pushback. That’s the signal: access is becoming the product, not just lift tickets.
1) Resorts Are Turning Access Into a Product (Parking + Reservations = The New Lift Line)
Paid parking, reservation systems, carpool incentives… it’s becoming standard at major mountains.
Case in point: Stevens Pass literally floated a paid weekend/holiday parking reservation plan for 2025/26 (with a price point and a carpool threshold), then adjusted course after guest feedback.
That’s the trend in a nutshell: resorts are experimenting in real time, because the lot is the bottleneck now, not the lift.
Translation: If you hate “planning” your ski day like it’s a concert ticket drop… buckle up.
Related reading: Powder’s breakdown of the Stevens Pass parking reservation drama.
2) Skiing Is Still Huge — Even When a Season “Feels Off”
Even with uneven conditions in parts of the country, the U.S. ski industry is still pulling massive numbers.
NSAA’s preliminary tally for 2023/24 came in at 60.4 million skier visits, making it the 5th best season on record, despite being down from the record-setting 65.4 million the year before.
So if lift lines feel like they’re getting worse even on random weekdays… it’s because demand is still extremely high—and concentrated at big destinations.
Want to dig deeper? NSAA keeps the long-term visitation charts and industry stats here.
3) Pass Prices Keep Climbing (And It’s Pushing Behavior Changes)
Season passes are increasingly a “commitment device”—people buy early, ski more, and show up midweek because they can.
Example: Ski Utah’s published price list shows Park City’s Epic Pass pricing and Powder Mountain’s 2025–26 season pass pricing (with Powder listed at $1,699 adult in that snapshot).
And Powder is leaning hard into the “keep it uncrowded” lane with Passholder Weekends—i.e., days where it’s basically passholders only.
This is where ski culture is heading:
- fewer “casual” day tickets
- more pass-driven behavior
- more midweek skiing
- more crowd-control experiments
4) Backcountry Use Is Up… And the Consequences Are Getting Harder to Ignore
The most brutal proof of the backcountry boom is also the saddest.
Last week’s catastrophic avalanche near Castle Peak (near Lake Tahoe) was reported as the deadliest U.S. avalanche in 45 years, happening during a major storm cycle.
Meanwhile, U.S. avalanche fatality tracking is publicly maintained by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC), with a national table that’s widely used as the database of record.
None of this is meant as a lecture—just reality: more people are out there, and the margin is razor thin when conditions are high consequence.
The Big Takeaway: Winter 2025/26 Is a Preview of the Next Decade
Ski towns aren’t just “winter playgrounds” anymore. They’re becoming year-round, high-demand outdoor hubs—and the squeeze is showing up everywhere:
- parking + access systems
- pass pricing and behavior shifts
- crowding pressure
- backcountry participation + risk
The future isn’t “less skiing.” It’s more people, more pressure, and more rules wrapped around the same few mountain corridors we all love.