Indy Pass, the Anti-Vail Seasonal Ski Ticket, Is Gaining Fans

For years, Soldier Mountain, a small ski area in Camas County, Idaho, was barely solvent. Since 2011 its owners have included actor Bruce Willis, a local nonprofit and an Oregon couple who in 2015 purchased the mountain for $149,000, effectively the cost of covering its debts. In 2020 a Utah-based investment group bought the three-chairlift mountain for an undisclosed amount, only for a wildfire to tear through the area a day after the deal closed.

But Soldier Mountain soldiered on. It managed to open that winter, in part because it joined a network of ski areas using a new pass system. Indy Pass, a seasonal lift ticket that gives skiers and snowboarders access to mountains around the world, exposed Soldier to a slew of new customers coming from Oregon, Utah and Washington, says its general manager and co-owner, Paul Alden. Since then, Soldier has been able to revive its snowmaking infrastructure, which wasn’t used for decades. This year, using the $35,000 in advance ticket sales Indy Pass brought in, Soldier was able to build jumps and other new terrain features to host training camps for the US Snowboard and Freeski teams.