2 weeks Ago
Considering the new Raintree lift was carrying, on average, four people up Cobabe Canyon every 15 minutes, the snow beach at the top of Powder Mountain’s newest private amenity was surprisingly bustling. A small group of skiers and snowboarders sat at a row of picnic tables, basking in the spring sun while eating stroopwafels doused in bacon butter. They were served from an electric blue snow cat-turned-food-truck.
Another half dozen skiers dipped behind a rope barrier, setting off on a guided snowcat tour into the as-yet-undeveloped Davenport area. Three more guests, who had trekked over from the public side of the massive resort , ripped the touring skins off their skis and prepared to reap the rewards of their efforts. Snow hadn’t fallen on the Ogden Valley mountains in at least three days, but they would have no trouble finding aprons of powder.
This is surely what Reed Hastings envisioned when the billionaire cofounder of Netflix made Powder Mountain the test case for his novel approach to ski area management. In his unique public-private hybrid model, some lifts are reserved solely for the use of residents of Powder Haven , a collection of multimillion-dollar homes atop the mountain. Their dues and proceeds from the sale of their lots, in turn, are expected to pay for the operation of the public facilities.
Currently, that includes six lifts and the 5,000 acres they connect. As the sun sets on the resort’s first season under the new model, though, Powder Mountain regulars are equally divided in their opinions about whether or not it’s working. For some, the changes are welcomed: more amenities, more improvements, more art.
Others have watched their access to what previously felt like a locals’ mountain be pushed further and further out of reach. “It’s still accessible, just not as easy,” season passholder Dr. Richard Courtney said, referring to the areas reached by private lifts.
“So I don’t feel like those changes affect me personally. I know people that are [upset] about the changes: It’s a beautiful part of the mountain that’s going private. But I’m not a selfish person, and there’s so much mountain here that it doesn’t bother me.
” (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dr. Richard Courtney of Huntsville, visits the Powder Keg beer bar at Powder Mountain following a day of skiing as live music plays on Friday, March 21, 2025. Courtney, a radiologist, discovered Powder Mountain in 2012 and said he has been trying to move near it ever since.
He finally did a year and a half ago, making the leap to Huntsville as soon as fiberoptic internet came to the area. Aside from its beauty, what drew Courtney to Powder Mountain from the start, he said, was its lack of crowds. Powder Mountain has the most skiable acres in North America with roughly 8,000.
Some 3,000 of those acres are now on the Powder Haven side of the resort but are still open to members of the public who want to hike or skin into them. Another thousand acres are expected to be added to that tally by next season with the construction of a lift in the Davenport area this summer. The Cache County Planning Commission approved the permit for that lift in the southeast corner of the resort earlier this month.
The county council is set to consider approving a development agreement at its meeting Tuesday . “I moved here,” Courtney said, “because traffic jams are composed of two turkeys and a deer gossiping in the middle of the road.” (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Skiers prepare for a private tour of the Davenport area at Gunsight Pass on the private side of Powder Mountain on Friday, March 21, 2025.
The Powder Mountain ski area wraps up its first season under Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings's experiment of taking some lifts private while leaving other public. Powder has made that uncrowded feeling the centerpiece of its marketing campaigns. When Hastings was asked to take over control of the resort in 2023 after former tech-entrepreneur owners The Summit Group nearly ran it into bankruptcy, Powder adopted the slogan “Uncrowded by design.
” This season, its tagline morphed into “Escape the masses.” During a Friday afternoon in the heart of the spring break season, Powder Mountain was living up to its promise. Aside from a community group of more than 30 skiers and snowboarders who occasionally swarmed a run on the public side like ants at a picnic, company on the slopes was sparse.
Lift lines were short or nonexistent. Tranquility also prevailed a month earlier in the midst of Presidents Day weekend. Already one of the most hectic periods on the ski calendar, this year it was made even more frenetic at many Utah resorts by the arrival of 40 inches of fresh flakes.
Not at Powder Mountain, though. Experimenting with a new incentive, Hastings and his team had restricted access to the mountain that weekend and every other weekend in February to only Powder Mountain season pass holders. The ski area ran social media posts in which guests commented that they felt like they had the place to themselves.
Marketing manager Jennifer Horowitz told the Salt Lake Tribune that Powder Mountain bled money in terms of ticket sales that month. And yet, the resort will bring back the perk next season. This time it will also give pass holders discount buddy passes for their friends.
Resort spokesperson Ashton Stronks said the promotion is driven by two objectives: prioritizing the experience of season-pass holder and keeping the mountain uncrowded. “The energy was really high, and there were lots of smiles on the mountain during those days,” Stronks said. “It was encouraging, and something we definitely want to replicate.
” All that solitude comes at a cost, though, and it isn’t usually the resort that’s picking up the tab. Some people who wanted to be at Powder Mountain weren’t, and won’t be any day this season or the next. Others who were there in March said they’re considering not coming back.
Yet the change that has driven them away isn’t their exclusion from certain lifts and lodges, many say. It’s the prices. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Scott Findley of Cache County, a professor of economics at Utah State University, talks about the numerous changes at Powder Mountain during a family stop for night skiing at the Sundown lift on Friday, March 21, 2025.
“I still have a lot of loyalty to Powder Mountain,” said Scott Findley, a Cache County resident who began skiing at the resort as a youth but gave up his family’s season passes in 2024-25. “I think it’s a phenomenal resort. But when it’s drastically more expensive for my family to ski here than it is to go to Snowbasin, it’s an easy choice.
” Vincent Allocca stares out the window of Lucky Slice Pizza as the sun sets over Powder Mountain’s Sundown lift. Outside, the ski area is the busiest it has felt all day. The lift line swells with mostly Weber and Cache County locals who have come for the $19 night skiing held on the dozen runs splaying out from Sundown.
Their wait to board the lethargic, four-person chair can be 20 minutes or more. Inside the throwback pizzeria, a centerpiece of which is its old arcade games, the scene is no less busy. The seats around Allocca are especially buzzing as his six kids and wife come and go.
The Alloccas have been making the trip to Powder Mountain from Hawaii the past four seasons. They fly on buddy tickets. They stay with friends.
They ski just a couple days per trip. At more than $200 per person for day tickets this year, though, it just felt like they spent too much. “A friend of mine told me we should go to Japan to ski,” Allocca said.
“$65 a lift ticket.” (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Vince Allocca of Oahu, Hawaii, visiting with his wife and kids, including daughter Violet, 6, visits the Powder Keg beer bar at Powder Mountain following a day of skiing on Friday, March 21, 2025. Season passes aren’t a bargain this season either, said Findley, a professor of economics at Utah State.
For most adults the cost of a pass at Powder Mountain ticked up about $250 over the previous season to $1,499 for 2024-25. Even at that price, some skiers and snowboards are no doubt just happy to have one. For at least the previous eight seasons, the resort capped the number of season passes it sold.
The resulting waitlist numbered in the thousands with only a handful of new passholders securing access each winter. Starting this season, Powder Mountain lifted the cap on season passes but enacted another on day-ticket sales. Just because passes are available, though, doesn’t mean skiers and snowboarders can actually afford one.
Some groups saw drastic increases in their pass prices this winter, up to 860% . That includes firefighters, police officers, military members and educators like Findley who for years had enjoyed steep discounts at the resort. Seniors and teenagers experienced the most significant upcharges, though.
Anyone 75 or older used to ski for free. Weber and Cache county students ages 7-17 paid just $109 for their pass. This season, the rate for both groups was $1,049.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Skiers and snowboarders ride the Sundown Lift at Powder Mountain during a night skiing session on Friday, March 21, 2025. Powder Mountain offers $19 nightly skiing on the 12 runs accessed by the Sundown lift. In addition, Powder Mountain began charging for parking during all weekends and holidays until 1 p.
m. in all of its lots. Findley posits the changes may be about more than making money.
By spiking prices for teens and youth, he said, Powder Mountain appears to be favoring those seeking something akin to a private, country-club experience. “Maybe there was a deliberate strategy to thin out a lot of local teenagers and local families from skiing at the resort,” he said, “and cater to more higher-end clients.” Stronks tied the changes to simplification and solvency.
She acknowledged that the previous owners had offered more discounts to more groups. They also, she noted, dug themselves into a $150 million debt. To avoid adding to that, she said, Powder Mountain made its pass prices competitive with other resorts on the Wasatch Front.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “some things had to change in order to start to get it back into the black.” The installation of art around the resort has been seen by some as further proof of Powder Mountain’s gentrification. The first exhibit implemented by Hasting, in 2023 was subtle enough.
A Magic Carpet surface lift near Sundown was turned into a kaleidoscope with the addition of a rainbow covering designed by Gerard & Kelly. Since then, two bronze bells — one on the west side and one on the east — have been added. Speakers transmit the 18th Century Americann folk hymn “Am I Born to Die ” near the Poma lift that takes skiers into the area otherwise accessed only by private lifts.
Those touches were developed by the nonprofit Powder Art Foundation, which Hastings bankrolls. The minds at Powder Mountain envision, per the resort’s website, creating “an open-air museum and sculpture park where visitors will experience site-specific artworks integrated throughout the terrain.” The future trails connecting the art installations, presuming they receive county approvals, will be kept free and open to the public during the summer and fall, Stronk said.
Still, locals wonder if, someday, they will become relics of the resort. That’s why the organization Save Powder Mountain has been prodding its followers to demand that Weber and Cache county leaders mandate Powder Mountain maintain public access to trails and ski runs. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) A skier rings a bell at Powder Mountain on Friday, March 21, 2025.
In October, resort managers submitted a master plan to the Cache County Planning Commission that outlines several development projects. They want to eventually add homes, cabins and condos for up to 650 families on the property, mostly in the Powder Haven area (Currently about 170 active members are tied to roughly 50 homes, Stronk said). They also intend to add up to six corporate retreats on the private side, a hotel on the public side and a mixture of public and private lifts, six in total.
While it awaits an analysis of the master plan from its planning department, the county commission agreed this month to greenlight permits for the construction of the private lift in the Davenport area and two other small developments over the summer. Last summer, the ski area built two other lifts, Raintree and Lightning Ridge, that were approved a la carte by the Cache County Council. Save Powder Mountain’s leaders fret that, with this piecemeal approach, the county is giving away its leverage to keep parts of the resort public.
“Powder Mountain has already privatized terrain that was open to the public last season,” a March 24 newsletter from Save Powder Mountain said, “and we believe additional privatizations are likely if stronger protections aren’t put in place.” (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Skylodge, a private yurt at Powder Mountain open to Powder Haven homeowners and their guest, accommodates patrons on Friday, March 21, 2025. Stronk said privatizing the entire mountain, the way neighboring Wasatch Peaks Ranch has, is not now and has never been part of Hastings’ plan.
“There’s no plans to make the mountain fully private at all,” she said. “We don’t want it. It doesn’t make sense for what we’re building.
” Indeed, two years after Hastings took over and one year into the private-public experiment, the vibe around Powder Mountain remains mellow. The lodges are rustic. Lifts, for the most part, are leisurely and yet, aside from the Poma lift and night skiing, rarely see lines.
Slopeside lodging is limited to Airbnbs and a seven-room inn . And after a session on the slopes, public and private skiers alike still gather in the intimate and often boisterous Powder Keg to imbibe a bowl of pho and $7 beers. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Patrons take in the live music at the Powder Keg beer bar at Powder Mountain following a day of skiing and snowboarding on Friday, March 21, 2025.
A favorite of locals, Reed Hastings has promised not to make any significant changes to the bar. It doesn’t look or feel like a ski area that has been taken over by a tech mogul. That’s something locals like Findley appreciate.
But if that’s the goal and Hastings’ experiment is working, why, they wonder, does Powder Mountain still price itself like some of the most exclusive ski areas in the state? “I can pay Deer Valley prices to ski here,” Findley said. “And this clearly is not Deer Valley.” Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only.
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