Colorado Ski Resorts Drop Prices

Five Colorado ski resorts are offering the best deals in decades as they battle for skiers in a national market that's been flat for a decade.

The leaves are still clinging to the aspens in the high country, but resorts already are trying to win the loyalty of skiers, especially the finicky ones who live in Colorado, by selling a four-person, unlimited season pass for $759, or slightly less than $200 per person.

"Unbelievable, I've never seen anything like it," said David Perry, vice president of marketing for Whistler, the Canadian resort that fights Colorado resorts each year for the No. 1 ranking among North American ski areas.

The five resorts offering the four-person passes are Keystone, Breckenridge, Arapahoe Basin, Winter Park and Copper Mountain, all within a two-hour drive of Denver.

Individual ski passes go from around $700 to more than $1,300 at major resorts in New England and the West, though resorts have offered family-pass discounts for years. The difference in Colorado is that the four people in on the pass don't have to be related.

"It's the best time in recent history to be a Colorado skier," said Paul Witt, a spokesman for Vail Resorts, owner of Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone and Breckenridge. "We haven't offered prices like this since the 1970s."

Vail Resorts does not offer its pass for Vail or Beaver Creek. The pass is offered at Arapahoe Basin though its marketing deal with Vail Resorts.

Winter Park set the ball rolling with the discount. Copper Mountain and Vail Resorts quickly jumped on the bandwagon.

The resorts have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new lifts and trails to compete for the national market and needs to entice the fussy Colorado skier to help pay for them.

The Colorado skier, though, has become increasingly picky, not skiing when rocks are showing and constantly complaining about the price.

"All you have been hearing for the last five years is that the ski industry is flat ... you've got to get more people. This will get more people," said Joan Christensen, a Winter Park spokeswoman who took orders for passes from callers in Florida and South Carolina as word spread.

The deal inspired David Fitzgerald-Crosby, who owns Clint's Bakery in Breckenridge.

"It saved me $1,200 bucks, because I usually buy some for my employees," he said. "I got down there around 3:30 p.m. Monday and it seemed like every other person in line was from Breckenridge."

Written By Robert Weller