Aspen Ski Company & KSL Purchase Steamboat and many other ski areas..

By Larry Hoffer

The mountain resort community woke up to exciting news this morning: Aspen Skiing Company and KSL Capital Partners are acquiring Intrawest Holdings, the owner and operator of several ski areas including Steamboat and Winter Park in Colorado. Intrawest also operates a number of eastern resorts, among them Snowshoe in West Virginia, Stratton Mountain in Vermont, Mont Tremblant in Quebec, and Blue Mountain in Ontario.

The combined company will bring together Aspen Mountain, Snowmass, Buttermilk, and Aspen Highlands in Colorado, along with Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows in the Lake Tahoe area. The move is widely seen as a response to Vail Resorts' success in acquiring and operating multiple ski areas across North America.

From early indications, it appears that there are no announcements on a combined ski lift ticket to combat Vail Resorts Epic Pass for the 2017-2018 season, but there is a great deal of expertise in the combined team of the Aspen Ski Company and KSL, as well as the management of Intrawest, and it would be very reasonable to expect that this team would put together a very effective offering for skiers to entice them to plan multiple trips to some of the world's best ski areas in the west, as well as servicing feeder markets of New York/New England, Toronto & Montreal, as well as the Bay Area.

Here are links to various new articles: Aspen Ski Company, Steamboat Pilot, Aspen Daily

This news is coming on the heels of Vail Resorts purchasing the Whistler/Blackcomb ski area in British Columbia, and the premium Vermont ski area, Stowe. both of which are planned to be incorporated into the Epic Pass (pending the closing of the Stowe acquisition).

It will be interesting to see how this all comes together, but from what we've seen well capitalized companies investing in ski areas is great for the skier experience.