Skiing is an expensive hobby. A single adult lift ticket purchased the day you plan to use it can cost $249 during the 2023-24 season at Northstar. A teen (13-18) or senior (65+) ticket is $224 and a child (5-12) ticket is $174. Northstar uses variable pricing, so the costs will vary during the season, but with these examples, it’s not hard to imagine that your cost for lift access might end up being more than lodging and food combined for a large group.
The good news is that there are ways to bring these costs down. However, they all require a little advanced planning.
Buy in advance
The easiest way to save is to purchase your ticket in advance. Suppose you know that you’re coming in a couple of weeks, well if you get on the Northstar website and buy your ticket early, that $249 ticket can drop to $211 (a $38 savings). The other types of tickets have similar discounts. The other reason to buy in advance is that Northstar limits ticket sales, so buying in advance for the dates you plan to ski guarantees that you won’t get shut out if the resort gets busy.
Are you worried about buying a ticket and then not using it? Don’t worry. Northstar offers risk-free refunds for your tickets if you don’t use them, as long as you request your refund before 5pm on the last day of your ticket.
Buy multi-day products
Buying in advance is good, but you can do even better than that if you purchase a multi-day ticket because there are discounts applied to the per-day price. Following the single-day example above, you can purchase a 4-day lift ticket for $820. That works out to $205 per day, for the same access that was $249 if you walked up the window each day you planned to use it. Again other tickets (child, teen, senior) have similar discounts. You can buy tickets good for anywhere from 1 to 7 days of skiing this way.
Are you concerned that you won’t want to ski every day? Don’t be. Your multi-day ticket has flexibility. A 2-day ticket is valid in a 3-day window. A 3-day or 4-day ticket is valid in a 5-day or 6-day window (respectively). Tickets for 5 or more days have 3 extra days added to their validity windows. And, of course, unused days are still refundable as long as you request the refund before 5pm the last day your ticket is valid.
Consider a season pass
This option only works if you plan in advance, but suppose in March or April of 2024 you are willing to commit to at least 3 days of skiing during the 2024-25 season. One of the many season pass products may be the most cost-effective means of access for you.
Season pass prices rise throughout the year and after a certain point, usually in early December, season passes are no longer available for purchase. So here too, act early to save the most. Here are some of the options you could consider:
Tahoe Local
Can you work around resort blackout days? (For the 2024-25 season these are 11/29-30/24, 12/26-31/24, 1/18/25, and 2/15-16/25.) If so, you should probably consider the Tahoe Local pass which goes for $621 for adults. Compare this to a 3-day ticket bought a couple of weeks in advance which in 2024 goes for the same price, $621.
Suppose you bought that and skied for 4 days. That works out to about $155 per day – and less if you ski more. The teen version of the Tahoe Local pass is $501 this year and the child (5-12) version is $310. There is no senior version, but there is a college pass version offered at $542 designed for full-time college students (proof required).
Tahoe Value
Want to save even more? There is a Tahoe Value pass option that, in addition to the blackout days mentioned above, is not valid at Northstar on Saturdays (the busiest of days). That pass costs $529 adults, $260 child (5-12), $441 teen (13-18), $430 college, and $450 senior (65+).
Epic passes do allow the passholder to purchase a lift ticket on a day their pass is not valid for a 50% discount, as long as tickets are available, but you’d want to carefully consider how often you’d do that. Saving the $100 or so by buying a Tahoe Value pass would not be cost-effective if you planned to ski even just one or two Saturdays.
Epic Day Pass
Are you only planning a few days, but you know those are going to fall on the blackout days mentioned above? Then, consider an Epic Day Pass. This flexible option lets you choose the number of days it is valid, whether that includes blackout days and even the set of resorts for which it is valid.
A 3-day, adult (13+) version that is good on any day of the season at 32 Vail operated resorts (including Northstar) is $283. There is a child (5-12) version that is only $144. More days means more per-day savings and you can customize the number of days on your pass.
Epic Pass
Are you planning to ski even more days and know you don’t want to deal with any blackout day restrictions? The full Epic Pass is $982 for adults (13+) and $501 for children (5-12). It’s a step up, but compared to a walk-up window rate of $249, it doesn’t take long to “break-even”. If you like to travel and ski, there are many places you can use this pass. See the website for details.
Epic Coverage
Are you concerned about the commitment involved in buying a pass? Are you wondering about getting a refund if you can’t use it? There is no refund for the pass products. However, all the passes come with Epic Coverage, an insurance product that can reimburse you for some of the cost of the pass if the reasons you cannot use it meet certain restrictions. The restrictions are complicated, but you can read about them in the Epic Coverage policy document.
Epic Mountain Rewards
One more reason to consider some type of an Epic Pass for your trip to Northstar is that passholders are entitled to a 20% discount on food and rentals on-mountain. See the description of Epic Mountain Rewards for details. If you usually buy lunch in the on-mountain lodges, this could add up to quite a bit.
Discounts through retailers
Were you unable to secure a season pass that meets your needs, but still willing to do some legwork to try to do better than the advanced purchase options mentioned above? There is one more option you can try, but it will require more effort on your part.
Throughout the season, certain retailers offer promotional deals that can save you money buying lift tickets.
- Tahoe Daves – a local ski and board shop chain regularly participates in a Skiing For Schools promotion. In the 2023-24 year, they offered $159 tickets to Northstar. Each year, they have a limited number of such tickets and usually sell out, so you do have to plan ahead (but maybe not as far ahead as buying a season pass).
- Others – I would have loved to put more entries here, but for Northstar there just doesn’t seem to be any. Retailers in the San Francisco Bay area who have had discounted tickets before and that you can check: Sports Basement, REI, Costco. What’s offered and what’s available changes from season to season and even within the season. (I mentioned that this option includes “legwork”, right?)
Summary
There are many options, but the basic principles involved in minimizing the cost of your mountain access are:
- buy early, prices go up during the season and months leading up to it
- buy in bulk, season passes and multi-day tickets will save you money
- be flexible with your days on the mountain
- be willing to do some digging and research about your options
By far, the most expensive option is to walk up to the ticket window and buy a single-day ticket on the day you want to use it. Anything you do other than that is probably going to save you money. Hopefully, the tips I’ve shared here will help you keep a little more of your money as you enjoy your time on the mountain.
Are you looking for a place to stay when at Northstar? Consider our house.