While the US has lost the soul of Skiing, Japan still embraces it.

Spend enough time on Reddit’s popular skiing and snowboarding forums, and you’ll find a growing wave of frustration, if not outright disdain, for the state of American ski culture. It’s a sentiment that’s been simmering for over a decade but has reached a boiling point during the pandemic. As outdoor recreation surged and ski resorts faced staffing shortages, long-standing cracks in the public’s perception of industry giants like Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Company were laid bare. While the cost of skiing skyrocketed, far outpacing inflation, profits for these conglomerates soared to record highs, even as the overall guest experience deteriorated. The industry's rapid consolidation, the rise of “resortification,” and the steady decline in competition have contributed to an atmosphere many describe as crowded, overpriced, and devoid of character. What was once a soulful, community-driven pursuit now often feels corporate, stale, and inauthentic. I’m too young to remember a time when skiing truly was raw and trailblazing, but things still are unrecognizable from my youth in the late 90s. Even at beloved local favorites like Jay Peak, the shift is becoming hard to ignore. While significant investment has undeniably transformed the mountain’s infrastructure, the resort’s recent acquisition by Pacific Group Resorts feels like a true turning point, one that’s already reflected in the sharp rise in season pass prices. Though a few independent holdouts remain in Vermont, Magic Mountain and Mad River Glen among them, most resorts, I’m looking at you Stowe, have traded their unique charm for something more closely resembling an overpriced theme park. Think of $12 hot dogs, $30 parking fees, ever inflating housing costs and a vibe that feels increasingly detached from the sport’s soul. The prevailing business model seems clear, extracting maximum revenue from guests at every touchpoint, even as the actual skiing experience suffers. Larger crowds, stricter and often more abrasive ski patrols, and shrinking access for newcomers have become the norm. For many families, single-day lift tickets and lessons are now prohibitively expensive, making skiing feel less like a community pastime and more like an exclusive luxury.

So here we are. Disillusioned, priced out, and wondering. How did it come to this?

The corporate ski resort, as we know it today, is a relatively recent invention. For much of the 20th century, most U.S. mountains were owned by wealthy families who saw them less as profit centers and more as personal passion projects that supported the community. Their fates rose and fell with snowfall totals, not stock prices, and their focus was on the quality of the experience, not quarterly earnings. Many of these resorts sat on federal land, leased from the U.S. Forest Service. In those early days, the government didn’t just manage environmental impact, it played a role in regulating affordability. Lift ticket prices were capped based on what was considered a fair rate for public land. The philosophy was simple, these mountains belong to everyone, and everyone should be able to access them. That ethos began to unravel in the late 1970s, when the Forest Service stepped away from pricing oversight. In the first year of deregulation alone, lift ticket prices shot up 300%. Within a few seasons, costs had far surpassed their mid-’70s levels. Around the same time, snowmaking technology became more widespread, making ski resorts less beholden to the whims of winter and far more attractive to investors. By the mid-1990s, a wave of consolidation swept through the industry. Ski conglomerates began to emerge, some even going public, and suddenly shareholder value, not skier satisfaction, became the priority. Opening a new resort grew increasingly difficult. In part, this was due to a growing web of environmental regulations dating back to the Nixon era and expanding through subsequent administrations. It’s simple economics: the cost, risk, and regulatory burden of creating a resort from scratch were too high. No new major ski resort has opened in the U.S. since 1981. The biggest player, Vail Resorts, is frequently labeled “the evil empire” by skiers, an allusion to the Galactic empire run ruthlessly by Emperor Palpatine, and grassroots rebels led by Luke Skywalker are forced to flee an ever-expanding imperial force. And flee they have. More and more skiers are turning to the backcountry, investing in touring gear and heading into the wilderness. In part, it's a return to the roots of the sport. But it also feels like an act of quiet rebellion, a way to reclaim the spirit of skiing from an industry that has priced out families, overcrowded mountains, and replaced authenticity with efficiency.

Here’s a quick comparison of lift ticket prices for reference at Killington Resort in Vermont, this season, lift tickets were $189 for one day versus $25 in 1979. Today 25 dollars is equivalent to $108.31, according to the US Inflation Calculator. So these prices are far outpacing inflation and when you look at west coast resorts the price increases are even more egregious.

While some look to Europe in their efforts to ditch the US and Canadian ski monopolies and why wouldn’t they. With over 4000 resorts, there’s a plethora of choices, a thriving après scene and affordable lift tickets. But I have a different Suggestion. The land of rising sun and in my opinion skiing paradise.

To me, skiing in Japan, though perhaps I romanticize it a bit, feels like stepping into a time capsule from the golden age of American skiing. It’s affordable, unpretentious, and refreshingly pure. Imagine what it must have been like in the U.S. during the 1960s and ’70s, before high-speed lifts, mega-passes, and parking lot surcharges, when the focus was on having fun, not profits or Instagram-able moments. You wake up to find a foot of fresh powder blanketing your car and have your pick of five nearby resorts, all within a 20-minute drive. There’s no mad dash to beat the crowd to first chair, because there isn’t one. Free refills of untouched snow last all day. A quick stop at Lawsons for Hokkaido milk, a canned coffee, and a pancake with butter, and you’re on your way. At the hill, you’ll likely ride just two main lifts all day. It’s a simple setup, which means you’re not getting separated from your friends or lost in a maze of lift interchanges. There’s little need to stress about locals poaching your powder stashes, many Japanese resorts enforced strict rules against ducking ropes until quite recently, which means most people you’ll see in the side country are international visitors and if you know were to go you won’t see any of those either. After hours of bottomless turns and face shots, you head into the lodge, your legs burning, and are met with the scent of real food. For 1,500 yen, you get a steaming bowl of tonkatsu and rice, maybe a beer or a hot chocolate, and it tastes like a home-cooked meal. Not some freezer-burned chicken tenders or some sad excuse for pizza. If the snowfall tapers off, you’ll find no shortage of approachable backcountry terrain. For more serious objectives, you can hire a local guide. And when the day’s turns are done, you can soak in a nearby onsen or belly up to a cozy izakaya, shouting kanpai with locals over beer and small plates. And while some people may like the après scene at US resorts, a mildly famous DJ, Champagne showers, and a bunch of sweat gear laden skiers. I prefer more intimate quiet connections you can make at 150 square foot izakaya’s. And yes many of these local resorts do seem frozen in time a common compliant from pretentious westerns, relics of Japan’s bubble era from the late ’80s and early ’90s. Outside of international hubs like Niseko and Hakuba, most resorts decor is unchanged since the early 90s. But instead of seeing that as a flaw, I find it endearing. It’s charming in the way old ski films are charming, unpolished, but full of soul. Compared to the hyper-commercialized landscape of American skiing, with its RFID gates, $250 lift tickets, and $12 hot dogs, the Japanese ski scene feels like very refreshing almost rare in the modern ski world.

So why is skiing in Japan so different? The answer lies at the intersection of culture, economics, and environment.

Start with the snow. Japan is blessed with one of the most reliable snow machines on Earth, cold, moisture-rich storms that blow in steadily from Siberia. In many regions, snowfall is so consistent and abundant that resorts don’t need to rely heavily on costly artificial snowmaking systems. In contrast to American resorts that often invest millions in snowmaking infrastructure just to open for the season, Japanese resorts enjoy significantly lower overhead, which helps keep costs down for skiers.

Economically, Japan’s ski industry developed in a far less consolidated environment than its American counterpart. Whether it’s cars, retail, or ski hills, Japan’s domestic markets tend to be more competitive and locally diversified. At its peak in the early 1990s, the country had over 1,669 ski resorts and 18 million domestic skiers. While those numbers have declined, today, there are roughly 500 operational resorts and about 4 million annual skiers, they still reflect a sprawling, decentralized industry. For perspective: the island of Hokkaido alone, roughly the size of Maine, is home to over 120 ski resorts. By comparison, all of New England, which includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, an area 2.5x bigger then Hokkaido has just 76.

Then there’s culture. Japan’s famed dedication to craftsmanship and quality permeates every part of life, from food and design to service and hospitality and ski resorts are no exception. Even modest local hills often offer experiences that feel curated and thoughtful. One of my favorite resorts just outside Sapporo has a lodge where a man stands behind the counter frying fresh chocolate taiyaki, a fish-shaped cake pastry. It’s a small detail, but it speaks volumes. That kind of attention to quality is rare in the U.S., where lodge dining typically evokes memories of overpriced, underwhelming fast food. As a Jay Peak season pass holder, I’m used to a menu that revolves around burgers, pizza, and chicken nuggets, with the only memorable part the questionable quality. I haven’t yet been to a Japanese ski resort where the food wasn’t outstanding. What Japan may lack in sprawling mega-resorts, it makes up for in heart, snow, and soul. And that difference is no accident, it’s the product of geography, economic structure, and a national ethos that prizes care over scale.

While the data isn’t perfect, and doesn’t account for resort size, which tends to favor larger American ski areas, it still paints a revealing picture of how consolidated the U.S. ski industry has become. In the United States, roughly 18 million people were classified as “snow sports participants” in recent surveys, with about 5.5 million of those being cross-country skiers. That leaves an estimated 13.25 million downhill skiers and snowboarders spread across approximately 480 resorts (54 of those owned by Vail & Alterra). That works out to about one resort for every 27,600 participants. Compare that to Europe, where around 30 million people hit the slopes across 3,949 ski resorts, a ratio of roughly one resort per 7,600 skiers. And Japan, 2023 data estimates 4.6 million skiers and about 500 operating resorts, giving a ratio of one resort per 9,200 people. Again, these aren’t perfect apples-to-apples comparisons, but the contrast is telling. Europe and Japan have far more distributed resort networks, resulting in more competition, better pricing, and often a more localized, less corporatized ski culture. In the U.S., consolidation has concentrated power in the hands of a few major operators, and with that comes higher prices, fewer options, and diminished competition.