A significant addition : A Letter from Indy Pass Director Erik Mogensen
I couldn’t be happier to announce that Smugglers Notch in Vermont has joined the Indy Pass as our 60th new resort for the 26/27 season. These additions give us the capacity to reopen sales to the public for a very short period of time, starting this morning. Once we reach capacity, the waitlist process will again be reinstated.
Assembling a coalition of 304 resorts is no easy task, especially for a small team like ours. The Indy Pass now spans 4 continents, 15 countries, 30 states, and 6 Canadian Provinces. While the pass has grown remarkably, we remain focused on getting more people to independent areas and preserving the sport and culture of skiing. Never will the Indy Pass be oversold or overpriced. While Smuggs joining the Indy Pass is a clear statement that independent resorts continue to band together and push back on the more recent corporatization of skiing, there is another story here.
Every inch of my childhood bedroom was plastered with ski area trail maps, and Smugglers Notch was squarely over my bed. I had it memorized. When I was 10 years old the ski area advertised a naming contest for its first terrain park. Fascinated by the legends of booze being smuggled from Canada and stored in caves in the notch during Prohibition times, my entry of “Prohibition Park” was selected as the winner. The prize was an all-inclusive trip to Smugglers’ Notch that ended up being our family’s first-ever ski trip. Smuggs became my first “big mountain”. My mom recently found a copy of the thank-you letter I wrote to the resort in 1998.
That trip made us a ski family, and cemented the sport and culture of skiing as the focus of my life. I distinctly remember meeting longtime owner Bill Stritzler on that first trip, and quickly idolized his ownership of my favorite ski area. When Bill was quietly considering selling the ski area in 2025, I had the privilege of spending time with him at the resort and advocating for an independent future for the mountain. Out of all the adjectives one could use to describe Smugglers’ Notch, I did not want to see epic or iconic be one of them. 28 years after my first visit, we snapped a picture together in the same spot where my winning trail sign hung.
I’m thankful that Bill and Smuggs found the perfect buyer in the Bear Den group, and that is the biggest story here: a world-class ski area is choosing to stay independent and aggressively invest in its future. I am also thankful Indy Pass can be a small part of that story; the revenue our partners' resorts receive from us very much matters. I continue to have more and more meaningful conversations with other owners who share these goals, and you can expect the Indy movement to keep growing and evolving. We are not done announcing major partners.
The Indy Pass is now a viable alternative to the corporatization of skiing for consumers. For the more casual skier, Indy is an accessible entry point that opens up an incredibly diverse lineup of ski areas to explore. For season passholders of partner resorts, the combination of your home mountain pass and an Indy Add-On delivers a season that competes with any pass on the planet.
It is inspiring to see people voting for the Independents with their wallets and demanding a different and better experience out of skiing. This is my life’s work, and I care deeply about making Indy the best that it can be; both for our resorts and passholders. We won’t get it right all the time, but you can bet that this story has a few more chapters that will be worth reading.
We all have a role to play in keeping skiing and riding independent.
- Erik
