Ski Area Count 2023-2026 Updates

Tony Crocker · Jul 1, 2025

Updated through June 2025:

Region	ChrisC	TonyC	James	Patrick	Liz	Lonnie	EMSC	JimK	MarzNC
Eastern Canada	4	4	18	75	4	0	0	2	2
US Northeast (NY+New England)	67	8	28	33	23	1	35	29	27
US Atlantic+Southeast+Midwest	25	1	7	3	3	0	13	16	19
US Northwest	18	16	2	4	7	30	2	1	2
US Southwest	24	28	0	4	18	34	9	9	9
Colorado	23	22	12	2	20	27	26	15	18
Utah	10	14	9	2	12	15	11	10	10
Other US Rockies	23	32	13	6	25	50	7	8	11
Western Canada	23	39	3	22	20	26	10	6	0
Austria	6	16	33	9	14	0	0	5	0
France	28	25	33	16	26	0	9	0	0
Italy	17	16	1	4	16	0	0	0	0
Switzerland	28	25	48	4	20	0	0	0	0
Other Europe	0	4	3	3	4	0	0	0	0
Asia	5	14	0	0	11	0	0	0	0
Southern Hemisphere	7	26	0	30	10	0	0	0	0
Total	308	290	210	217	233	183	122	101	98

Patrick added 4 areas in winter 2024 and SNØ Oslo earlier this month. I expect he will add Galdhøppigen while he is still in Norway in July. I do not know if he added anything during winter 2024-25. ChrisC revised per post #102 below. Patrick revised per his 2025 season recap post, and the conclusion of his 2024-25 season in New Zealand.

ChrisC · Jul 3, 2025

New Additions over the last 12 months

Europe - Trip #1 (Switzerland, Italy)

Engelberg - Brunni - .5 day
Zinal - .5 day
Grimmentz - .5 day
Courmayeur - Skyway Monte Bianco - 1 day *1 Guided day
Crevacol - 1 day

Europe - Trip #2 (Italy, France)

Via Lattea - Claviere - .25 day
Via Lattea - Montgenevre - .5 day
Pila - 1 day

South America (Argentina)

Las Lenas - 8 days *1 Guided day
Bariloche - Cerro Catedral - 2 days
Bariloche - Cerro Bayo - 1 day

Harvey · Jul 8, 2025

A new thread every year?

Tony Crocker · Sep 7, 2025

Harvey said:
A new thread every year?

I'm lazy; I changed the title. I also updated Patrick's info in post #101 to add the two new places he skied last week in New Zealand.

The summer heat and humidity discussion is moved here, with my recent expensive experience added since real summer heat finally arrived in SoCal starting Aug. 20.

ChrisC · Sep 14, 2025

I did not realize how allergic James is to Italy.

I was browsing his Austrian ski trip reports using the helpful geographic-based search feature on Google Maps and saw this!

It's as if there is a 'Maginot' line or something (wrong metaphor, it didn't work) preventing James from skiing in Italy during the last 10-20 years.

Well, I guess there was one - Bardonecchia. He's always on the border, just not on the Italian side. I joke and understand his language fluency.

Me: I was always a bit less interested in skiing in Italy because I perceived less snowfall. This is somewhat true compared to the Northwest fringes of the Alps (Chamonix to Arlberg), but not entirely true for all Italian areas (i.e., the Aosta Valley). And depending on the storm track, the Alps might be due for a winter favoring Mediterranean storms. There was one in the mid-2010s where the Dolomites were just buried.

Anyways, I have checked off/skied a lot more Italian resorts than I ever planned to. Generally, if the snow is ON, Italy is an incredible value compared to Switzerland and France: guide costs, lift tickets, food, drink, lodging, car rentals, Milan airfares, etc. And if you want to cruise around ski-wise in beautiful scenery, the Dolomites will almost always be good due to the best snowmaking in the world.

It will be interesting to see what the snow conditions are like for the Milan-Cortina Games 2026, coming up! Events are scheduled all over the Dolomite region.

Tony Crocker · Sep 14, 2025

ChrisC said:
There was one in the mid-2010s where the Dolomites were just buried.

That was 2013-14. That was the season our fabulous mid-February week in Zermatt reversed Liz' prior negative impression of skiing the Alps.

jamesdeluxe · Sep 14, 2025

ChrisC said:
It's as if there is a 'Maginot' line or something (wrong metaphor, it didn't work) preventing James from skiing in Italy during the last 10-20 years. (...) I joke and understand his language fluency.

As ChrisC alludes to, the only allergy preventing me from skiing in Italy is that it's more fun/fulfilling/educational/efficient to travel in countries where I speak the language. I look forward to going there on my own terms and get started on the Italian ski scene that the prolific blogger Starli has visited over the past 17 years. These include more "James areas" than I'll ever be able to check out.

Given the heavy Germanic influence in South Tirol, I'd long planned to visit sub-regions like Vinschgau, the Dolomites, and Puster Valley but always got distracted by hundreds of ski areas in the other Alps countries. Now that our son is out of the house, we can put that on the table again.

ChrisC · Sep 14, 2025

jamesdeluxe said:
As ChrisC alludes to, the only allergy preventing me from skiing in Italy is that it's more fun/fulfilling/educational/efficient to travel in countries where I speak the language.

I am fulfilled if I do not butcher French and German pronunciations of basic geographic locations, such as the town you are in or the place you are skiing.

In Italy, they can somewhat comprehend my Anglo-accented Spanish, so I feel pretty successful there.

Sbooker · Sep 14, 2025

I think I can realistically add 8 new destinations this coming winter. That will get me to 90. I’m going to take a wild guess that may be very inaccurate but I’m tipping there wouldn’t be too many life long Brisbane residents with 90 ski hills on their resume.

*It doesn’t matter that they are skied badly.

ChrisC · Sep 15, 2025

Sbooker said:
I’m tipping there wouldn’t be too many life long Brisbane residents with 90 ski hills on their resume.

I don't think there would be many Australians with that many ski mountains on their resume unless they left the country for an extended period (winter in the Alps, working in Whistler, etc.).

Tony Crocker · Friday at 10:52 PM

Updated through June 2026:

Region	ChrisC	TonyC	James	Patrick	Liz	Lonnie	EMSC	JimK	MarzNC
Eastern Canada	4	4	18	80	4	0	0	2	2
US Northeast	67	8	30	33	23	1	35	29	27
US Atlantic+Southeast+Midwest	25	1	7	3	3	0	13	16	19
US Northwest	18	16	2	4	7	30	2	1	2
US Southwest	24	28	0	4	18	34	9	9	9
Colorado	23	22	12	2	20	27	26	15	18
Utah	10	14	9	2	12	15	11	10	10
Other US Rockies	23	33	13	6	26	50	7	8	11
Western Canada	23	40	3	22	20	26	10	8	0
Austria	6	16	36	9	16	0	0	5	0
France	30	28	33	16	26	0	9	4	0
Italy	21	18	1	4	16	0	0	0	0
Switzerland	28	28	48	4	23	0	0	2	0
Other Europe	0	4	3	4	4	0	0	0	0
Asia	5	14	0	0	11	0	0	0	0
Southern Hemisphere	7	26	0	30	10	0	0	0	0
Total	314	300	215	223	239	183	122	109	98

jamesdeluxe · Saturday at 11:22 AM

I updated mine.

To avoid a competitive aspect as far as bolding the "leaders" for each individual country in the table above -- we've discussed how people use different ways to count interconnected ski resorts with numerous sectors, which can really pad one's total. For example, I call Austria's Skiwelt or France's Espace Diamant one ski area instead of tabulating the eight or nine different villages. OTOH, Aspen's four distinct mountains should be counted separately as should Whistler and Blackcomb.

ChrisC · Saturday at 7:25 PM

jamesdeluxe said:
To avoid a competitive aspect as far as bolding the "leaders" for each individual country in the table above -- we've discussed how people use different ways to count interconnected ski resorts with numerous sectors, which can really pad one's total. For example, I call Austria's Skiwelt or France's Espace Diamant one ski area instead of tabulating the eight or nine different villages. OTOH, Aspen's four distinct mountains should be counted separately as should Whistler and Blackcomb.

I would agree, leaderboards are a bit irrelevant.

I like the breakdown of the mega-resorts into their parts because otherwise, what constitutes "skiing" in an area? I primarily use it to 'tick off' the various sectors of a mountain.

So often, most people ski maybe 25% (or less) of a mega resort, often resorting to the familiar, where they park a car or stay at a lodging base.

I often talk with friends, "How was Vail? Were the Back Bowls good?" Reply: Never made it there in 3 days.

"What side of Val d'Isère-Tignes did you like best?" Oh, never made it to Tignes.
"Chamonix?" We just skied where we could walk to: I think Brevent-Flegere. Crowded and mushy snow, not very good. "Did you try the Vallee-Blanche?" No, I think that costs extra. Me: OK- the lodging, restaurant choices, ski gear, etc...and skip the Vallee Blanche because a guide costs $150? After paying day rates at some US mountains? What are the guides trying to do: extort you?
"Zermatt?" We never made it to Italy, not sure if our pass worked.
"St. Anton?" Hated it, bad intermediate skiing. "Did you go over to Lech for a day?" What's that? "Princess Diana skied there, high-end intermediate area - like Deer Valley?" No, didn't know about it.
"Whistler?" It was raining, so we didn't ski. "Up high?" What do you mean...it can snow?
"Park City?" Oh, we just stayed at our hotel at the Canyons. Drove over to Park City town for dinner one night.

I honestly believe most people don't use much of a mega-resort and really don't ski it. Again, that's part of the value: snippets are good enough.

That's why I always recommend casual skiers go to Colorado: it's sunny, low humidity/great surface conditions, doesn't snow too much, close-by lodging, and has enough signage to make it idiot-proof. Coastal Mountains or Interior Northwest are too intense: rain, cloudy days, refrozen snow, wet snow, wind, etc. Utah works. Jackson is borderline. Big Sky/Sun Valley (while a bit low on snow) mostly works.

ChrisC · Saturday at 7:32 PM

Ski resorts in Europe are listed on Wikipedia in an interesting manner:

I strongly feel that each ski village needs to ensure its name remains relevant to the overall ski area brand. However, does each village really warrant its own ski area? Some do, some don't.

List of ski areas in Austria - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Tony Crocker · Saturday at 8:32 PM

jamesdeluxe said:
we've discussed how people use different ways to count interconnected ski resorts with numerous sectors, which can really pad one's total.

Big picture our lists are overall constructed similarly. ChrisC's

default to the "Ski Area" definition used by Marketing, Separate Lift Pass, and/or the Separate Lift Company/Village that got merged into a mega resort. Less strict than the 'linked together by lift/piste' definition, it's easier to count when you drop a list of ski resorts into a spreadsheet and check boxes

results are very marginally more liberal than mine. Because I count vertical within each ski area, I have a geography bias toward requiring defined boundaries. Fortunately that fits well with the Euros' Skististics criteria of separate lift tickets and/or lift but no piste connection. Jimmy Petterson's definition of counting every separately named village is quite a bit more liberal and fits with ChrisC's observation:

I strongly feel that each ski village needs to ensure its name remains relevant to the overall ski area brand. However, does each village really warrant its own ski area? Some do, some don't..

ChrisC and I both make judgment calls on this topic, which I suspect James does as well.

Where I'm more liberal than the Euros is counting backcountry locations. I have 14 of them, 7 of those on the 2011 Antarctic trip. Most of the Euros will count snowcat or heliski operations. Skististics is silent about backcountry touring lodges.

This whole exercise has to look bizarre to North America only skiers. There are very few disputable ski area definitions here vs. a massive number of "gray areas" to define in the Alps. When I set up my personal records spreadsheets in 2007, it took some thought how to automate ski days split between areas so that day/vertical season totals and consecutive day totals would add up properly. That logic allows for 2 areas in one day, because in 2007 it did not occur to me that I would ever ski more than 2 areas in one day. I have a lot of two area days, primarily at Big Bear, Mountain High and AltaBird.

But when there is a third area in one day (Trois Vallees and Sella Ronda only examples so far) I have to assign a different date to the third area. Vertical and season totals come out correctly, while my spreadsheet definition of "0.5 day" really means "day where I skied another area besides this one." I can live with this because day totals for month/season/consecutive remain correct and there are certainly two area days where 90% of the skiing was at one of them yet they both count as "0.5 day."

jamesdeluxe · Saturday at 10:32 PM

ChrisC said:
It's as if there is a 'Maginot' line or something (wrong metaphor, it didn't work) preventing James from skiing in Italy during the last 10-20 years. Well, I guess there was one - Bardonecchia. He's always on the border, just not on the Italian side. I joke and understand his language fluency.

I finally started learning Italian last month and feel that I'm moving forward but also struggling a bit. It's allegedly the toughest Romance language and knowing French has caused more trouble than it's helped thus far ("language interference"). I'll keep the forum updated on my progress.

jamesdeluxe · Saturday at 10:34 PM

@Tony Crocker, in your chart above: where does California fit and why doesn't it get its own line similar to UT and CO?

Tony Crocker · 2026-06-14T00:23:22+0100

jamesdeluxe said:
where does California fit and why doesn't it get its own line similar to UT and CO?

Southwest is CA, NV, AZ, same definition as Kottke/NSAA.

ChrisC:

I honestly believe most people don't use much of a mega-resort and really don't ski it.

This is precisely the reason for my bias in favor of them. Often we can examine a trail map before we set foot on a new place and figure out how to avoid crowds. I love all those Q&As ChrisC posted! :eusa-clap:

jamesdeluxe · 2026-06-14T11:39:46+0100

Tony Crocker said:
ChrisC and I both make judgment calls on this topic, which I suspect James does as well.

Not to belabor a point of low importance but -- while I've certainly been to the most Austrian and Swiss ski areas here, you and ChrisC must've skied more places in France than me.

Patrick · 2026-06-14T14:57:53+0100

Tony Crocker said:
I have a geography bias toward requiring defined boundaries. Fortunately that fits well with the Euros' Skististics criteria of separate lift tickets and/or lift but no piste connection. Jimmy Petterson's definition of counting every separately named village is quite a bit more liberal and fits with ChrisC's observation:

ChrisC and I both make judgment calls on this topic, which I suspect James does as well.

My ski area count is generally related to individual/reasonable lift ticket zone. I looked at the various areas listed and noticed by others.
A few differences which I made maybe a decade ago.

From 1 area to 2 areas
Brévent/Flègère became 2 areas as at the time, both areas we separate and had separate lift passes.
El Colorado: I added Farrolenes for that day I skied that separate section.
Alpe d'Huez: Added Oz for that one day where we arrived to and skied that part plus Alpe d'Huez.

Still 1 area:
Chillan: In 2012 I "accidently" skied in part of the generally area and skied a runs and lift that isn't included in the ski pass.
I might have skied a separate area when in Flaine, but still counting it as 1.

Counted separate at the time:
Mannlichen-Kl. Scheidegg and Schilthorn-Murren

Trois vallées:
Counting as 4. Val Thorens, Meribel, Courchevel and Les Menuires. Didn't bother adding La Tania which is part of Courchevel.

Zermatt/Cervinia:
Counted as Zermatt, Cervinia and Valtournenche. Noticed Tony counted Zermatt and Klein Matterhorn as 2 separate areas.

For other that have merged:
Blackcomb, Whistler, Moonlight Basin, Big Sky, Mont Blanc, Mont Faustin, Mont St-Sauveur and Avila. These are counted separately, but were independent at the time. Although I have skied Mont Faustin section since intergrating into Mont Blanc, I have never counted those days as Mt Faustin. I'm still counting Avila when skiing that terrain, you can buy Avila pass.

Ski Area Count 2023-2026 Updates

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