Yet, this happened during a record-breaking snow year (up 31% nationwide over the previous season), a turbo-charged economy and stock market, not to mention the newly synergies created by the multi-area Epic, Ikon, Mountain Collective, Powder Alliance and Powerpass, everything creating a perfect storm, but could only rank this season as the fourth with most total visits since NSAA began tracking visitations in 1978-79.
In fact, the United States couldn't break the 60 million visitors mark reached twice in 2007/08 and 2010/11, or even the third best number reached between the two, in 2009/10, all withing the worst of the devastating financial crisis.
What does this mean? Simply that once more, and over a 25 year period, the industry has been woefully incapable of generating new skiers, and it's not Vail's daily lift ticket at $209 a piece that is going to help creating a positive and endearing image for skiing.
More work is badly needed to get some truly creative solutions to a systemic stagnation!
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