Season passes for 2022-2023 are beginning to come onto the early-season market for California's 38 independently owned ski and snowboard mountains.

Montana's Blacktail Mountain is joining the Powder Alliance reciprocal lift pass program for next winter's 2022/23 season, which allows for three free days of skiing and riding at 17 winter destinations spanning three countries on two different continents.

A half-dozen resorts of the Powder Alliance have provided pass holders at fire-damaged Sierra-at-Tahoe free access to their trails and slopes until the resort gets back on its feet.

The first round of 2021-22 multi-mountain season pass sales is underway, with a few changes from this past season in the works and price competition that continues to heat up.

Finally, some good post-vaccination news for skiers and snowboarders after two rough pandemic winters that greatly disrupted ski vacations, travel and the snow sports industry. Unlike just about everything else we enjoy in travel and recreation, the cost to go skiing has actually dropped in recent years, mainly do the prevalence of multi-resort unlimited ski passes. But as of today it is going down even more, at dozens of the most popular and desirable ski destinations in the world.

With a boffo snow year all across the nation, the multi-resort season passes earned their keep in 2018-2019 as skiers and riders hop-scotched around. Now, those same passes are up for sale for next season.

Powder Alliance, the so-called “off-beat” combined pass, is now a partnership of 19 resorts in U.S., Canada, Japan and Chile with the addition of Sugar Bowl, Loveland and two mountains in the Canadian Rockies.

Iconic mountain lodge has it all. (Timberline Lodge/Facebook)

Only one resort in North America spins its lifts in all four seasons. That’s Timberline Lodge Ski & Snowboard Area, hard on the slopes of Oregon’s Mount Hood and beneficiary of both high elevations and the largesse of the Northern Pacific storms. 

Scenes like this one at Mammoth make combo passes enticing. (Sean Engie)

Thanks to ski-resort consolidations and new partnerships, there are so many combo or multi-area season passes now that it can be delightfully difficult to decide which pass to get.

Construction crews at Utah's Snowbasin have built a new reservoir on the mountain this summer to solidify snowmaking at the northern Wasatch resort.

Bargains abound for skiers and riders who can hit the road to get on the slopes at a variety of resorts next season. Also for those with itchy feet, a trio of multi-resort, multi-day passes give riders and skiers up to five days at a variety of resorts in both the East and the West.

It started in the 1990s in Colorado when ski areas like Winter Park and Copper Mountain, in a bid to stay competitive with a rapidly expanding Vail Resorts conglomerate, started experimenting with discounted season ski passes.

The hot trends in lift tickets are cool college and partnership passes that can be found countrywide. But, time is running out to buy them.