A ski season is a period when skiing, snowboarding and other alpine sports are viable in an alpine resort. The season corresponds to when ski lifts are running and lift passes are available. Depending on the latitude and altitude of the resort, the season will typically run from early to mid-winter until mid- to late spring. Ideally the season will be over before the thaw begins.
A typical ski season has three stages, and therefore three levels of lift ticket pricing:
- Off-peak, at the very beginning and ending of the season, when the number of lifts open is limited and the snow cover in the lower sections of the mountain is typically patchy.
- Shoulder, during which the mountain is entirely snow covered but lift pass sales are not sufficiently lucrative to justify opening all lifts or areas of the mountain.
- Peak, during which all lifts and most if not all runs are open. These periods are usually at the height of the season or during school or public holidays.
Famous quotes containing the words ski and/or season:
“The goal for all blind skiers is more freedom. You don’t have to see where you’re going, as long as you go. In skiing, you ski with your legs and not with your eyes. In life, you experience things with your mind and your body. And if you’re lacking one of the five senses, you adapt.”
—Lorita Bertraun, Blind American skier. As quoted in WomenSports magazine, p. 29 (January 1976)
“When we reached the lake, about half past eight in the evening, it was still steadily raining, and harder than before; and, in that fresh, cool atmosphere, the hylodes were peeping and the toads ringing about the lake universally, as in the spring with us. It was as if the season had revolved backward two or three months, or I had arrived at the abode of perpetual spring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)