When Sean Regan posted on the Tahoe Truckee People Facebook page last month about Palisades Tahoe’s new Apex Club, a bougie members-only club that offers premium amenities like priority lift line access and private lounges, his phone started lighting up with text messages and phone calls.

The number one question he got was: “Is this real?”

One friend texted him, “We should start a refund-our-passes campaign.”

Like his friends, Regan, who lives along the Highway 89 corridor and has been a Palisades Tahoe passholder since 2010, is most upset about the Apex Club’s members-only lift lines at both Palisades and Alpine Meadows.

“It’s a fraud to sell me a $1,000 pass and tell me you are going to have a great experience and then turn around and tell me I am going to have a terrible experience unless you pay $12,000,” he said.

The old adage “you get what you pay for” has never been truer. For those willing to pay, the opportunity to enhance their experience in many industries has been around a long time. Sports stadiums have private luxury suites and corporate boxes. Airlines offer first-class tickets and the chance to pay extra for priority boarding or upgrading one’s seat. Disneyland has the Lightning Lane Premier Pass (formerly called FastPass) that lets guests skip long lines at rides. And air travelers can pay extra for Global Entry or Clear+ to expedite their journey through customs or security lines.

Ski resorts jumped on this bandwagon years ago, offering guests the opportunity to fork out extra cash for valet parking, access to exclusive lounges, and members-only lift lines. But the recent news that Palisades Tahoe is joining the trend has some longtime skiers bristling, saying it devalues their pass by allowing others to cut lines and is being launched at a time when the wealth disparity in the country is growing. Palisades Tahoe, along with other ski resorts that offer premium services, says the Apex Club is was created in response to what a segment of their guests want, and that it caters to all economic levels of skiers.

Apex Club Amenities

Palisades Tahoe launched the Apex Club this fall “to offer an elevated experience for guests seeking premium amenities,” Palisades spokesperson Patrick Lacey wrote in an email to Moonshine Ink. “Our guest base is incredibly diverse, from families to first-timers to experts to weekend visitors, and many guests are looking for new experiences when they come to the mountain.”

Membership in the Apex Club is limited to 200 members for its inaugural year and starts at $12,000 for one person (in addition to an Ikon pass). Apex Club Daily Tickets are also available for $800 but can go up to $1200 during peak holiday periods. Day tickets are capped at 33 per day.

Club benefits include premium parking near the kids ski school, concierge service, two private member lounges, and priority lift lines at select lifts. Two spaces at Palisades have been converted into lounges — the Plaza Bar in the Olympic House has been extensively remodeled and is now the Apex Lounge, which offers a private bar as well as work and dining areas, and the former ski patrol office at the mid-mountain Gold Coast is now the Oro Bar.

Although the Plaza Bar was an iconic part of the Olympic House and the mountain’s history, Lacey said it had fallen out of popularity with skiers and had not been consistently used for a while, with guests preferring to après at outdoor spaces like the KT Base Bar. To this end, Palisades has invested more in the base bar, expanding last year’s 24 free concerts to 52 this winter. The loss of the Plaza Bar was further compensated by investing in Bar One as well as in the Olympic House, “bringing back a revitalized public space that hadn’t been actively used for years,” wrote Lacey.

But the Apex Club amenity that is most ruffling feathers among Palisades skiers is the priority lift lanes. These will be in place this winter at seven lifts at Palisades — including Red Dog, the Funitel, Siberia, and Shirley Lake — and four at Alpine (Summit, Roundhouse, Sherwood, and Treeline Cirque), as well as the Base-to-Base Gondola.

“With Apex, the membership is intentionally small, which means the effect on lift lines will be very minimal,” wrote Lacey. “We are also being intentional about which lifts are included.”

As Mark Fisher of Unofficial Alpine wrote on his website in October, “They smartly avoided starting a riot by not including KT-22.”

Priority lift lanes are not new to Palisades. They already exist for ski school, race programs, adaptive lessons, and the North Face Mountain Guides program, where up to four people can book a private guide for $699.

Skiers’ Concerns

Nevertheless, some Palisades passholders find the priority lift lines the most egregious of the Apex privileges, made worse by an Apex Club promotional video showing an image of a crowded KT line on a powder day where a narrator says, “The lift lines are intimidating, and that’s a terrible thing for our guests to feel. It’s an opportunity to have an easier parking situation, to have a priority line in our lifts, and within the context of that, to really have the best day you can have on the mountain.”

“I worked for marketing for Aspen, the ultimate place where people pay to cut the line, but they do it with class,” Regan said. “They sell you a club at the top of the mountain and parking, they don’t sell it as ‘plebes are in line and it sucks, give me $12,000.’ They [Palisades] just stuck a finger in the eye of every die-hard skier.”

Adam Pilger, who lives in Marin County and has been a Palisades passholder for seven years, agrees with Regan.

“This doesn’t feel like fair treatment to me,” he said. “The way it was marketed is incredibly foolish. They are soliciting my pass purchase by saying ‘Palisades is awesome, this is the place to ski,’ then three months later send out a video saying, ‘it’s pretty awful here, parking is horrendous and the lines are the worst we have ever seen’ … They have effectively devalued my pass.”

Pilger went so far as to call Ikon and ask for a refund. He was told he needs to reach out to Palisades directly. “I suspect they won’t give me a refund,” Pilger said. “If that’s the case, it will be my last year skiing at Palisades … If they had been forthcoming earlier in the season I would not have purchased a pass.”

Andy Hays, an avid Palisades skier since 2005, skis every day of the season with a target of 200 days a year. He worries that the Apex Club’s priority lift line will have a negative impact on his own skiing experience.

“With airlines, if you buy a first-class seat, you are getting an elevated experience, you are more comfortable, but it doesn’t come at a direct expense to other passengers. We all get to the same destination at the same time,” he said. “But here, someone’s elevated experience directly impacts the rest of us … [Palisades] is notorious for how quickly it gets tracked out. But when we’re creating a system where someone can buy three runs for every one that is coming out of my pocket, it’s diminishing the experience I have, it’s diminishing the value of the pass I buy because I’m still paying the same for my pass, but it’s now worth less.”

Hays is also concerned that creating line-cutting abilities for a small, exclusive segment of Palisades skiers harms the culture, where on a powder day the early birds — those passionate skiers first in the KT line — get the worm, as in, the best snow.

“I don’t think the purpose is to price anyone out. I think it’s more recognition that the guests have different wants and needs and you try to offer products to meet those. If you truly are guest-focused, you’re listening to all ends.”

~ John Rice

“I think it’s a commodification of a culture that, frankly, I don’t know that they have the right to sell,” Hays said. “This feels like they’re somehow monetizing something that used to be the best part of [Palisades] — the showing up early, just putting in the work — and it’s just been turned into another product to be exploited. I think that for people who have invested their lives into this [powder skiing at Palisades], that’s hard to see just go away.”

Pilger notes that this move by Palisades is coming at a time when the wealth disparity in the U.S. is growing, when the difference between the haves and have-nots is only widening.

“It’s also tone deaf,” he said. “We are living in a time where there’s a growing divide, there’s disparate classes in terms of wealth, and it seems like more and more there’s just this … if you can get away with it, do it. And the rules don’t apply to the wealthy.”

Fisher of Unofficial Alpine agrees.

“It’s not just Palisades,” he wrote to Moonshine Ink. “The world is becoming a playground for billionaires.”

Palisades Late to the Game

Yet premium services are not uncommon at ski resorts. In 2010, Mammoth Mountain launched the Black Pass, which this season costs $11,000 for individuals and $18,000 for families. Members receive access to exclusive events, VIP areas, premium parking, front-of-line ski passes, and members-only fine dining on the mountain. There is already a substantial wait list for this season, according to Mammoth Communications Manager Emily van Greuning.

“Many guests were requesting a premium experience at the resort and Mammoth Black Pass was created to satisfy demand,” she wrote in an email to Moonshine.

Similarly, Northstar California Resort opened the Clubhaus, formerly called the Platinum Club, 15 years ago. Membership includes similar perks to the Apex Club and the Black Pass, one of the most valued being private access to the Big Springs Gondola, according to Cole Zimmerman, senior communications manager for Vail Resorts. Seasonal membership, which is $3,700 for individuals and $4,700 for a family of four, is already sold out, but guests can purchase day memberships for $150.

“We believe that ski resorts are always looking to adapt to best fit the needs of a variety of guests,” wrote Zimmerman. “Northstar provides a range of products and opportunities for our guests to best cater to the experience they are looking for. The Clubhaus is one example.”

Alterra Mountain Company, the parent company of Palisades Tahoe and Mammoth Mountain, introduced the Reserve Pass at many of its properties this year. It offers skiers and riders the opportunity to upgrade their season pass or daily lift ticket to get priority chairlift access at select lifts. Palisades’ Apex Club is the resort’s own version of the Reserve Pass.

“We regularly conduct guest surveys, and a number of skiers and riders are looking to save time and want ease of access,” wrote Kristin Rust, vice president of communications at Alterra. “[This] may be ideal for a family that is coming for a week’s vacation or a quick weekend to help them get the most out of their experience.”

“It’s not just Palisades. The world is becoming a playground for billionaires.”

~ Mark Fischer

In Washington, the Crystal Mountain Reserve Pass, which costs $199 for the day or $1,499 for the season on top of a lift ticket or Ikon pass, grants access to dedicated express lanes on all high-speed lifts on weekends and holidays. This caused such an uproar among skiers that a petition called “Stop the Crystal Reserve Pass at Crystal Mountain” was started in mid-November and now has almost 5,000 signatures.

“The introduction of the Crystal Reserve Pass at Crystal Mountain is set to create an inequitable experience for skiers and snowboarders,” states the change.org petition. “This pass … effectively creates a class-based system on the slopes. Implementing such a system threatens the community atmosphere and will pit skiers and boarders against each other.”

Rust said that like Apex Club membership, Reserve Passes are available in limited quantities “to ensure the on-mountain experience remains fantastic for everyone.”

Ski Industry Norm

John Rice, president of Ski California, said that ski resorts around the country have been offering premium services long before Mammoth and Northstar. Vail Mountain Club, for example, opened in 2008. Amenities include a private clubhouse, slope-side ski valet, complimentary breakfast and lunch, spa and fitness center, and first and last tracks ski events. The year it opened, full membership cost $275,000 or a mere $150,000 without the heated underground parking.

“There have always been programs like this,” said Rice, who has worked in the ski industry for almost 50 years. “If you look at Colorado and Utah, they have always had these clubs where people would pay additional fees for services, like valet parking. There’s always been this opportunity for guests if they wanted to pay for more creature comforts or a sense of belonging.”

“It’s a fraud to sell me a $1,000 pass and tell me you are going to have a great experience and then turn around and tell me I am going to have a terrible experience unless you pay $12,000.”

~ Sean Regan

He points to Sierra-at-Tahoe, where he was general manager for 32 years. Beginning with the 2006/07 season, the resort has offered the Fast Pass, which lets guests skip the lines at three high-speed lifts for an upgrade of $359 this year.

As to those who criticize these programs for being elitist and exclusionary, Rice says that not only do upgrades exist across many industries (he points to TSA PreCheck at airports and toll roads as examples), but that ski resorts are only responding to customer demands. An example he gives on the opposite end of the spectrum is Boreal’s Take Three Ride Free, which offers beginner skies and riders who take three group lessons a free season pass.

“I’ll just say that as an industry, we try to stay guest-focused and so when our guests ask for something, if we can accommodate it, we try to find a way to do it. We care about everybody,” he said. “I don’t think the purpose is to price anyone out. I think it’s more recognition that the guests have different wants and needs and you try to offer products to meet those. If you truly are guest-focused, you’re listening to all ends.”