Ikonic Travels: Make This The Season You .. Buy an Ikon Pass

The Ikon pass offers an incredible opportunity to ski more places at a far lower cost than would be possible if you bought each resort pass individually. For those of you who might be considering splashing out on one next season, here are the overall positive and negatives.

1 / There are more than 50 resorts on the pass, covering Europe, the US, Canada, Chile and Japan, but you can’t ski all season in every resort. Most of the European resorts on the pass offer either seven or five days. The bigger US resorts also limit the time you can spend there – seven days only in Aspen, for instance. Many of the places that offer season-long skiing are smaller, particularly in the US, and you might only want to spend a few days there. In some resorts you have to book (Aspen, Arapahoe Basin) in advance. You do however get a family and friends discount of up to 25% in many resorts, which is not to be sniffed at.

2 / You need to be able to ski for more than 15 days in Europe (or seven in the US), if you’re going to get value out of the pass: which is not always easy if you work, have children and commitments, or a partner who doesn’t ski.

3 / It’s not a free pass to everywhere. Plenty of the big, popular resorts are missing. There is another pass, called the Epic, which covers some of these.

4 / It’s a lot of packing up and moving on. You need a car. In comparison to going to one resort and staying put, it’s actually a lot more tiring. And unless you know the resorts already, you have to repeatedly learn your way around a new place every week, looking for the bus stops, the best slopes, the best snow, the best bars. In Europe, of course, that’s where the Ski Club comes into its own. Joining up with a group of people who already know the resort well is invaluable. As the Ski Club currently only has Reps in Jackson Hole (we could be available to rep in Aspen next year, did we say?), we had to navigate our way around the Colorado resorts from scratch, which made it a bit less relaxing.

DO IT!

With passes in Steamboat and Aspen some of the most expensive in the world (a cool $230 per day) the Ikon pass at £1,075 seems like a no-brainer. Plus, the Ski Club is offering a 10% discount if you buy a pass before 1 December.