Priced at $2,000, Windham Mountain Club’s early-bird season passes were roughly twice as expensive as similar passes at other resorts in the region. These high prices are fueling concerns about access to Windham slopes for Catskills locals.
Passes at other popular resorts in The Overlook region have either remained stable or risen less in recent years. An early-bird pass at the state-owned Belleayre Mountain comes in at $729 for the 2026-2027 season, which is unchanged from the last two years; a $899 pass provides access to Belleayre as well as Gore Mountain and Whiteface Mountain. At Hunter Mountain, which is privately owned, an early-bird Northeast Value Pass is priced at $662 this year and includes access to 21 resorts across the Northeast. The higher-end Epic Pass, which offers access to a number of other resorts including Vail Ski Resort in Colorado, is $1,089.
Chris Brower, 46, a Windham resident of 15 years and former program manager at the Adaptive Sports Foundation, said the mountain’s pricing has become hard to reconcile with the town, where for many people $2,000 for an annual ski pass is simply out of reach.
“The mountain’s success is our community’s success,” said Brower who currently works as a ski instructor at Catamount Mountain in Columbia County. “I believe they are a private business and have every right to run it as they choose. But we need them as a community partner.”
For his own family, Brower said affordability has already shaped where they ski. Brower, whose wife, Antonia, runs the Windham Spa, said their 5-year-old son receives a free ski pass from Windham Mountain Club, which provides passes to all students in the Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School District. Brower buys a midweek Windham pass for himself for about $650 a year, while relying on other options for family skiing. “I want there to be a more affordable option,” he said.
Belleayre and Hunter have also made their early-bird rates accessible for longer periods than Windham. Windham’s discount was available between March 6 and 8, while Belleayre’s remains open until the end of April, and Hunter’s until mid-April.
Though this is the second consecutive year that Windham has offered $2,000 early-bird passes, the company increased rates by 38 percent from 2024 to 2025. This increase followed closely on the resort’s acquisition by a group of private investors in 2023.
Kristen Leach, president of Windham Mountain Club, said the resort’s pricing reflects a deliberate strategy to limit crowds and preserve what she described as a higher-quality experience on the mountain. “We intentionally keep it uncrowded, and that comes at a cost,” Leach said.
Leach also said the club is focused on offering an overall experience, instead of maximizing skier volume, a strategy that began during the COVID era, when the resort saw that many visitors wanted a less congested experience with shorter lift lines and more time off the mountain. Windham formalized that approach last year, she said, with the goal of controlling the flow of skier visits.
She said season-pass prices had not increased from March 2025 levels and described the resort’s departure from the Ikon Pass network—which she said had brought about 30,000 visits—as part of the same strategy. The Ikon Pass network is a collection of ski resorts around the world that participate in a single multi-resort season pass program.
Leach said this winter had been a strong one for the resort. She also said the resort expanded a local business owner pass program this year to provide a discounted ticket for local small business owners and their employees in the town of Windham. During the early-bird sales window, those passes cost $500; they are now priced at $700.
In an email, Leach addressed what she described as the resort’s “controversial” decision to move the public weekend opening times from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. The earlier hour will now be reserved for members, the mountain’s race program, and scheduled instructor training.
Other Catskills resorts operate on similar schedules, she noted. On the weekends Hunter Mountain typically opens at 8:30 a.m., while Belleayre Mountain opens at 9 a.m.
Windham’s full-cost passes for the coming season, which will become available for purchase in October, come in at $2,500.
These passes, of course, do not get you access to all that the Windham Mountain Club has to offer. The resort has many amenities, including a private spa and an exclusive gym, and will be unveiling a new aquatics and racket center in the future. These facilities are reserved for Windham Mountain Club’s members, who have paid a one-time fee that has been reported to cost upwards of $200,000.
The price increase of the annual pass is coming at a tough time, as people are feeling the pinch from tariffs and now rising gas prices from the war in Iran. As Geri Marino, owner of the Snow Bird Ski Shop in Hunter, told The Overlook in December 2025, tariff pressures already have Catskills skiers cutting costs by favoring used equipment over new equipment. Local ski retailers also told The Overlook they expect costs to grow significantly next year, as pre-tariff retail stocks are exhausted.
Correction: Windham Mountain Club said it provides free ski passes to all students in the Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School District.
Yoni Gelernter is a contributing writer. Send correspondence to reporting@theoverlooknews.com.
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.