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Indy Pass has become a real part of my life over the last few years.

To be fair, every year my son and I are Epic, Ikon, Indy, and an Uphill New England passholders, so I ride a little bit of everything: major resorts, independent mountains, uphill routes, and backcountry days. But Indy has given me something different. It has taken me to smaller mountains I may not have otherwise visited and helped give my son the kind of ski experiences that still feel personal.

This month, I got to see what most of us do not: the business, pressure, questions, and strategy happening underneath the pass. I attended the Conference of Indypendents at Black Mountain, a gathering Indy Pass has not typically opened up to the press in the past, and it reminded me that what we see as consumers is rarely the full story.

We see the access, the affordability, and the fun of checking another independent mountain off the list. But what does it actually take to keep those mountains running? Where does the money go? What are these operators worried about? And what happens when a pass becomes part of a much bigger conversation about the future of independent skiing?

Right off the bat, Erik Mogensen said something that stayed with me: the competition is not really Vail versus Indy, Ikon versus Indy, or one pass versus another.

It is all of us fighting for people’s time.

That landed because skiing and snowboarding are, as we all know, not easy hobbies. Getting a family to the mountain is practically a full-time job, especially as a single mom. We all know all too well about the packing, the gear, the layers, the boots, the snacks, the drive, the weather, the cost, the early alarms, and the chaos of just getting everyone from the car to the lodge.

And yet, once it gets you, it gets you. That is why we are all here and why we write about it.

Erik asked the room to remember their first ski mountain. Mine was not exactly magical. I was a kid in Colorado with non-skiing parents who dropped me off in Aspen for a lesson. Today, that sounds like a dream, but I could not keep my skis from tripping over each other, got dragged up the tow rope more times than I care to admit, and left confident that skiing was not for me. 

It was not until years later, in my 20s, chasing “bros” down a mountain while trying to learn how to snowboard on a rowdy mountain outside of Pittsburgh, PA, that it finally started to click. It was the community I was drawn to, and the snow and the freedom that came with it were just a bonus. 

For my son, fittingly, it started at an Indy mountain: Titus Mountain, tucked way up in the middle of nowhere, New York. The owner, Bruce, made the effort to meet this city mom, help get my city kid on skis, and make him feel like he belonged out there. Bruce and I are still friends to this day, and those first days many years ago helped set the foundation for a 13-year-old who lives in New York City to clock in 45 days on snow this season. And if you have been around Black Mountain lately, you may have seen that same dedicated kid climbing up on skins solo. Not many kids do that. Indy made that possible.

That is why seeing independent mountains succeed feels personal. These are the places where people get their first real chance to fall in love with snow, where a parent can find a mountain that feels welcoming instead of overwhelming, and where one good experience can turn into a lifelong pull toward winter.

This Is Bigger Than A Pass

At Black Mountain, the message was clear: Indy Pass is not just selling access to ski areas. It is trying to keep people connected to the experience of skiing and riding itself.

For independent mountains, that mission hits close to home because they are often the places where that connection begins. But these mountains cannot do it alone. They are fighting rising costs, staffing challenges, weather volatility, lodging gaps, food and beverage demands, technology needs, transaction fees, rack-rate decisions, and the very real competition for people’s time, whether that is screens, local soccer clubs, or everything else pulling families in different directions.

That is where Indy Pass and Entabeni Systems are trying to build something larger than a pass product: a support system rooted in the real, mountain-level issues that shape whether an independent area thrives or struggles.

Black Mountain as a Complicated Case Study

One of the reasons Black Mountain matters to this story is that it is not a neat, polished example. It is complicated.

Indy Pass initially stepped in to help keep the historic mountain open, with early plans to explore a community or co-op ownership model. Since then, Erik decided to buy it out fully and keep ownership, turning Black into a real-world testing ground for the ideas Indy Pass and Entabeni are building for independent areas.

That shift alone is worth paying attention to. Black has become a place where the bigger questions around independent skiing are playing out in public: Who owns these mountains? Who gets a say in how they operate? What happens when a new owner comes in with unconventional ideas? And how do you balance saving a beloved local ski area with changing the way it has always been run?

There has also been public resistance and tension in Jackson,NH around Black Mountain’s operations. That context should not be ignored. Erik’s approach has stirred conversation, and not everyone sees the changes the same way. That makes Black less of a simple success story and more of a useful case study in what happens when an independent mountain is trying to survive, modernize, and redefine itself in real time.

That is also what gives the story some weight. Erik is not only talking about independent mountain struggles from the outside. He is living the operational reality: staffing, grooming, food and beverage, lodging, technology, guest experience, weather, margins, and local expectations. Black Mountain is where those ideas meet the real world.

The Hidden Math Behind a Day on Snow

A major part of the summit focused on Entabeni and the systems being built to help independent mountains run more efficiently.

As a longtime snowboarder, I will be honest: I have never once thought about how something as small as hamburger bun UPC codes could matter to a mountain. But sitting in that room, I was blown away by how much goes into running even a small ski area, and how thin the margins really are when you factor in weather, staffing, food and beverage, lodging, transaction fees, and every tiny line item that has to be tracked.

That is where Entabeni comes in. Indy’s summit recap highlighted several rollouts, including mobile POS with payment integration, management dashboards, self-service kiosks, time tracking and budgeting tools, food and beverage systems, direct booking lodging, and the “Ask Indy” AI tool. In the room, one of the most practical ideas was the stored-value card: Guests could load money onto their RFID card, possibly with an incentive or discount, and use it across the mountain instead of making multiple separate credit card transactions throughout the day. It is the kind of seamless payment experience larger pass players like Epic and Ikon can more easily offer across their multi-mountain networks.

That may not sound glamorous, but for a small mountain, those little fees and friction points add up fast. As guests, we usually just walk up, get a ticket, click in, and enjoy the mountain. Behind the scenes, Entabeni is trying to make the business side easier so these teams can focus less on spreadsheets and more on the things we actually feel: better service, smoother operations, and yes, perfect corduroy for rope drop.

Hard Questions, Direct Answers

From an outside observer’s view, the Q&A may have been one of the most telling parts of the summit. Mountain operators asked difficult questions about payouts, redemptions, liquidity, sustainability, and the future of the pass model in front of industry peers and media.

 

Erik did not shy away from those questions or skate around the answers. He gave them room to ask directly and responded directly.

 

That kind of room says a lot, but it also points to the larger debate around Indy Pass. There are people in the ski industry who support the model and see it as a lifeline for independent mountains. There are also critics who question whether Indy takes too much value out of the system, whether enough money flows back to the mountains, and whether the model is as invested in long-term resort infrastructure as companies that own and operate ski areas directly.

 

That tension is part of the story. Vail, Alterra, Indy, Mountain Collective, Snow Pass, and other pass products are not doing the same thing, and they are not built on the same business model. Mountain Collective already uses a two-day-at-each-resort model across a smaller group of major destinations, and the new Snow Pass is entering the space with a similar two-day structure aimed at a curated network of regional and destination resorts. The question for journalists is not simply whether more pass products are “good” or “bad.” It is whether they help the industry grow, whether they create more access, whether they put enough money back into the mountains, and who ultimately carries the risk.

 

For journalists, the job is not to pick a side. It is to ask better questions: Who benefits? Who carries the risk? How much revenue stays with the mountain? What does the model help solve? What problems remain? And does more competition help independent mountains, or does it make an already crowded pass market even harder to navigate?

Why This Story Is Worth Telling

What I kept coming back to is that these mountains are all different, but they are carrying a lot of the same weight.

They each have their own terrain, their own locals, their own quirks, their own problems, and their own reasons people love them. But sitting in that room, it was clear they are also dealing with the same bigger questions: How do we keep people coming? How do we make the numbers work? How do we compete for families’ time? How do we keep skiing and riding accessible without losing what makes these places feel so special?

That is where the Indy Pass story gets more interesting. It is not just about where someone can ski with a pass. It is about whether these independent mountains can share information, learn from each other, and keep more people connected to the sport.

And that is the story I hope NASJA members go out to find themselves and tell.