Every fall, at kitchen tables across Utah Valley, the same spreadsheet gets built. It has a column for each family member, a row for each pass, and a lot of erased pencil. The question is simple — which ski pass should we buy — and the answer is not, because the passes are priced for different families, the deadlines move the prices, and the closest resort to Provo is the one resort the two big passes do not cover.
This is the worked version of that spreadsheet, with 2026-27 prices as Ski Utah published them in its pass roundup (Sundance's as of June 3, 2026; Ikon's and Epic's from their spring on-sales). Prices step up through the fall, so what you pay in October will be higher than what is here; the relationships between the passes, which is what decides the choice, hold.
For the resorts themselves, our skiing near Provo guide has terrain, drive times, and the season-pass section this page now expands. This page is the money.
The One Fact That Decides Everything
Sundance Mountain Resort is not on the Ikon Pass, the Epic Pass, the Indy Pass, or the Mountain Collective. Its listed multi-resort partners are the Ski Utah Gold Pass, the Ski Utah Passport, and the Yeti Pass.
Sundance is also the only ski resort in Utah County, 25 to 35 minutes from Provo up the canyon, and the only resort a Utah Valley family can ski after school on a Tuesday. Every other resort in the Wasatch is an hour or more away.
So the decision is really two decisions stacked. First: is this a Sundance family — does the value of skiing close and often outweigh the value of skiing big and far? Second: if not, which of the big passes matches the resorts you would actually drive to? Almost every Utah Valley family lands in one of three places: a Sundance pass, a big pass and a long drive, or the combination — a Sundance pass for the after-school days and a handful of day tickets or a Yeti Pass for the road trips.
The Menu, With Prices
Here is what each pass costs and what it buys, for 2026-27.
Sundance season pass. $799 adult (27+), $669 young adult (18-26), $409 youth (13-18 in high school), $319 junior (6-12), $359 senior (65+), per Ski Utah as of June 3. Unlimited Sundance. Prices rise in tiers through the fall. Sundance's own pass page lists any blackout products, the current tier, and perks like discounted friend tickets.
Ikon Pass. $1,449 adult (23+), $1,049 young adult (13-22), $449 child (5-12), $199 for 4 and under, per Ski Utah's Solitude listing. In Utah: unlimited Solitude; seven days each at Brighton, Deer Valley, and Snowbasin; seven shared days at Alta and Snowbird. Plus 70-some destinations worldwide. The Ikon Base Pass is cheaper — it opened at $949 in March — with unlimited Solitude, five days at Brighton and Snowbird, blackouts, and no Deer Valley, Alta, or Snowbasin. Ikon went on sale March 12, 2026; renewal pricing is lower; there is a "Family & Crew" group discount and, new this year, a refundable option.
Epic Pass. $1,119 adult (13+), $889 young adult (18-30) and teen (13-17), $569 child (5-12), per Ski Utah's Park City listing. Unlimited, no-blackout Park City Mountain and Vail's worldwide network. The Epic Local Pass — $829 adult, $659 young adult and teen, $435 child — is the same Park City access with blackout dates. Park City also sells resort-only youth passes: $440 for ages 5-12, $475 for teens, $531 for college.
Yeti Pass. $899. One lift ticket at every Utah resort — fifteen days — no blackouts, non-transferable. Sold by Ski Utah.
Ski Utah Passport. $79, rising to $99 on December 1. Three days at each of the fifteen resorts, 45 days total, for any 4th, 5th, or 6th grader anywhere in the world. There is no residency requirement.
Ski Utah Gold Pass. $12,500. Unlimited, fully transferable, every resort, no blackouts, limited quantity. Included here for completeness; it is a corporate and very-high-use product, and it is the only pass on this list that covers Sundance and everything else.
Individual resort passes at the other Wasatch resorts, for reference: Brighton unlimited $1,239 adult, $199 for ages 7-12; Snowbird Summit $1,569 adult with a free Kids Freeloader pass for 18 and under with an adult purchase; Snowbasin Premier $1,279 adult; Deer Valley $4,100 adult; Alta $1,549 adult with a $3,199 family package. Most of these are alternatives to Ikon for a family that skis one resort, and Brighton's and Snowbird's kid pricing is aggressive enough to change the math for large families.
The Math, By Family
Passes are priced per person, so the decision changes with the number of skiers and their ages. Here are four families, each skiing from Provo.
Family A: Two adults, two kids (8 and 11), six days a year
This family skis on holiday weekends and maybe one spring day. The 11-year-old is in 5th grade: buy the Passport, $79, and that child skis free everywhere, three days at any resort. For the other three, six days at Sundance on day tickets — around $119 adult and $89 child at recent weekday rates, more on weekends — comes to roughly $1,950 for the season, versus $799 + $799 + $319 = $1,917 for three Sundance passes. It is a wash at six days, and the pass wins the moment they ski a seventh. At four days, tickets win clearly.
Verdict: Passport for the 5th-grader, and either tickets or Sundance passes for the rest depending on whether six days is a floor or a ceiling.
Family B: Two adults, three kids (6, 9, 14), fifteen days a year, mostly after school and Saturdays
This is the Sundance family. Five Sundance passes — $799 + $799 + $409 (the 14-year-old) + $319 + $319 — is $2,645 at June prices, for unlimited access to the resort 30 minutes away. Five Ikon passes would be $1,449 + $1,449 + $1,049 + $449 + $449 = $4,845 for resorts an hour or more away, and unlimited only at Solitude. Fifteen days at Sundance on tickets would run well past $6,000.
If the 9-year-old is in 4th grade, the Passport replaces that child's $319 with $79 and adds 45 days at other resorts the family can use on road trips.
Verdict: Sundance passes, Passport for the eligible child, and the whole family under $2,500.
Family C: Two adults, one teen (16), twenty days a year, and they want variety
This family will drive. Three Ikon passes — $1,449 + $1,449 + $1,049 — is $3,947, for unlimited Solitude and 28 days spread across Brighton, Deer Valley, Snowbasin, and Alta/Snowbird, none of which is close. Three Epic passes — $1,119 + $1,119 + $889 — is $3,127, for unlimited Park City Mountain, the biggest resort in the state, an hour away. Three Sundance passes — $799 + $799 + $409 — is $2,007, close and small.
The honest tie-breaker is where the family wants to be on a Saturday. If the answer is Park City, Epic. If the answer is the Cottonwoods, Ikon or a Brighton pass ($1,239 adult) plus tickets. If the answer is "close, and we'll take two road trips," Sundance plus a Yeti Pass for one adult ($899) to sample the rest.
Verdict: Epic if Park City is the home mountain, Ikon if the Cottonwoods are, and either way, expect $3,000-plus.
Family D: One adult, one 5th-grader, twelve days, no strong preference
Passport for the child, $79. For the adult, the choice is a Sundance pass at $799 — which does not travel — or a Yeti Pass at $899, which gives one day at each of fifteen resorts and lets the parent ski alongside the child at every resort the Passport covers. Twelve days on a Yeti is twelve different resorts, each once, which is either the best winter of the child's life or an exhausting drive schedule. The Passport child gets three days at each resort; the Yeti parent gets one.
Verdict: Passport plus a Yeti Pass if the family wants the tour; Passport plus a Sundance pass if the family wants a home.
The Passport Changes the Order of Operations
For any family with a child in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade, the Ski Utah Passport comes first, and everything else is built around it. Three days at each of fifteen resorts for $79 is not comparable to any other pass on the list; it is a different category. A 5th-grader on the Passport can ski three days at Sundance, three at Brighton, three at Park City, three at Deer Valley, three at Snowbird, and still have 30 days unused.
What it does to the adults' decision is this: it makes the road-trip resorts free for the child, which lowers the family's cost of variety, which tilts a family that was going to buy Sundance passes toward Sundance passes plus a few adult day tickets elsewhere, and a family that was going to buy Ikon toward Ikon Base or a Yeti. It also has a hard deadline: $79 until December 1, $99 after.
Two other youth products worth knowing. Brighton's Grom pass for ages 7-12 is $199, cheap enough to pair with an adult Ikon that already includes seven Brighton days. And Snowbird's Kids Freeloader pass gives 18-and-under free with an adult Summit pass, no blackouts, if added by the purchase cutoff — which for a large family that wants Little Cottonwood makes Snowbird's $1,569 adult pass cheaper per skier than it looks.
The Deadlines, and Why They Matter
Ski passes are priced on a ladder. The lowest price is at the spring on-sale; it rises in steps through summer and fall; and sales close as the season begins. Ikon went on sale March 12 with a mid-April first deadline and sales that typically end in early December. Epic follows a similar calendar. Sundance's prices step up as the season approaches, with a late-fall deadline before the top tier. The Passport is $79 until December 1.
A family buying in early October, as this page goes up, is in the middle of the ladder — more than the spring price, less than December. The practical advice is to decide by mid-October, buy, and stop thinking about it; the increments after that are real. And to set a reminder for March, when the next season's prices reset, because the family that buys in spring is the family that wins the spreadsheet.
Ikon's new refundable option is worth a look for a family whose winter is uncertain; it costs a bit more and returns cash if plans change.
The Student Tier, and the College Skier's Version
Every pass on the list has a young-adult price, and for a BYU or UVU student the tiers are the whole game. Sundance's young-adult pass at $669 covers ages 18 to 26, which is nearly every undergraduate and most graduate students. Ikon's young-adult tier at $1,049 stops at 22, so a 24-year-old pays full adult price; Epic's young-adult tier at $889 runs to 30. Park City Mountain's college pass at $531 is the cheapest unlimited-big-resort product a student can buy, and it is resort-only. Brighton, Snowbird, and Eagle Point all sell college passes at a discount to adult.
The other student route is a resort job. Sundance, Park City, and the other resorts give seasonal employees a pass, and for a student who has weekends free the pass-for-work trade is one of the better deals in the valley; our ski-season jobs guide works through it. A student who would pay $669 for a Sundance pass and instead washes dishes two nights a week for a wage and the same pass has changed the sign on the spreadsheet.
What Changed for 2026-27
A few things on this year's roster are different from last year's, and they matter to the math.
Ikon's price rose $70 at the on-sale, to $1,399 in March and $1,449 by the time Ski Utah's roundup posted the Solitude listing; the Base pass rose too. Ikon added a refundable-purchase option, a "Family & Crew" discount for group purchases, and a Gen Z deal on Base passes for ages 23 to 28 when five are bought together — useful for a group of siblings or roommates. Epic's prices rose just under 4 percent. Sundance's June adult price of $799 compares with a higher late-fall figure in prior years, so the early-buyer discount is real.
Eagle Point, the southern Utah resort on the Indy Pass, is listed by Ski Utah as closed for the 2026-27 season. It was never a Utah Valley family's home mountain, but it was on the Yeti and Passport rosters, so a Yeti or Passport this year covers fourteen open resorts rather than fifteen. Ski Utah's product pages are the place to confirm whether the pass prices adjust.
And Deer Valley, which completed one of the largest terrain expansions in North American history over the past two seasons, remains on the full Ikon Pass at seven days and is not on the Base pass. For a family that wants to see the new terrain, the full Ikon is the only multi-resort route.
Day Tickets, Beginners, and the Under-Six-Days Family
Not every family should buy a pass. At six or fewer days a year, the math generally favors tickets, especially with the discounts. Sundance's walk-up rates have run around $119 adult and $89 child on weekdays with half-day and twilight rates below that; the resort's beginner packages bundle a lesson, rental, and lift ticket at a rate that is far below buying each separately, and are the right first purchase for a family learning. Ski Utah's discounted-lift-ticket page lists multi-day packs and midweek deals. Ikon and Epic both sell day-pass products — Ikon Session Passes start at $299 for a bundle — that undercut window prices at their resorts.
If you have never skied and want to know what a first day costs before you think about passes at all, our Sundance resort guide walks through the beginner day, and our winter activities guide has the non-skiing alternatives that keep a family busy on the days nobody wants to drive a canyon.
The Combination Most Utah Valley Families End Up With
After enough Octobers, most families here settle into one of two patterns.
The Sundance-plus family buys Sundance passes for everyone, the Passport for any eligible child, and treats the rest of the Wasatch as an occasional day-ticket trip or a Yeti Pass for one parent. Their season is fifteen to thirty days, most of them short, and their spreadsheet is under $3,000.
The big-pass family buys Ikon or Epic, drives an hour every ski day, skis bigger terrain, takes one out-of-state trip on the same pass, and never sees Sundance. Their season is ten to twenty days, all long, and their spreadsheet is over $3,000.
Neither is wrong. The families that regret their choice are the ones who bought a big pass and then found that an hour each way was too much on a school night, or bought Sundance and spent the winter wishing for Park City's acreage. Decide which family you are before you decide which pass to buy, and buy before the ladder climbs.
Related Guides
- Skiing Near Provo: The Complete Guide
- Sundance Resort Guide
- Winter and Ski-Season Jobs for Students
- Park City from Provo
- Winter Activities in Provo
- Winter Tires and Canyon Driving in Utah
- Snowshoeing Near Provo
- Learning to Ski or Snowboard Near Provo
- Getting to Sundance and the Resorts Without a Car
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Sundance on the Ikon Pass or the Epic Pass?
How much is a Sundance season pass for 2026-27?
What does the Ikon Pass get a Provo family?
What does the Epic Pass get a Provo family?
What is the Yeti Pass, and who is it for?
What is the Ski Utah Passport?
When are the deadlines?
Are there cheaper ways for a family that only skis a few days?
