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If you ski, I don't need to tell you, things have changed over the last few years.

One of the biggest shifts has been the rise of these multi-resort ski passes. You sometimes hear them called mega-passes. The biggest ones around here are the epic and the icon. And they make it possible and for a lot of people affordable to bounce around from resort to resort, not just in Utah,

but all over the place.

And those passes have helped fuel a surge in popularity at the resorts here. So more skiers, more visitors, but a very different experience on the mountain.

It's reshaped, not just the business of skiing,

but the culture of it. And for some people, the joy of it. This is how Joe Prokopf feels about it.

Joe is a colleague of ours. And for a very long time now, he's been an Alta guy.

The whole reason I came to Utah was to ski.

And for a long time, it was to the point where you could ski on nonstop powder days

and have these amazing experiences, these amazing days that stick in the back of your mind.

You know, like the time that I got to the top of gun sight, I was hiking with my friends, and then I looked down there and it's a powder day where it's up to your

armpits and it was cloudy. The sun broke, the clouds broke, and I look back at my friends. I look

back at that powder and I'm like, see ya.

I still remember it, that feeling, that idea of floating, that idea of unbridled joy to this day, that one run.

And I've had thousands of days like that.

Skiing is my tribe. It's my friends.

I know people that I started skiing with who had kids,

who those kids have now had kids. I met my wife there, fell in love with my wife. To this day,

at Alta, if I don't run into someone coming up and down the stairs to the locker room,

I will run into someone in Lifeline and we will go and ski.

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