On Thursday, Alterra Mountain Company, the new Denver, Colorado-based company that owns more than a dozen ski resorts around the country, announced it’d be bringing yet another ski area onto its roster: Washington’s Crystal Mountain Resort. Crystal is now part of the new-for-this-winter Ikon Pass, a collective pass with full access to all Alterra-owned resorts and limited access to even more world-class resorts.

The $999 Ikon Pass works at ski resorts like Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, Mammoth, Winter Park, Steamboat, Snowbird, Aspen and Deer Valley. In June, Alterra announced it was acquiring Utah’s Solitude Mountain, and in late August, the company established partnerships and pass access to Utah’s Brighton Resort, New Mexico’s Taos Ski Valley, Washington’s The Summit at Snoqualmie, British Columbia’s Cypress Mountain, Maine’s Sunday River and Sugarloaf, New Hampshire’s Loon Mountain and Michigan’s Boyne Mountain. The total count, as of now? The Ikon Pass gets you lift access at 35 resorts in North America, Australia and Japan, including 13 Alterra Mountain Company destinations and 22 partner resorts.

But what’s perhaps most interesting about this latest deal is that Crystal Mountain had just sold a little over a year ago to its current owner, John Kircher, who bought the mountain in 2017 from Boyne Resorts, the Michigan-based company owned by his family.

Read the full story on REI's Co-op Journal.