This Is the Most Affordable Ski Resort in the U.S. — and Tickets Start at $9

Ready to hit the slopes to shred some epic powder? Same. But, if you’re looking to do it on a budget, that can be pretty tough, especially in the U.S., where the average cost of a single-day lift ticket is reportedly about $250. (Ouch.) But there are still mountains out there that offer more affordable options, and Casino.org has done the hard work of finding the cheapest for you. 

In late 2024, Casino.org commissioned a study to identify America’s most and least expensive ski resorts. To uncover the destinations where you should expect to splurge and where you can save, it first created a seed list of the 20 highest-rated ski resorts, which it found via On The Snow. Then, it scraped each ski resort’s data to find the pricing of one-day lift tickets, one-day equipment rentals, average nightly accommodation costs, average meal costs, and the cost of a half-day group lesson.

After looking at all the pertinent information, it named Purgatory Resort in Colorado the most affordable.

According to their findings, you can expect to spend $95 on a single-day pass, $75 for rentals, $29 for meals and drinks, and $149 for a half-day lesson. The biggest savings came with accommodations. At Purgatory, you should expect to spend just $200 per night, bringing the cost to $548 per day, or about 69 percent less than the most expensive mountain in the study, Aspen Snowmass, which costs nearly $1,800 per day for total cost. 

However, you could actually visit Purgatory for even less than this. As Travel + Leisure correspondent Evie Carrick wrote in 2024, tickets at the mountain actually start from just $9, and the variable pricing system means the earlier you buy, the lower the cost will be. It’s also a mountain with plenty of bonafides, including 11 lifts, 107 named trails, and multiple terrain parks, accounting for 1,600 acres of skiable terrain, so don’t let its cheap tickets fool you into thinking it’s a cheap mountain. 

As for other more affordable mountains on the list, Casino.org named Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico the second-most affordable, running at $560 for an overnight trip, and Crested Butte in Colorado as the third-most affordable, where you can expect to pay about $612 for an overnight trip. This way, you won’t feel bad about splurging on that second hot cocoa.