Perhaps I should have seen it coming (I didn’t), but Vail Resorts has a multi-mountain bike pass.

What the Epic Pass is to skiing, the Free-Ride Unlimited Pass is to mountain bikes with the summer option taking a handful of pages from the same playbook. Take a gander at the launch video:

The stats are very similar to its winter-sibling in that the pass covers five resorts:

• Kirkwood
• Keystone
• Northstar
• Canyons
• Vail

Giving riders access to 155 trails and 11,000 feet of vertical served by 10 chairlifts.

Missing Piece
Like the Epic Pass It comes in both a regular ($349) as well as a local ($249) option with early bird discounts if you order before a certain deadline.

The one thing I was surprised not to find was a central website for the pass and ordering like we see with the Epic Pass.

Instead, each resort seems to be pushing and selling it individually including uploading the promo video to each of their channels.

Reactions
I saw a little bit of coverage from the bike world including Vital MTB and Pinkbike though the articles were fairly stock reprints of the press release.

The comments, however, especially on Pinkbike, were virtually a mirror image of winter announcments: half haters of corporate outdoor sports, half recognizing that they are putting effort into good parks and this could be a heck of a deal.

It’s not an industry first, to my knowledge the $279 Trestle Pass (good at Winter Park, Steamboat, Snowshoe, Crested Butte, and Angel Fire) takes those honors, but with a name like Vail Resorts in the game it’s going to be stiff competition.

Interesting
I’m still chewing through the value and implications of big investments into biking, but let me get anecdotal again for a moment.

One issue I keep seeing pop up is the line serious cyclists walk between training/riding and time with their families. This is especially true for cross country and road riders. But, if lift served does appeal to these cyclists or can act as the bat symbol to get their attention, suddenly the broad range of other activities Vail Resorts have been building make more sense.

The whole family can travel together while Dad gets his training in and the families zip lines to their hearts content.

An interesting move for sure.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.