Affordable ski trips and Lake Tahoe may not belong in the same sentence. After all, California resorts like Northstar and Palisades are charging well over $200 for a one-day lift ticket!
Still, over the years my family has learned a few tips for saving money skiing Lake Tahoe resorts.
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Here’s how we manage affordabe ski trips to Lake Tahoe
After skiing in Lake Tahoe most years since 1999, I’ve seen lift ticket and rental prices skyrocket.
Lake Tahoe lodging has gotten really expensive too.
But because it’s close, we still ski Tahoe more than any other location. These are the strategies we use to make skiing in Tahoe more affordable.
Affordable ski trip tip 1: Never buy your lift ticket at the window
There are multiple ways to save money on Tahoe lift tickets. Waiting in line on the morning you want to ski is not one of them.
- Buy a season pass. We usually buy an Epic pass, which gets you unlimited skiing at three Tahoe-area resorts: Northstar, Heavenly and Kirkwood. This year, I bought a Tahoe Local Pass for $669.
- Or consider Epic Day Passes. A season pass usually takes four to six days of use to pay off. If you think you’ll ski just two or three days, you might want to buy a few day passes before the season begins. They’re a lot cheaper than walk-up tickets. However, they are not refundable — so it is a bit of a risk if your plans change. (As with regular Epic passes, if you have a medical excuse, you can file a claim to get your money back.)
- Look for age-related discounts and freebies. When our kids were 4 and under, their Epic passes were free. In some states, Epic offers a Schoolkids program, with free skiing for elementary school students.
- Look for multiday discounts — from the resort or through retailers. For instance, Sports Basement offers its members discounts on multi-day ticket packs for Palisades. Costco also sometimes sells discounted ticket packs for local resorts.
- Ask friends with passes to share discount tickets. In 2025, Vail introduced “Friend Tickets,” a flat 50% discount that Epic pass holders can share with companions. If you buy your pass early enough, you should get six Friend passes to share.
- At the very least, buy tickets in advance online. Even if you didn’t plan ahead enough to buy a pass and your friends have no discounts for you, you can save some money — and time — buying your lift ticket before the day you’re skiing. Fortunately many (or most) resorts will give you a refund if your plans change and you can’t ski that day after all.
Affordable Ski Trip Tip 2: Don’t book lodging through Airbnb
So-called home sharing site Airbnb is getting a bad rap. While I’ve enjoyed the service for many years, I did have one Airbnb nightmare experience that put me off. However, our one bad experience isn’t the reason I try not to book our ski rentals on Airbnb or VRBO anymore.
I do it to save money!
See, both Airbnb and VRBO tack a service fee onto your rental. For the house I recently rented, that fee was $150. So here’s my strategy for avoiding the dreaded Airbnb fee:
- I use Airbnb or VRBO to search for a property. Their search functions and calendars are great for finding a place that has everything we want and is available for the dates.
- I read the property description and reviews carefully. This helps me weed out rentals with bad management or other issues.
- Sometimes, these listings mention a property rental company. If so, I leave Airbnb and find that property rental company’s site. Usually I’ll see the same house, often offered without a fee.
- If no rental company is mentioned, I Google the name or description of the property. For example, I found this listing I liked on VRBO with a $150 fee. Then I Googled “Whitehall Cabin.” I immediately came up with the same house, listed for the same exact price, with no service fee.
Tip: If you do use VRBO, click through the AAdvantage E-Shopping portal or another portal so you can earn miles.
Or, consider joining a season ski lease to lower your nightly rate significantly!
Affordable ski trip tip 3: Season gear rentals, thrifting and hand-me-downs
Once upon a time, my husband and I used to wake up on a ski day and stop at a ski rental shop on the way to the mountain. If we were runnign late, we’d rent our gear right at the mountain. Yes, this was expensive! It also ate up precious ski time. When there were long lines at the rental place, we often ended up starting our ski day at noon or later.
At this point, I own my own skis, boots and poles. But my youngest kid, Toth, is still growing, so we rented his boots this year at Sports Basement for around $168 for the season. (I was torn between buying him some boots and paying this.)
We haven’t always rented our kids skis and boots. Sometimes, we were lucky enough to find their size at one of the many thrift stores in the Lake Tahoe area. A favorite is Mountain Kids in Truckee, where we have bought ski boots, snow suits, helmets and more. This year, my son is using skis that an adult friend passed on to him. Two of my kids have worn the ski coat I purchased at Any Montain in 1999! Unfortuantely, this year the fabric is starting to disintegrate at the seams. Not bad for 25 years of service.
Affordable ski trip tip 4: Leave home early in the morning
For years, we drove to Lake Tahoe after work on Fridays — only to face hours of traffic backups and get to our rental late at night. The goal was to get a good night’s sleep and be able to get to the mountain bright and early. But in practice, it didn’t always work out that way.
With nightly rental prices so high, I’ve increasingly been starting my Tahoe trip on the morning of the first ski day. Leavning home around 7 a.m. and driving straight to the resort, we’ve often found that we start skiing around the same time we would have if we stayed locally. For instance, this past weekend, one of our friends left his home in Oakland at around 7 a.m., and arrived at Northstar before 10:30. He arrived at the same time as some of our friends who had been staying 7 minutes down the road.
On the same token, our departure day is also a ski day. We ski all morning, maybe part of the afternoon, then drive home.
Using these tactics, Toth and I skied four days on our recent three-night trip. Yes, day one and day four were a little shorter than days two and three, but that helped us avoid getting completely exhausted!
Affordable ski trip tip 5: Try home exchanging for lodging
I have belonged to Home Exchange for years! We enjoy hosting folks at our house, then using the points to book trips to Lake Tahoe.
A lot of the homes available on sites like HomeExchange.com in the Lake Tahoe area are second homes that are also rented out on Airbnb, etc. That means they’re often fully booked every weekend. But if you have the flexibility to visit Tahoe during the week, you may be able to find lodging for free with your HomeExchange points. My adult daughter and I recently stayed in a darling studio above a local couple’s garage that was only five minutes from Heavenly. I can’t wait to go back!
I also plan to try pet sitting in exchange for free lodging in Tahoe this season. Now that I have lots of positive reviews on Trusted Housesitters, I’ve been watching for Tahoe winter sits to post.
Affordable ski trip tip 6: Stop at Costco on the way
As a Costco girlie, of course I try to schedule my gas stops at a Costco on all trips. But for Tahoe trips especially, we’ve settled into a routine of stopping at Costco for a gas refuel, bathroom break and a quick slice of pizza. This serves as brunch and allows us to start our ski day feeling satisfied, so we don’t need to pause for lunch.
If we have a little extra time, we’ll also do a quick shop to stock up the ski rental. The prices are of course better than at the local Safeway. Besides, the lines at Lake Tahoe grocery stores after the lifts close can be out of control. And if the day is cold enough, the groceries will be fine sitting in the car. If it’s over 40 degrees out, we bring a cooler.
There are many Costco locations between the Bay Area and Lake Tahoe, most of them clumped around Sacramento. I think the most convenient stop on the way to North Tahoe, for when we’re skiing Northstar, is the Roseville Costco. According to Google Maps, it only adds six minutes to the trip.
Of course, I have to be honest and admit that stopping at Costco takes longer than stopping at the closest gas station. Sometimes there’s a line for gas. Walking from the car to the store bathroom takes more time. But the bathrooms are usually cleaner!
Affordable ski trip tip 7: Cook your own meals
Before we had kids, Erik and I would go up to Tahoe with friends and eat out most nights. But once we added kids to the equation, it was frankly easier to feed them at the rental than to drag them out to a restaurant. And we saved a ton of money.
Nowadays, we tend to share a house with one or two other families. On the most recent trip, one family cooked two dinners and the other family cooked one. I didn’t have to cook any dinners! I did bring a lot of breakfast food to share, though.
Affordable ski trip tip 8: Bring tons of food to the mountain
During our recent trip, my friend found out a friend had also been skiing at Northstar. My son was really surprised to hear that the friend talk about food he bought at the mountain. That’s because in my kid’s experience, buying food at the resort is just not a thing.
Instead, we pack our own ski lunch. When the kids were little, that meant packing something hearty and also appealing, so they wouldn’t feel jealous of friends with trays of burgers and fries. To cut down on prep time, I would usually buy a big loaf of sourdough bread, a pack of coldcuts and a block of cheese — and then let everyone break off hunks at the resort to make rustic sandwiches. Lately, my son is more into optimizing his ski day, so he just wants a sandwich and a drink that he can carry in his pocket and maybe eat while waiting in the lift line.
It’s a good idea to fill up your pockets — and the kids’ pockets — with appealing snacks, too. I like to carry some kind of surprise treat to hand out to kids in our group for having a good attitude. This weekend, I brought a Costco box of Froot by the Foot for this purpose.
And yeah, I often break ski resort rules and bring my own alcohol as well. As long as you’re not causing a problem, in my experience the staff doesn’t care.
Affordable ski trip tip 9: Plan ahead to avoid parking costs
Have you noticed a theme here? Most of the money saving tips we use are just about planning ahead. And that’s definitely true of parking. Recently, Tahoe ski resorts have started requiring parking reservations for peak times, like weekend mornings. They’ll charge $20 for a reservation — but for cars with four people or more, there’s no fee.
So we always try to consolidate our group so we have at least four passengers per car. The good news is that the staff at Northstar has been generous with us. A couple times, due to someone deciding to stay home, we drove in with just three people in our car — but they gave us our free parking pass anyway.
If you can’t carpool, another tactic is to show up just after the parking reservation requirement ends. We did that on our first day this week, and it went fine.
Affordable ski trip tip 10: Don’t pay for a locker
I honestly don’t know why people get lockers at ski resorts or what they put in them. At most resorts, the lockers are far from the area where you will be skiing, so it’s not as if people will be accessing them halfway through the day. So if it’s a wallet or purse, you might as well just leave it in the car. I can’t speak for every ski resort, but I have never seen a car breakin at any of the Tahoe resorts where we ski.
We actually tend to bring a lot of stuff from the car to the mountain, but we still don’t get a locker. We carry our ski boots and extras in our boot bags. Once we’re close to where we’ll begin skiing, we change into our ski boots. Then we put our shoes and anything we don’t want to carry around into the boot bags and stash them somewhere like under a ski rack, under a bench, etc.
Are we worried about our stuff getting stolen? Once in 25 years of skiing, I had a pair of goggles stolen from my ski bag. I had actually left the goggles — which were not new or expensive — clearly visible in the outside pocket of the bag. When I came back at the end of the day, the bag was still there, but the goggles were gone. So, I don’t leave goggles behind, or anything else really valuable, but I still leave my boot bag with my shoes.
We also usually stash our lunch bag in a convenient area for having lunch — unless I carry it in my small backpack. You’ll see lots of other lunches sitting around base areas as well. No one has ever disturbed ours. The only thing I would caution you about is making sure you put it in an area that won’t get full sun, and if it’s snowing hard, try to put it under an overhang.
Bonus tip: Go as many days as you can!
Once you invest in that season pass, make use of it. I like to calculate my per day cost as I go through the season. Since I paid $679 for my pass this year, once I’ve skied 10 days, my cost will be down to $67.90 per day. That’s goals!