I'm not an industry insider, but one contact knows a little bit about Alterra and thinks we should not be drawing conclusions that they are mirroring Vail's Epic Pass as a long term strategy.
First is to draw a distinction between the areas Alterra owns vs. the ones who are on Ikon as affiliates. The latter can make decisions year-to-year on their pass affiliations. Telluride switched from MCP in 2018 to Epic in 2019.
Recent changes:
Alterra bought Solitude so the Ikon is unlimited there.
Boyne affiliated all of their areas with Ikon whereas originally it was only Big Sky and Loon/Sugarloaf/Sunday River. The Boyne Michigan areas, Brighton, Snoqualmie and Cypress are the new additions.
Thredbo plus Niseko is great for Aussies like sbooker.
Taos is a new affiliate. That leaves Sun Valley/Snowbasin as the only MCP areas not on Ikon.
Ikon Utah is now unlimited Solitude + 5/7 days AltaBird + 5/7 Brighton + 5/7 Deer Valley. I think that's quite competitive with Epic unlimited Park City. Of course if I were a local I'd still go with season pass at Alta and/or Snowbird.
My contact thinks Alterra wants to concentrate on premium iconic areas and might unload some of the peripheral places. He says Jackson, Snowbird and Sun Valley are desired targets. I agree Sun Valley/Snowbasin post Earl Holding is an obvious sale candidate. I think Alta, Snowbird and Jackson are unique products that can survive just fine as independents if their owners so desire.
Personally, I think large "middle class" areas like Mammoth and Winter Park are valuable cash cows. Blue Mountain, Tremblant and Big Bear may not have world class skiing, but they are dominant in their local markets and sell lots of tickets. So I see Alterra hanging on to all of those.
I have no idea what the future of Mountain Collective is, but it still has value. Some of our Iron Blosam people are buying Ikon and some Mountain Collective.
We bought full Ikon for $899 but for only $100 more we could have bought base Ikon plus Mountain Collective. Why would we do that? Full Ikon gives us 7 AltaBird days, but we get no breaks beyond that. Base Ikon + MCP gives us 10 Altabird days + half price after that, so nearly break even on day 8 and the combo is better after that.
Admittedly this is an unusual situation where someone might surpass 7 days at more than one area. Since I've owned my own week at Iron Blosam I've skied the following number of days per season at Alta/Snowbird: 10, 12, 13, 11, 10, 15, 8, 6, 5, 9. The decline in recent years is due to overseas trips in January, which will be happening in 2019 also.
Mammoth days during those same seasons: 15, 12, 27, 9, 18, 3, 4, 21, 27, 14.