Four single-session tickets at Wachusett costs around $240. If you ski more than once or twice a year, you buy used skis in the summer, you don't need lessons, and you bring food from home. If only one parent skis, it's under $200 with two kids.

It's not nothing, but it isn't restricted to "rich people", and it doesn't cost $500. If you really love skiing, you buy a season pass, and you save significantly. My point isn't that it's free, or that it isn't a luxury -- it absolutely is -- but rather that it isn't reserved for folks in the 1%. Stuff like Vail buying out our local slopes (ugh, Okemo) sucks, and supporting smaller mountains helps to keep it from becoming something akin to what you see in CO or CA.