Black Mountain Was Going to Close. Then the Indy Pass Bought It.

Ski areas close quietly. A season ends, the lifts don't turn the next November, and a year later somebody posts drone footage of the liftline growing in. New England has dozens of them, and they're lost partly because nobody was paying attention while it happened.

Black Mountain in Jackson, New Hampshire nearly became one of them. What happened instead is genuinely unusual, and it's all on the mountain's own website.

What the site says

Black Mountain describes itself as operating "since 1935," calling itself "the soul of skiing for the past 90 years." It claims to have been "one of the first in the country to offer lift support" and to be "home to the first overhead lift, now known affectionately as the 'J-Bar.'"

That first-in-the-country claim is theirs, not ours. Lift-history firsts are contested across several New England mountains, and we haven't verified it against anything but Black Mountain's own page — so treat it as what the operator says about itself, which is exactly how it's presented here.

The part that isn't in dispute is the recent history, because the mountain published it in plain language. John Fichera and his family ran the place from 1995, working "to keep this place open, accessible, affordable — and, most importantly, fiercely independent." Then, in the site's own words: "Last October, John announced that he had to close operations due to a lack of staffing and financial viability."

We can't tell you which October. The page says "last October" without a year, and we don't guess at dates — that's the whole premise of this site. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of small thing that becomes wrong when three other websites copy it and pick a year each.

Then a pass company stepped in

What followed is the unusual part. The Indy Pass — a multi-mountain pass built specifically around independent ski areas — didn't just add Black Mountain to its roster. It backed the mountain financially. The site says Indy "stepped in, giving the Fichera Family the financial and operational support he needed to get the mountain open and back in operation."

And now it's gone further. Per the same page: "after another challenging season, John is fully transferring the ownership and stewardship of Black Mountain to the experienced and impassioned team at Indy Pass to keep the mountain open."

A pass company buying one of its own member mountains is not how this industry usually works. Passes are distribution — they sell access to somebody else's snow. Indy's stated reasoning, under a heading that reads "WHY IS INDY PASS DOING THIS?", is not a business case at all: "At Indy Pass, we truly love skiing with a fervor that approaches religion. We are committed to preserving the essence of our sport at all costs."

You can read that as sincere or as marketing. What's verifiable is the transaction, and the transaction is real enough that the mountain is selling 26/27 season passes right now.

Why this matters beyond Jackson

Black Mountain is one of 5 New England areas we've so far confirmed on the Indy Pass, out of 43 areas checked and 91 tracked. Indy's entire proposition is that independent mountains are worth keeping — the pass exists because skiers will pay for somewhere that isn't a corporate resort.

So a pass built on independence now owns one of the mountains it was built to serve. That's either the strongest possible version of the promise or a quiet contradiction of it, depending on how the next few seasons go. Either way it's a real test, and it's happening at a small hill in Jackson rather than in a press release about synergies.

The small mountains are where this question gets answered. They're also, consistently, the ones nobody tracks.

What we're watching

Black Mountain has not announced a 2026–27 opening day. Neither has anywhere else in New England yet — it's August, and announcements start landing in September. When it comes, it'll appear on the opening dates tracker and on Black Mountain's own record page with the date we confirmed it.

Three specific things we'll be checking on this record through the autumn:

Whether the ownership change alters Indy Pass access at the mountain — a pass company owning a hill could plausibly mean more access, or a restructured product. Whether pass prices move, which we track for every area on the season pass deadline page. And whether the opening date lands earlier or later than it did under the previous ownership, which is the cleanest single signal of whether the new operator is investing in snowmaking.

We don't have answers to any of those yet, and we'd rather say so than speculate. Every fact above came off blackmt.com on the date stamped at the top of this page — here's how we check, and what we refuse to publish.

Opening Day Alerts

One email a week through the autumn, listing the New England mountains that have named an opening day — each one checked against the mountain’s own site, not rumor. It stops when the season starts.

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