Pats Peak sits in Henniker, close enough to eastern Massachusetts that you can ski after work and still make dinner. Half the mountain is beginner terrain, the lights stay on, and racing is part of the personality. You do not come here for a White Mountains epic. You come here because the drive is sane and the hill is set up for a real ski day without turning it into a trip.
The snowmaking plant does the heavy lifting. A hundred inches of natural snow is not a powder argument. It is why the guns matter, and why Pats Peak still skis when a thin week would shut a natural-snow hill down. Night sessions are the whole product for a lot of people. If you only ski weekends, you are missing the version of this mountain that locals actually live on.
Indy Pass makes the math easy. A walk-up ticket is still independent pricing, not destination pricing. If the group wants more vertical and a lake view, Sunapee is the Epic step-up on a similar drive. If you want the smaller, closer night hill, stay at Pats.