There Is Room on the Mountain

Recently, I was reading the comments on a social media post from SKI Magazine about new data on the demographics of the American skier. The article itself was interesting, but I found myself spending more time thinking about the conversation happening underneath it. People were debating race, diversity and whether the ski industry should even be talking about who is, and is not, participating in the sport.

Some questioned why race should have anything to do with skiing. One commenter asked why Black people not skiing was somehow the fault of white people who do. Another described efforts to diversify skiing as “cultural appropriation.” Then there were comments about needing to “lock up” skis and a comparison to merchandise being locked up at CVS.

The people making those jokes about theft did not explicitly say who they believed would steal the skis, and I am not going to put words in someone else’s mouth. But context matters. These comments appeared in a conversation about race and representation in skiing, alongside comments specifically talking about Black and white participation in the sport. Whatever the intent, I found myself thinking about how those words would be received by someone who has never felt represented in the ski community and is considering entering it for the first time.

I have spent much of my life around skiing, and I know that a social media comment section does not represent the entire ski community. I know this community to be filled with people who are passionate about sharing the sport they love. I have watched coaches dedicate countless hours to young athletes. I have seen volunteers give their time and companies, foundations and donors invest in creating opportunities for young people. I have seen people go out of their way to help a new skier feel comfortable on the mountain.

That is exactly why I think we should be willing to have this conversation. We can love this sport and still recognize that not everyone has had the same opportunity to become part of it. We can be proud of the ski community while also asking whether there are things we can do differently to make that community larger.

Skiing has real barriers to entry. Equipment, clothing, lessons, lift access and transportation are expensive. Geography plays a role, but so does exposure. If your parents do not ski, your friends do not ski and skiing is not something people around you do, there is a good chance you may never have the opportunity to try it. For many families, skiing is not something they decided against. It simply was never presented as something available to them.

There are also barriers that have nothing to do with money. Anyone who has spent years skiing probably does not think twice about walking into a lodge, figuring out where to go, putting on boots, carrying skis or getting onto a lift. Those things become second nature. For someone experiencing the sport for the first time, the entire environment can feel unfamiliar. For a child who also looks around and sees very few people who look like them, that feeling can be even stronger.

This is something we think about every day at Winter4Kids. Our work begins with removing the practical barriers. We provide young people with the equipment, clothing, instruction and access they need to experience skiing and snowboarding. Many of the children who arrive at our mountain have never put on ski boots, ridden a chairlift or stood at the top of a trail. They do not need to know anything about skiing before they walk through our doors. That is our job.

Our youth-only mountain gives us an opportunity to create a very different first experience. Kids learn alongside other kids. Beginners are not trying to navigate around experienced adults moving quickly down the mountain. No one has to pretend they know what they are doing because everyone else seems to know. They can ask questions, fall down, laugh, get back up and try again. Over time, something that felt completely unfamiliar starts to feel like something they can call their own.

That is the difference between simply providing access and creating an environment where someone can see themselves as part of the sport. We can hand a child a pair of skis, but what we really want is for that child to eventually say, “I’m a skier.” We can teach a child to snowboard, but the bigger opportunity is helping them discover a sport they may choose to carry with them for the rest of their life.

Making room for more people in skiing does not mean taking something away from the people who are already here. It does not mean abandoning the traditions that have made generations of people fall in love with this sport. It means recognizing that there are kids who have never had the same opportunity and deciding that we want to give it to them.

I think sometimes conversations about diversity become so focused on terminology that we lose sight of how simple the goal can be. We want more kids outside. We want more kids experiencing the mountains. We want more young people learning something difficult, falling down and discovering that they can get back up. We want children who never pictured themselves as skiers or snowboarders to have the opportunity to find out that they might love it.

At Winter4Kids, we see that happen all the time. We see children arrive unsure of themselves and leave proud of what they accomplished. We see kids who were nervous about their first run asking when they can go again. We see young people discover a place and a sport that may have seemed completely outside their world only hours earlier.

Our hope is that their experience does not end when they leave our mountain. We want them to ski and snowboard at other mountains. We want them to join teams, bring friends, compete if they choose, work in the industry and someday introduce their own families to winter sports. We want Winter4Kids to be the beginning of their relationship with the mountain, not the only place where they feel comfortable being part of it.

That is why I kept thinking about those comments. We can remove the cost barrier. We can provide the equipment. We can teach the lessons. We can create the first opportunity. But eventually, the young people we introduce to skiing and snowboarding will enter the larger winter sports community. What they find when they get there is something all of us help create.

The comments underneath one Instagram post do not define skiing, and I do not believe they represent most people who love this sport. But dismissing them completely would also miss an opportunity. They remind us that saying everyone is welcome is not always the same as making people feel welcome. Sometimes we have to look at our own community through the eyes of someone entering it for the first time.

There is room on the mountain for the kids who grew up skiing and the kids putting on ski boots for the first time. There is room for families who have spent generations in this sport and families beginning that tradition today. Creating opportunities for new skiers does not require anyone else to give up their place.

The mountain is big enough for all of us. At Winter4Kids, we are going to keep doing everything we can to make sure more kids have the chance to discover it.