Why yes let’s deforest the side of a mountain so we can run down it and possibly hit trees at fatal speeds. Im fucking glad climate change is making this bougie bullshit harder to do. I went skiing once, horrible experience. Everyone in the skiing lodge was a rich white asshole and it felt like I walked into a country club, no a hitler youth recreation club. If you own a timeshare let alone an entire house at a ski resort you deserve the fucking wall!!!!
Do Americans think skiing in general is the same as alpine? Skiing isn't any more bougie than going for a hike.
Yeah, every criticism I've seen in this thread applied exclusively to alpine skiing, and almost exclusively to alpine resorts.
Cross-country is basically just Other Snowshoeing. Brand new gear costs maybe a couple hundred bucks, used gear is perfectly functional and ubiquitous (at least here in Canada) and the only infrastructure or anything that needs to exist is just snow having fallen.
I think i only spent 80 bucks on my equipment, and it's been working well for the past decade for cross country lmao.
Yeah this thread is wild. It's a geography/climate tied sport. People are bitching about equipment being so expensive in California? The place famous for not getting much snow?
As this thread has tried to correct against only criticising the concept of traveling for vacations and the environmental factors of ski resorts (which both do suck yes) the criticism of non-alpine skiing has gotten even dumber than when it was just being ignored.
I guess I wish people could learn that not everything is always about them.
Tbf cross country equipment can be very expensive in a country that is all about cross country skiing.
I'd argue alpine skiing isn't bougie if you live within two to three hours of a mountain. Secondhand equipment is cheap, and lift tickets were affordable until relatively recently.
Yeah, I disliked it because it felt crowded and I felt pressured into it by my family, but I grew up in an area much closer than two hours and there was never a significant class element to it as far as I could tell. Kids who didn't have their own equipment, like me, would just borrow. Maybe as an adult there's more complicated stuff that you need specific gear for but I couldn't tell back then.
Adult sporting equipment in general is hard to find because if you're an adult who plays a sport you probably really like it and use the equipment until it's busted. Kids grow out of stuff, or lose interest.
I can't find adult ice skates in thrift stores ever. I've been on the hunt for a while, might have to just bite the bullet and spend $150 CAD on a new pair.
Only exception is golf gear because rich guys like buying new equipment.
I don't know where you are, but where I live this has never been the sort of second hand stuff that is even remotely accessible to poor people.
I have been able to alpine ski about twice in my life. With rented equipment. Plenty of places around me for doing it, the lift tickets alone make it way too expensive.
And when it comes to cross country, which is a kind of national sport where I live, we all did do that as kids. But, it isn't cheap. Plenty of kids can't afford the equipment and those who have the good stuff obviously enjoy it more and don't get laughed at.
During covid year one me and my partner thought about doing it again as it's outdoors, but soon found out there is no way poor folks buy even cross country adult skiis that are actually usable. Used isn't all that cheap either.
There are endless tax payer money maintained ski routes in this country during winter that take over walking routes, hiking routes etc. You are not allowed to do anything there but ski during the ski season. The people who do it are all upper middle class or otherwise in a position where they can afford the equipment. The poors don't even get to use the area for walking during this time.
I don't know where you are, but where I live this has never been the sort of second hand stuff that is even remotely accessible to poor people.
Good point, the availability of secondhand equipment isn't something that ever crossed my mind.
I grew up in the California Bay Area. The PMC types buy equipment, use them for a season or less, then get rid of them on Craigslist and/or yard sales—the surplus drives the prices way down, especially during off-season. It's still too expensive if you're struggling to put food on the table and pay rent, but it's viable if there's breathing room in the budget.
In the 90s and 00s a decent set up of used jackets, pants, helmets, skis, and boots could be had for under $100, and last you for well over a decade. Hell, my dad is still using gear he bought in the 90s.
Gear is more expensive now. We recently had to kit up my cousin's bf, and we managed to scrounge everything for $155. He's a min wage worker, but in our cultures multigenerational living is the norm, and that reduces the cost of living enough that spending that much won't put him in the red. He also didn't have spend everything at once, because our family could loan him whatever he was missing while we searched for good deals.
Lift tickets also aren't what they used to be. Growing up, lift tickets at smaller resorts could be had for $10-15, so overall the sport was affordable for working class refugees with only a highschool education and a middling income. Now the cheapest lift tickets at the smallest resorts are $25, and that price is only available once a month.
Had my parents fled to the US now or within the last decade instead of when they did in the 80s, we wouldn't have been a skiing family. With the increase of lift ticket prices, we remain a skiing family only because we have all the gear already, and living with my parents lets me save up enough to buy us season passes. If I were living on my own I wouldn't be able to afford it, nor would my parents since they're on a fixed income.
Skiing with family and friends are some of my fondest memories, and introducing new people to the sport and watching them fall in love with it is phenomenal. Watching year after year as that joy becomes increasingly out of reach for the working class is enraging. Don't even get me started on the insulting, increasingly low pay of resort workers, destroying another solid avenue that working class kids used to use to afford slope time.
You could never really be poor and ski around here, but to the average middle class family it was doable. Now only those in, just below, or above the upper middle class can afford it. It's only going to get more bougie from here on out, which is a travesty.
There are endless tax payer money maintained ski routes in this country during winter that take over walking routes, hiking routes etc. You are not allowed to do anything there but ski during the ski season. The people who do it are all upper middle class or otherwise in a position where they can afford the equipment. The poors don't even get to use the area for walking during this time.
That blows big time, I'm sorry. While the resort slopes are exclusive to skiers, the miles and miles and miles of hiking trails in the Sierra Nevada are open to regular and snowshoe hikers, as well as cross country skiers. Y'all are getting hosed. We're all getting hosed. Death to capitalism.
It's very different then. Here this is a mandatory sport in school, but everyone has to buy their own equipment. Often kids from poor or for example migrant families end up having to sit out the ski lessons and also get poorer grades/negative feedback because of it. I was able to buy my kid one set of new skiis during their school years, but even those broke our bank. Kids skiis are cheaper, but you also need the sticks, shoes and proper clothing. Kids need several pairs over the years as they grow up so other times my kid just never got to take part.
We are made to compete in skiing as well from grade 1 onwards latest, it can be very humiliating for those who never learn it well or those many who never like it. I personally did like it, but my parents never were able to get good skis for me so it was always miserable. I did ski in the woods by myself though, that was nice. It was a good way to get to places in winter growing up, I did love skiing on sea ice.
Interestingly skiing was just a mode of transport in this country in the past, just like biking, and everyone had these equipment or made them. Nowadays it has become more of a banal nationalism and a symbol of "national spirit" and "fitness" or whatever that is seen as good and moral. It fits really well into the neoliberal wordview because people can just say "everyone is free to do it", ignoring the fact that the cheapest and crappiest skis for adults are hundreds of euros. If you are for example tall or fat, you can't buy those or you will hate skiing or end up hurt.
It is actually pretty depressing how something that historically was a mode of transport for the majority has been turned into something very exclusive and expensive by capitalism. I would argue this is happening to biking too, new bikes are well out of reach for someone like me now, but at least there is a better second hand market.
I tried to look for old school forest skiis to get past this and to be able to ski outside the raging bougies in the maintained lanes, but turns out those are even more pricey as the bougies have also discovered nature now as a posing stage.
Wish we had kept all the old skis our grandparents still had when I was young, the wood plank style army skis and such from the start of the last century. Those would still work in cross country terrain and could be maintained forever unlike the high tech carbon fibre stuff we are sold, but you can't find them anywhere anymore.
Here this is a mandatory sport in school, but everyone has to buy their own equipment
It's not mandatory anymore. Even when I was in school, we went skiing maybe a few times, and this was 20 years ago. Having to buy equipment was probably a big reason for why it's not mandatory.
I should have said "socially mandatory". Not mandatory as in you fail your classes if you go walking instead, but it was heavily not ok if your kid doesn't take part or you can't buy the equipment for them. My kid was in school just a few years ago still, but it was more rural.
I also did substitute PE teaching for some years and saw a lot of these equipment related financial issues during those times, there was none to give from the school to improve inclusion. Not just with skiis, but with skates and other winter sport stuff as well.
I couldn't afford downhill skiing as a child (and we lived right next to a ski hill) and I am still vaguely resentful. Used to bring a sled up the hill by foot and go down it though. The only way I got to learn how fun it is was my mum winning a union raffle for a skiing weekend.
My brother twisted his ankle the first day, so it wasn't very fun for him, but that is what we call a skill issue.
Ah solidarity, I also won a week long ski pass as a teen with lift tickets and rented skiis. I went to it with a friend and we spent all day every day in the slopes. That along with a school class trip are the only times I have alpine skied in a country of endless ski slopes, haha. It was a lot of fun, the rich kids did it all the time. Tony Hawk games and snowboarding was a big thing at the time and it was the rich kids in my class exclusively who had snowboards and were able to do that and flex about it.
There's a reason why you never see successful winter sports athletes from the global south.
Climate definitely doesn't help. Hard to do snow sports where there is no snow.
Southeast Asia seems to be serious about building up infrastructure for a number of winter sports so maybe in the future that will be less true.
You clearly don't have an adequate appreciation for how bad golf is if you think this is an appropriate comparison
It’s pretty fun. I don’t think anyone who has to drive a long way and pay big for outdoor clothes and equipment rental is having fun though.
Some of the nicest memories I have are stunting on rich tourists in fifteen year old thrift store gear that got refurbished at a shop in the off season.
It’s nice to go fast.
fuck it I will go to the mat for skiing. not those monstrous resorts but cross-country skiing and also backcountry skiing are both fun, except for the avalanches that kill at least one of your friends every year.
you literally cannot walk around where i live because of snow from november to late april but the city bike paths all get groomed for nordic skiing so its an actually a very viable way to get around
Does anyone around you use kicksleds? Remember them being all over when I was a child but haven't seen one in years.
there's a store here that's making an effort to build a kicksled community, I've seen people using them on frozen lakes a bit as an alternative to skating but people on the trails are usually on skis or fat bikes.
Fun fact, the OG big covid wave in my country was almost single handedly brought in by bougie skiiers partying in Austria, in the middle of a pandemic.
They just had to go skii, in a pandemic.
The genetic variant testing has revealed that not a single actual wave or mass spread ever happened here from outside the circles of bougie whiteness, no matter how hard they tried to make headlines of the "Chinese tourist" with covid.
And the fact that energy is spent in putting fake snow on the ground for these people so they can do their sport in climate change destroyed mountains is also a thing. They fly to these places to ski on artificial snow...
Not to mention how this "sport" and the tourism done in Lapland around it exploits and robs Sami peoples lands.
Wait they use fake snow? I know places thst have machines that make real snow, but it has to be cold enough
I mean the snow making machines, afaik they use a lot of energy. Where I live those are used to put snow into the cross-country ski routes that are everywhere as well.
The petty bourge loves this sport too, it makes them feel like they are properly doing their protestant seld-discipline. It has a lot of male coded and toughness coded undertones, there are a lot of sayings about skiing and "toughness". Ski route rage is a real thing that happens here as a result.
Fake as in not from the sky, but made on the ground with one of those machines. They consume around 20 GWh of power per year in every large alpine ski area[1].
[1] https://praxistipps.chip.de/stromverbrauch-schneekanone-so-viel-strom-verbrauchen-kuenstliche-schneeerzeuger_153343
I live in Colorado and used to go skiing a couple times every year as a kid (ie, when my parents were paying for it). It's pretty fun to go sliding down a scenic mountain at 30 mph, and it's rewarding to learn and get better. But now that I'm an adult I've decided that it's not really worth it to wake up early on a weekend, drive 2+ hours, freeze my ass off, spend a lot of money, and possibly hurt myself. Speaking of, you definitely want a helmet if you don't want to end up like Sonny Bono.
There are a few smaller and cheaper ski slopes that aren't crowded with rich tourists, but they're the exception. I've run into plenty of rich dickheads on the slopes, and lots of loud obnoxious Texans dressed fully in Cowboys gear.
That's where I'm at with it. Winter Park, Eldora, Loveland, all the I-70 and Wyoming ones- I have so many options nearby for skiing. I haven't been skiing since moving here because it's $200+ to freeze and die.
Ski Cooper on their discounted Thursdays is the only place worthwhile, in my extremely humble opinion. Otherwise, just be like me. Stick to trying to find good places to cross country ski and be mad at yourself all winter for moving away from the midwest.
be mad at yourself all winter for moving away from the midwest.
To be fair, you were sort of forced to move to Colorado
I knewa few people who would go in the evening and get cheap passes to stay late into the night getting blazed and skiing. I'm not in mountain territory tho, just big cold hills lol
its less rich people doing it here but still very white
unlike golf its a manner of conveyance so its weird to say its 'bourgeois' if theres people that just do it to get around snowy areas. the big resorts are great cancers on the landscape and society of the mountain though. rich assholes buy up all the property and all the required peons are immiserated having to make long dangerous commutes from adjacent towns or semi-indentured on-location
I hope you’re not implying that there’s anything redeemable about skiing.
i dont think theres a problem if someone got out some skis to go somewhere around their snow-bound community instead of snow shoes. you decide if that's applicable to the redemption of the "sport" ig
Should isolated mountain town communities even exist though that necessitate such means of travel? Like why the fuck should anyone be living in Tahoe, Aspen, ect?
A lot of mountain towns used to be mining communities. Colorado and Montana used to be hotbeds for the IWW.
The youth yearn for the mines moment. Mining is a shitty job and not a suitable industry to build a city off of.
The youth yearn for the mines moment.
What does this have to do with what I said?
Mining is a shitty job
Yes.
and not a suitable industry to build a city off of.
Uh, some of the biggest non-coastal cities in the world were built around mining.
And how sustainable is this industry? Under a planned economy mines would be phased out, all those mining towns, the people relocated into the city, retrained to clean toilets or something. Mining towns should be abandoned not turned into tourist traps.
uhh there's normal towns in mountains. stuff like pastoralists, high-altitude agriculture, mines, forestry, without getting into any modern tourist/recreation bs
A lot of those isolated mountain communities serve railways, at least they do in Canada. Jasper has a busy railyard and there's main line that goes right by Banff. Same with a bunch in BCs interior.
It's a good means for traversing snowy terrain?
This would only be a defense of cross country skiing though.
isn't the problem with golf the amount of urban space and absurd amount of water it requires? (and, like, country-clubs have a history of de jure racial exclusivity.) like, class resentment is very understandable, but this sounds like someone who hasn't carved fresh powder, ya know?
tbf I imagine the snow machines consume a lot of water too. They certainly take a lot of energy as has been said elsewhere.
Most winter sports are pretty
since white people are the only freaks who actually kinda like the cold.I say this as a Mayo myself who enjoys the snow.
Most winter sports are pretty
since white people are the only freaks who actually kinda like the cold.i feel like this is ahistoric
They don't do winter sports tho, they're too busy trying to survive in the harsh unforgiving Arctic wastes
Yes, their traditional cultures embraced pure adversity and never created a codified sports league designed to fit a two hour television broadcast with commercials. This must mean that they never had fun in the snow until a heroic mission of American advertising executives brought them their first can of red bull and a snowboard.
It's also much more dangerous than people think. Because skiing takes place on the snowy ground for the most part (excluding jumps and tricks), people think it's safe. But that's an illusion, if you have a fall at those speeds you're screwed.
I wouldn't be surprised if other sports like rock climbing or kayaking are safer.
Even the most basic skiing routes you go pretty fast and are uncomfortably close to trees lol. The only thing skiing has going for it safety wise is that speed control is pretty easy for amateurs to master, I find it incredible that anyone learns to snowboard without dying. Like all of the dangers of skiing, except also controlling where you go and how fast has a higher skill requirement.
In my experience the first thing they teach you is to just slide down the slope on your heel edge at 0.05mph.
Admittedly I've never snowboarded, but it was my understanding that steering was only a little bit harder, and even then failing to steer you'll probably just wipe out (because the added difficulty is how it impacts balance, along with the asymmetry) whereas failing to steer on skis might leave you accelerating forward.
doesn't seems that way all water sports are really bad cause drowning
I know one person who got a concussion and another who broke their arm while skiing
I know someone who died in a car accident. I know someone else who died from being too fat.
in non-mountainous areas, they turn landfills into these sii hills so i think its a good fun way to use landfill land
Skiing was more of cosmopolital sport decades ago. My boomer aunt loved it and my mom's side wasn't particularly rich growing up.
Not to mention in most cases the town or county or state for all intents and purposes sells the land of the mountain to a private corpo to sell ski passes to you as if a fucking mountain is not a public good.
And bonus info on Protect the Peaks as Klee Benally just died, sometimes white people steal mountains that are sacred to local tribes and destroy them with skiing, massive tree clearing, etc.
https://protectthepeaks.org/
Aw fuck F :’(
Kind of veering off topic but the whole way we view nature preservation is kind of fucked. Like why are we making a place like yellowstone accessible? There shouldn’t be any tourist infrastructure, people shouldn’t be going there, expect for the indigenous people who actually own the land, most wilderness should be closed off to the public.
As a white person who was never able to afford skiing, I approve this message.
