00:08:16.300It was so incredibly alienating and scary to me
00:08:20.080to even have like lunch options i was like what do you mean you have to spend like 15 for a burger
00:08:26.320why is everyone not like like i we only picnicked or like sometimes you'd buy a cup of noodle you
00:08:31.380know like it was just a very very different experience for me and i found myself as an adult
00:08:37.380when i graduated from college i no longer had you know the the ability to go back to my home
00:08:44.400mountain and my ski stuff got old and then i was a graduate student i was poor and i lived in texas
00:08:49.500like there were all these things that kept me from coming back. And it really wasn't until I
00:08:53.420moved back west that I revisited and regained that incredible love and freedom of it. And now my home
00:09:00.560mountain is a mountain that's a lot like the one where I grew up skiing. And that's very important
00:09:05.660to me. But that has also like, you know, going skiing all the time, like each time that I'm on
00:09:11.520the chairlift, it brings back all of these memories and gives me opportunity to process
00:09:16.280a lot of the like ways that mountains have changed the class connotations all of those things so
00:09:22.940that's my long spiel that gets us there's a lot there and like you have such an interesting story
00:09:28.400too and you really trace it eloquently in your book and so it like it's similar to what I just
00:09:34.520did can you set us up a little bit about your like vantage point towards scheme yeah yeah and
00:09:38.780one of the things I mean one of the things that you kind of just drilled into there to there is
00:09:42.360like one of the things that I'm most interested in that all this which is sort of this like
00:09:46.540idea of obsession yeah like what makes your parents drive their kids you know three hours
00:09:51.800every weekend to go do this thing that's like objectively like expensive and sort of stupid
00:09:56.780and potentially dangerous right and like what is that thing about skiing that like
00:10:00.760hooks people because it hooked me um and like I said earlier like I didn't I grew up in
00:10:06.000Boston area. Um, and I got really hooked into skiing in high school. My high school had a
00:10:12.260really good ski club where you could, I sold breakfast at the high school so I could ski for
00:10:17.760free. Yeah. Um, and it was like, I was kind of similar, you know, like I like always did sports
00:10:23.700as a kid, but there wasn't anything that was like my thing. And all of a sudden with ski club,
00:10:28.640it was like, I had this group of friends. There were cool older boys. I had a thing to do on the
00:10:33.780weekend it was just like this thing that like my I felt good in my body like it clicked in all these
00:10:37.900ways um and I from there I went to college in Maine skied a bunch and then I did this sort of
00:10:43.640like classic ski bum thing where right after college I moved to Colorado um and I got to do
00:10:48.940with three of my good for two of my good friends from college um I got a job scanning lift tickets
00:10:53.780for like six bucks an hour at Beaver Creek which is one of those like incredibly it's one of the
00:10:59.400probably like three fanciest ski areas in the country. There's heated sidewalks and free
00:11:04.640cookies and all this. So I was automatically kind of thrown into this very fancy, like in the,
00:11:12.340I became part of the service side of this very fancy elite institution. Yeah. I had grown up
00:11:17.240skiing sort of like scrubby mountains in New Hampshire and Massachusetts where you like
00:11:21.880leave your boot bag under the table and like peanut butter and jelly. And all of a sudden was
00:11:26.720like oh skiing is skiing is a lot of things yes yeah that's that's exactly how to say it skiing
00:11:33.840is so many things that I understood yeah and I think like to kind of circle back to that
00:11:37.800Kardashian thing like that is a piece of it but I don't think that's the whole picture and so I
00:11:42.980you know showed up in the mountains as a 21 year old fresh out of college on my own for the first
00:11:47.720time and I really sort of like fell in love with this lifestyle where I get to be outside every
00:11:54.420day, you know, my community, the, my sense of self, my, you know, activities, my hobbies all
00:12:01.320kind of got rolled into one thing. And I got really obsessed with this idea. Um, and I did
00:12:07.140that for a couple of years and then I ended up getting hurt and kind of couldn't work seasonally
00:12:11.420anymore and washed out of, you know, living in a ski town, working on the mountain. Um, and I
00:12:17.100became a, I went to journalism school and became a magazine editor, which is, you know, unstable
00:12:22.780and not lucrative in other ways but um I sort of watched as I was doing that I kind of watched my
00:12:30.400friends that I had been you know 21 and 22 with try to establish themselves in these towns and
00:12:36.600hold on to jobs and start families and I sort of had this really interesting sliding doors of my
00:12:43.420own life where I could kind of look at that life and this idea of like living the dream and living
00:12:47.780in the mountains and being outside all the time. And I could kind of see the good and the hard
00:12:53.700parts of that. And also, I kind of had this question of like, is that still the dream? Is
00:12:58.500that a good dream? You know, what's all wrapped up in that dream of skiing? Yeah. And that really
00:13:03.340kind of that question about my own life and how it spirals out into, you know, work and economies
00:13:10.300and climate and community kind of became the bones for this book that there's powder days.
00:13:15.240so one last thing that we should do some table setting because sometimes I think because of
00:13:22.200where I grew up and where I live now like even if people don't ski they're very familiar with like
00:13:27.680categories of skiing or you know what I mean like all that sort of thing yeah yeah um so just for
00:13:34.600listeners who aren't as familiar with ski culture do you can you like give me like a couple buckets
00:13:40.600of types of skiers oh that's interesting yeah um huh yeah what's the best way that you mean in
00:13:48.160terms of like okay let me let me let maybe I can start us out because I think it's actually changed
00:13:54.980a lot in the last 20 years so when I was growing up you had people who had been skiing for
00:14:02.860generations in their family and a lot of these people grew up in places like you know near or
00:14:09.660around ski places and might have really old cabins that were in their family for a long time
00:14:15.180not fancy but they were there and so like the thing I always think about in terms of like who
00:14:19.800had a season pass at our ski mountain like the people I saw all the time were my first grade
00:14:24.440teacher and my barber right and they were some of the best skiers that I knew and they had a little
00:14:29.180cabin that had been in like their family and they were like many generations old Idahoans and like
00:14:36.680the secretary of my high school also would go skiing all the time and like then there were
00:14:42.500also a lot of doctor's kids um so it's like this kind of mix of middle class and like upper working
00:14:49.000class who would all be at the mountain and because of the style of mountain that it was
00:14:55.300sometimes you would be like oh look at that person skiing in jeans but there would be a lot
00:15:00.040of people skiing in jeans at the mountain and just wearing like their starter jacket you know
00:15:04.640what I mean yeah and I think there's sort of like there's an interesting geographic stratification
00:15:10.180there and there's also there's been us and we can totally get into the weeds on this stuff but
00:15:15.820there's also been a split in the past five to seven years in terms of resort management and
00:15:24.420ski passes and how ski passes work and I think that's really changed how people access the
00:15:30.000mountains and how they go and whether they're sort of like what you're talking about, where
00:15:35.500you have a local mountain where you maybe go every weekend or a lot, or you're going on like a ski
00:15:40.980vacation. Yeah. You're going on a trip and you're going to, you know, an Aspen or a park city or
00:15:47.460something like that. So I think there is this really deep stratification of like what skiing
00:15:51.960can look like. And I think it can be like where I live in Durango, we have like a local resort
00:15:58.840mountain you know 25 minutes up the road but we also have an in-town ski hill yeah and that has
00:16:03.420two rope toes and it's like 10 bucks to go and so that skiing can be that you know skiing can be
00:16:09.320you go after school the lights are on you're like the base area is also the hockey rink for town
00:16:14.540yeah um and skiing can also be you're going to jackson hole for a week yeah and spending you
00:16:21.460know 50 000 on your vacation i mean skiing can also be you're going heli skiing and like going
00:16:27.460flying to alaska so there is this like very broad range of what skiing can look like i think and
00:16:33.940there's a lot of like middle ground there yeah i'm trying to think of another like sport that
00:16:39.320has that sort of range and one of the things that comes to mind is like cycling you can bike around
00:16:44.160town on like the old beater that you've had in your like that was your mom's that's in your
00:16:48.560garage and like if you pump it up and grease the wheel like the chain then it still works
00:16:52.820and it's fun right because you're moving and that to me is like little ski hills are still fun
00:16:58.900because you're like you're going fast you're going up a rope toe like it's super there's always like
00:17:04.260pleasure in that and then you can like have a $25,000 bike and like be taking cycling trips
00:17:12.820tracing the route of like the Tour de France you know there's all sorts of access points in that
00:17:18.480way yeah and skiing is like interesting in that part because and then maybe like golf is an
00:17:24.780analogy too even though i think that's kind of yeah yeah yeah like you have to do it in specific
00:17:29.640places you know like cycle you can go like i can go out my front door and go cycling and like with
00:17:33.420skiing you have to go somewhere where there's infrastructure so like that's another piece of
00:17:38.320it too that the hat there has to be a venue for it and you have to be plugged into that yeah and
00:17:43.600with golfing like there are like muni courses municipal courses and also like golf in the
00:17:49.660united states we've privatized it so thoroughly and like made it into such like a profit center
00:17:54.280that it's incredibly expensive whereas like there are avenues that make it more affordable
00:17:58.880in yeah in europe and there's also all these like cultural signifiers attached to it about
00:18:03.540like what it means to be a golf what what gear do you have where do you go yeah all that's okay
00:18:09.240let's get into our questions where we're going to touch on so much more of this. So this is about
00:18:14.040the cost of skiing and how it's changed. And I think it'll give us an opportunity to talk about
00:18:18.580the changes that have occurred, especially over, say, the last five years. This question comes
00:18:23.260from Laura, and Melody's going to read it. I was born and raised in Colorado and loved skiing.
00:18:28.620I'm constantly grateful that my parents, who rode that line between poverty and lower middle class,
00:18:34.080scrimped, saved, and hustled to get at least one ski day a year to teach my siblings in
00:18:39.080me to ski. I'm not sure that what they did would be possible today, and I'd love to see more
00:18:44.160families and lower socioeconomic situations access skiing. Besides cost, which is prohibitive,
00:18:50.080how can people in the industry reduce the barriers to entry, or is it just an exclusive activity?
00:18:56.200Okay, so before we answer Laura's actual question, I think this is the place where we can talk a
00:19:01.300little bit about how the conglomeration of ski resorts has changed the landscape in significant
00:19:07.940ways. So I know that's hard to talk about in like a paragraph, but maybe we can try.
00:19:11.660Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's sort of like two, two buckets in that question, I think. And I think
00:19:16.500the, how do people who aren't exorbitantly wealthy and have a ton of extra money access skiing.
00:19:24.460And I think part of why that's gotten hard lately is because, I mean, there's a couple of factors.
00:19:31.560One of them is that it's really hard to run. Skiing is not, if you're operating a ski hill,
00:19:37.580It's not a particularly lucrative business.
00:19:39.440And that's gotten even harder in climate change because seasons are more variable.
00:19:47.360There's all these other factors that just make it hard.
00:19:49.780And in the face of that, basically two big corporations, Vail Resorts and Altera, have bought up or managed most of the major ski resorts in the U.S.
00:20:03.620and that's like everything like your Vale, your Killington, your Snowbird, your Crystal in
00:20:10.340Washington, you know, like most of the sort of like brand name ski resorts are now under the
00:20:16.220umbrella of one of those two companies. And that sets up this like basic duopoly in skiing where
00:20:23.180those two companies can now set pricing for lift tickets, for food, for what they pay people at
00:20:30.640resorts. And so what they do is that they now offer these mega passes. So if you get a Vail
00:20:37.900Resorts pass, that means you have access to, I'm not going to get the numbers right, right off the
00:20:42.700top of my head, but you know, say 40 ski resorts that you can go to. Yeah. So if you're somebody
00:20:47.340and that pass is say a thousand bucks. Um, and if you're somebody who has the ability to travel to
00:20:54.840go to a bunch of ski areas who has the flexibility to go it's a pretty good deal yeah and it makes
00:21:01.100sense on some level from the resort management side because they're consolidated they can kind
00:21:06.540of ride those climate waves if say it's snowing in california but not in new hampshire they're a
00:21:12.260little bit more diversified but if you're somebody who is maybe wants to get into skiing maybe has
00:21:20.640one weekend a year that you can go on a trip those passes are probably cost prohibitive and
00:21:26.880the way that those guys structure their businesses now is that they keep the
00:21:30.500single day ticket prices pretty high yeah and make the passes comparatively affordable so if
00:21:36.320you want to go ski a veil over christmas week it's like almost 300 for a day ticket right and
00:21:41.520they also do variable pricing um not just like not just like christmas day or christmas week or
00:21:47.320whatever. But like if the snow is good and there's lots of people who want to go, then it's more
00:21:51.000expensive. Yeah. They now have the data to be able to kind of like make those prices go up and down
00:21:55.980when they know it's going to be busy. Yeah. So that makes the barrier for entry of somebody who's
00:22:00.000a beginner or somebody who doesn't have that economic or social structure already in place
00:22:05.680that they know they want to go. They know it's worth it really hard. I can see in a lot of ways
00:22:10.380why those organizations would do that from a business standpoint. But from a pathway into the
00:22:14.800sport perspective from you know like broadening the audience who's gonna like be a part of this
00:22:22.180forever or for the future it makes it makes it really narrow eventually well and skiing's one
00:22:28.200of those things that i think a lot of sports are like this to some capacity but if your parents
00:22:32.940don't do it if a parent doesn't do it or another adult in your life like it's sometimes difficult
00:22:38.640to get into it yourself unless there is an infrastructure so i've lived in places where
00:22:43.480there are really robust like PE programs for skiing. Yeah. Where they go to the mountain
00:22:49.780once a week. And a lot of times they put kids in just rental skis for that week. And like the
00:22:56.160mountain understands we're essentially rearing new skiers. Yeah. We're building that kind of like
00:23:01.820future customer. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of those small ski hills have a, you know, like
00:23:06.200avenue into that. Yeah. And, you know, to part of that part of that question, like how do we reduce
00:23:12.760barriers to entry and how do we get people into the sport I think there's sort of two pieces of
00:23:19.040that and one of the one of them is that like pathway in like how do you get people hooked
00:23:23.400in the first place and they're so skiing is really high barrier to entry sport you know you need it's
00:23:28.520hard weird gear it's often in places that are like are hard to access yeah and a lot of times if you
00:23:34.740don't have somebody actively bringing you in that's a it's a big hurdle to get going and I
00:23:40.760think a lot of those like yeah like my husband grew up in portland oregon and he got into skiing
00:23:46.020because they had a ski bus so they would go after school a couple days a week and that was like the
00:23:49.600thing that became the pathway and i think in a lot of places like if you're not in a family or
00:23:56.340in a community that's like actively part of it i think there are pathways there's affinity groups
00:24:01.920but it takes a little bit more work to to get there totally totally you have to have someone
00:24:07.860who's like very very into it whether that's like the person who runs the ski bus or a parent or
00:24:15.580something like that um and it's not like running where you're like okay now move your legs fast
00:24:20.000yeah right like this is the thing that i think people who don't ski or who have skied a couple
00:24:25.000times and are like this is really hard that they if you're an adult you have a long way to fall
00:24:30.540my partner I'm like so impressed he he learned to ski four years ago and like he was describing
00:24:39.480himself skiing the other day he was like big tree fall hard um like just how much harder it is to
00:24:45.920learn to ski when you're an adult and how much like more treacherous and painful I think of some
00:24:51.120of the falls that he's taken over the last four years and I can't think of any like I did yard
00:24:55.620sails all the time when I was learning to ski but I never a yard sale sorry I'm using ski lingo a
00:25:01.440yard sale is when you like lose every like you fall and you like lose your mitten and you lose
00:25:06.020your your hat and your goggles and it's just like horrible he's right under the chairlift
00:25:11.700but like I never experienced pain the way that he has experienced pain from falling
00:25:20.900so i think that there's just a lot of barriers to entry and if you haven't like and that's not
00:25:27.540even talking about the money component i do think that they're like skiing often gets this like oh
00:25:33.640my god it's so expensive only rich people can ski that discounts not only like so at my local mountain
00:25:40.540mount baker all fifth graders have free passes and kids passes are very steeply discounted yes you
00:25:48.220would have to pay for a parent's pass but like that makes it a little bit easier for people who
00:25:51.860are families to have a trip there and then the other thing too is like the the existence there's
00:25:58.680a robust secondhand ski equipment market that sometimes if you look at the the sticker price
00:26:06.400of ski equipment it looks incredibly prohibitive but if you just like especially for kids skis
00:26:12.420if you just like people are growing out of them so fast and they still have so much life on them
00:26:17.080that like you can get really great stuff on that secondhand market yeah you were asking about early
00:26:22.480ski memories earlier and like one of mine is going to I think it was called ski barn and it was like
00:26:28.220in a basement of the you know like upstairs was like the nice ski shop and then you would go down
00:26:32.940in the basement and they had last year's rentals and all the kind of exchange gear and we would get
00:26:37.060season rentals of like used kids gear so you'd have like your skis for that year and you'd send
00:26:41.820them back at the end of the season and then next year when you were bigger you would get like the
00:26:45.540next size up yeah my friend's kids do that and it's like incredible for them and then even just
00:26:50.820like ski swaps like I a ski swap is when lots of people bring in all of their old ski stuff that
00:26:58.100they want to get new ski stuff or like you know refresh in some way and then like it's just like
00:27:03.260a giant yard sale but you're not personally manning the booth it's like it's it's in a
00:27:08.600like incredible abundance and everyone there is just like there's so much great energy yeah and
00:27:13.340for us here that's sort of like one of those markers for like okay this is the beginning of
00:27:18.480winter yeah I think that's part of like one of the there's like you know obviously many things
00:27:22.860I like love about skiing but like one of them is just like okay this is like the time of the year
00:27:27.140when we're doing this thing and there's the build-up there's the ski movies there's the like
00:27:30.420you get your gear sorted and I think that's like that ski scop kind of community aspect is a piece
00:27:35.080of that yeah yeah you take out your bag where all of your ski stuff has lived for the last year and
00:27:40.500like you're like oh that neck warmer is like kind of cheese in the pocket 100 okay so we've talked
00:27:48.540a lot about our own experiences but for this next question from Elle she's gonna um put us on blast
00:27:54.160a little bit and let us talk about the outside perception of skiing why do skiers suck so much
00:28:00.880as in why did they make me feel so awful for not skiing and why did they always sound absolutely
00:28:07.340baffled at the prospect of someone they know not owning skis. Don't they know it's a ludicrously
00:28:12.820expensive hobby? It's made me never want to learn to ski, even if it sounds like a fun luxury.
00:28:18.620Okay, so I want to get to the heart of this, which is I think that like,
00:28:22.620sort of like running or lots of other hobbies, there is something that is difficult to describe
00:28:29.560when you love it. Yeah, I think that and I've struggled with this in trying to write about
00:28:34.160skiing and like what it actually feels like because everything sounds so sort of like
00:28:39.860foofy and dumb when you try to explain it like there's no good adjectives really for like what
00:28:45.420happens in your body yeah I I think that for me part of it and this might also be rooted in the
00:28:51.680fact that I took you know 20 years away and then came back for to it um like I love going really
00:28:58.300fast and and i do not like on a bike i do like i'm the person breaking down the hills right um
00:29:05.400but on skis like i have the confidence to go really fast so that is incredibly like makes me
00:29:11.280feel very alive in my body and then it makes me feel like a kid like i go and like hang out in
00:29:16.680little jumps in the hills and i'm like like not doing anything cool like i'm doing things that
00:29:22.180are very not cool but i'm like i'm 11 like that's what it feels like i mean i've thought about like
00:29:27.320this is you know I wrote a whole book about skiing and like in a lot of thinking about that I was
00:29:31.840like is this stupid is this elitist is this even worth digging into and like one of the things
00:29:38.700that I like came to and thinking about that is like okay why yeah why do I keep coming back to
00:29:44.780this and I think it is kind of what you're saying and that like skiing for me is one of the only
00:29:50.120things I can think of that I do that's like just for joy yep and like you know if I go for a bike
00:29:57.160ride there's like probably an exercise component baked into that but like of the things that I do
00:30:03.180that are just like purely fun skiing is like one of the things that I can one of the only things
00:30:09.420I can think of is like I'm complicated in that aspect and I think there's like I know you think
00:30:14.940a lot about hobbies and like how we kind of spend our time and like I think there is a huge amount
00:30:20.020of value in that like here's the thing that's like exists outside of like my sense of productivity
00:30:27.840or like how I show up in the world that's like just for like how it feels in my body yeah yeah
00:30:34.960I think it's hard to untangle that from all that other stuff about money about how other people
00:30:39.420perceive it about what you're wearing and about all those things but I think like at its like
00:30:43.780very core that's what it feels like to me it's useful to me that I don't go to a fancy place
00:30:49.700where it makes me think about oh my god I'm spending so much money here that's useful and
00:30:55.080then also that like the people that are at this mountain and the mountain itself is not pretentious
00:30:59.960in any way and part of it is also it's drawing from like the Bellingham area which is not a
00:31:05.060like ostensibly pretentious area so I'm never like there's no one in skims I'll tell you that
00:31:10.320not one single person who shows up at paper in skims I will be so curious yeah it would get so
00:31:15.820wet yesterday they would have been dripping they would have melted your butt would be so soggy on
00:31:20.000the left there's not like we don't yeah anyway um and then I also think like ritual is part of why
00:31:28.060people love it too have you thought about that yeah yeah in terms of like the seasonal aspect
00:31:34.700in terms of like the ritual of the day I think about that like even in terms of like the people
00:31:39.860that I see like there like there's a point in the year in a lot of places that I live where like
00:31:45.100that kind of early season like oh we go see the ski movies all of a sudden you're like oh yeah
00:31:49.400Jimmy like I haven't seen you since March and so I think that that whole sort of like yeah the
00:31:54.720community aspect the sort of like even the ritual of getting your gear getting dressed getting like
00:32:01.080getting in the car and listening to music going back to the parking lot and like having a beer in
00:32:05.220the parking lot all those pieces can be part of this sort of like yeah I think ritual is a really
00:32:10.700good way of putting it i love like the sound of people clomping downstairs in ski boots
00:32:15.680it's such a particular sound and everyone has to do it if you're wearing ski boots like you have to
00:32:21.620like use the railing and like be awkward and yesterday there was this this incredible couple
00:32:28.640in their like late 70s who was up at the mountain and they were just taking like a midday break to
00:32:33.640have a coffee and a cookie and uh the woman wasn't like going down the stairs in front of me and i
00:32:38.840like even when I'm that old I'm gonna have like especially when I'm that old I'm gonna make the
00:32:44.080same sound in my boots and that like a five-year-old makes when they're clomping down the
00:32:48.680stairs and I think that's like I don't know even just like the image of those people like that's
00:32:52.320the dream oh my god yeah my parents now live my mom's retired my parents live 10 minutes from a
00:32:58.100ski hill in New Hampshire and like the other day they're like yeah we just like went up for an hour
00:33:01.880at nine in the morning and I was like yep that's the thing you know and I love that we're answering
00:33:08.240this question about why ski people are so annoying with like us just talking about why we love skiing
00:33:13.540and I think that like yeah this is why it's sort of hard to like wrap your arms around because I
00:33:18.140think skiing is all of that and there definitely is a sector that is I mean these people that you
00:33:28.100talk about some particularly annoying but there is a sector that's like I go on a ski trip because
00:33:33.300that's like yeah a cool thing to do I get the whole outfit I'm going to like the restaurants
00:33:39.660in Aspen that are fancy like I think there is there is a clump of people who do that but I
00:33:44.980think that that's not and I think that kind of gets a lot of light and attention but I don't
00:33:50.240think that's like the breadth of skiing so I'm gonna I hope you're familiar with both of these
00:33:54.780movies I feel like you have to be because of you were similar age there are two movies that I think
00:34:00.360get at the heart of annoying ski culture but one is incredibly endearing to me and one whatever um
00:34:06.860so the first one that I think of when I think of ski culture is Aspen Extreme which is like
00:34:12.080super fancy people skiing right and like like lots of like bad behavior and then the other one
00:34:19.420is Ski Patrol which my brother and I wore out on VHS do you know this movie I've only seen
00:34:25.880ski patrol at once i think but aspen extreme is something i think about so ski patrol is an
00:34:31.680incredibly goofy movie um but it's about a bunch of like weirdos many of whom work for the mountain
00:34:38.020and some don't but like about skiing as goofing off and about it as in group in terms of like in
00:34:47.860jokes and like rejecting a particular posture towards making money and being cool and fancy
00:34:56.060even though there's like a cool hierarchy within their like group of people in terms of like who's
00:35:00.980joking and that sort of thing but yeah yeah the one that hits that point for me is out cold oh
00:35:06.720yeah yeah yeah which is like about which is like a little bit more modern and it's you know like
00:35:10.560there's like the like dirtbag ski bums who are like up against like the rich guy who's gonna
00:35:16.120to come own the mountain yeah and like yeah it's like totally sets up that sort of like
00:35:19.980I think there is sort of and Aspen Extreme actually gets into this a lot too there sort
00:35:24.640of is this like cultural idea of like okay we're the like hardcore real skiers yeah and there's
00:35:30.100like the Bryce Kellogg fancy people who are on vacation and there's this sort of like battle
00:35:35.240between the like people who are doing it for the love of the sport and then the people who are
00:35:39.320doing it to like be on vacation and make or make money or like be elite yeah yeah I think Aspen
00:35:45.180extreme in a lot of ways is sort of a movie about class issues yes and about like who can afford
00:35:51.440to exist in a ski town yeah absolutely and i think that the reason why skiers are annoying
00:35:59.920is in many ways the reason why people who are super into any hobby and are trying to evangelize
00:36:05.960for it can be annoying right no totally runners are super annoying golfers are like we're like
00:36:12.540But hearing people talk about their vacation is annoying.
00:36:15.600So there are so many reasons why skiing could be annoying.
00:36:19.520But I praise this person for holding strong against not wanting to ski.
00:36:23.360Yeah, and I think there are like, yeah, I think there are ways you can find your way
00:36:27.260and they don't have to feel like that.
00:46:03.240But, like, is that, what are you missing out on if you set it up like that?
00:46:07.160And, you know, I think that the rise of, like, mountain camping, so what I mean by that is, like, people who stay at the mountain in, like, vans or trucks that are oftentimes, like, some are totally kitted out and some are, like, I have a crappy generator so that I can, like, not freeze in my car overnight.
00:46:25.820but there's like a real community feel amongst the people that like people sit around and like
00:46:30.680hang out with one another barbecue whatever like that's almost like this overflow from people who
00:46:36.800have been shut out of like the experience of the town you're like oh here's a way as a family that
00:46:42.320we can all go skiing together yeah it's interesting we actually i have i'm like guilty it was like one
00:46:47.440of those people like the van life people yeah and yeah i don't think it's guilt like i don't think
00:46:52.160it's a bad thing do you know but i think there's like sort of an evolution of that too we're like
00:46:56.060yeah yeah we had a van that my husband had for years and it was like you know had a bed had a
00:47:00.400heater and it was like pretty he had built it out it was pretty bare bones um and i think that we
00:47:05.820used it a lot during covid and i think this is also like a northwest thing where yeah you can
00:47:11.560camp in the parking lots in a lot of places um and there was this rise i think driven by covid
00:47:16.980of like the van bros yeah where all of a sudden like there was this huge market for like your
00:47:21.740a hundred thousand dollars printer van that you had built out and we were in um the parking lot
00:47:26.300at mount bachelor in bend and one of his friends who lives there was like we didn't have a pandemic
00:47:31.220in bend we had a vandemic like all of a sudden all these people who could like work remotely
00:47:36.880and had flexibility bought these fancy vans and like showed up in the ski areas so i think there
00:47:43.420is this sort of like that gets stratified too totally no it's totally right and then i think
00:47:48.180about the woman i took a chair with the other day who like slept in the back of her car she
00:47:53.980specified she said my car um and she was like it was only 33 it was okay i met some fun people
00:48:00.160yeah i have a good sleeping bag who like just drove up from bellingham and wanted to like get
00:48:06.000first tracks and she did it by herself that's a different i think uh sort of attitude than like
00:48:13.100They're like, I will only go and camp in my van if my van costs $100,000.
00:48:36.480Should I give up on my dream of skiing with my kids?
00:48:39.120I grew up skiing in the Catskills with my entire extended family every weekend, grandparents and
00:48:44.460cousins and everybody. Now that I have my own kids, I have no idea how they did it. It seems
00:48:49.720impossible. Tickets and lessons are just entirely out of reach financially. How did my parents'
00:48:55.380generation do this for all of us? Was it just much cheaper 30 years ago? When did it get so,
00:49:00.520so, so, so expensive? And more painfully, there's just not enough snow. My grandmother skied 70
00:49:07.640days in a row the year that she turned 70. I don't know if there were 70 days in a row where you even
00:49:13.220could ski near where I lived last year. I always wanted to raise my own ski buddies, but is it cruel
00:49:18.820to encourage my kids to love a sport that might not last until they're adults? Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
00:49:28.380So we've talked about the financial piece of this a bit, but I wonder how much do you think
00:49:34.420that the rising cost can be connected in some ways to climate change? I think they are related.
00:49:39.700I think just because on some level, it is the cost of operating a ski area and the sort of like
00:49:49.800risk that the business of skiing has to take in the face of less stable winters is really real.
00:49:58.320yeah um and a lot of you know smaller local ski areas like a lot of ones that i know have closed
00:50:04.740because they can't ride that kind of like wave of you have you have a bad winter and then you have
00:50:10.800like another bad winter in a row and you just don't have the financial insulation for that and
00:50:15.340even like you know it's end of december here it hasn't snowed in weeks where i live in southern
00:50:20.080colorado and i was on a run this morning with a friend who's talking about another friend who
00:50:24.820owns a snowmobiling company like they kind of do tours and they're he's out there he has to make
00:50:30.000snow this year to kind of like keep his business going so like the end you know the investment
00:50:34.300becomes way higher but I think more on a I mean this is the way I think about it for myself because
00:50:41.340I think about this all the time like is it stupid to be doing this thing and thinking about this
00:50:47.060thing and like obsessed with this thing that is could go away soon or like even in a in a year
00:50:54.080like this where it's december and it hasn't been that good it's like you're you get your hopes up
00:50:58.300and you get sort of like a little heartbroken let down and and crabby and cranky that was me
00:51:04.120last year i was so freaking cranky and like yeah i mean the last year we had like an incredibly
00:51:11.260crappy year and the way that i thought about my pass was that like obviously like i lost money
00:51:19.000on it but like you can't sometimes especially if you're with a smaller ski mountain like i didn't
00:51:22.900think of it as losing money I thought of it as a way that I was sustaining this mountain
00:51:28.420for future years because it is a local family-owned mountain your CSA and I think it is like in terms
00:51:34.580of like should you not get your kids hooked on this like unreliable drug I think it's sort of
00:51:43.940like I guess the way I think about it is like I don't wanna yes the future looks scary and sketchy
00:51:50.560but I don't want to like give up on the thing before I have to give up on the thing. And I
00:51:55.580don't want to like live in fear of it not existing. And I also think that there's a level that,
00:52:03.360and I think this is true in terms of like a lot of different kinds of recreation and how we're
00:52:07.180thinking about sort of like, where can we be? What is the future of climate and the outdoors
00:52:13.340look like that you, that kind of obsession and love also leads to a kind of care. And like,
00:52:19.200it's really hard to care about things that you don't care about yeah yeah yeah and having that
00:52:23.300sort of like hook in I think gives people an emotional sense of emotional resonance and a
00:52:28.840way to sort of like personally connect themselves to place but I think I have that like you probably
00:52:34.220have this too I have this like personal barometer of like like my birthday's in January it's supposed
00:52:38.760to be snowy on my birthday it's not okay what does that mean what am I seeing here yeah I think it's
00:52:43.820also like I don't know to go back to that idea of hobbies and joy that's why we're doing it and
00:52:49.800like to have to like give up on that sense of joy out of fear seems really sad to me yeah I do think
00:52:56.760that like sometimes you know especially if you want to do something like this as a family and
00:53:02.420want it to be financially sustainable that if it's not local it might not be possible yeah and
00:53:11.260that's hard yeah I think that's the same like maybe this is like getting a little loose but
00:53:15.820I think it's the same with like food systems or that kind of thing yeah you support can you
00:53:19.460support the thing that like actually supports your community and like maybe brings you and like
00:53:24.460that's obviously not it sounds like you and I both live in places where we have that we do have that
00:53:29.260like local ski mountain and that's obviously not true for a lot of people but like yeah can you
00:53:34.220sort of engage with like the smaller scale local the piece of it that actually is sustainable on
00:53:40.600some level yeah and that's hard because like a lot of times those places are also the ones that
00:53:44.820don't have the infrastructure to make them as resilient to climate and don't have they can't
00:53:49.400ride those waves as much but yeah and also like the places that maybe we remember skiing are not
00:53:55.960necessarily the places that you can ski sustainably anymore and whether that's because the character
00:54:01.560of that place has changed so I grew up skiing it was Brundage Mountain in McCall Idaho and McCall
00:54:05.600has changed significantly since then um or like in skiing in the Catskills like or skiing in
00:54:12.040Vermont like the predictability the reliability of weather in those places and all places but
00:54:17.220especially I think in the east yeah so I think it is like there is some level of like you have to
00:54:23.540live in the like I thought a lot about nostalgia in this too because I think so much of like ski
00:54:29.340culture is about this sort of like oh my god old school nostalgia this is what we wear this is what
00:54:34.700the seasons are like and I think there's like something that really like hits me in the chest
00:54:39.320about that but you also can't live you have to like also live where we are right now yeah no it's
00:54:44.900climate great for sure maybe this is me getting like Pollyanna about it but like is that your
00:54:48.460sort of like wedge into like feeling something about it yeah like having context on your own
00:54:52.720life yeah like how it impacts you yeah I feel like I'm so much more in touch with the way that
00:54:58.440like winter works and the rhythms of winter and like how el nino and la nina work because of
00:55:06.280becoming a skier again yeah being outside and especially in the winter when it's so easy to
00:55:11.820like be inside and be insulated and be in front of screens it's like that's that's the being out
00:55:17.200in and it's like the cure for it in a lot of ways i think yeah yeah absolutely i mean yesterday so
00:55:21.440it snowed all day on the mountain turning into rain at the end of the day and classic northwest
00:55:28.280I know going is a atmospheric river that then like it rained so hard on the way home. And like so intensely that it at 4pm, it was so dark. And like in another scenario, it would be so bleak, just like looking outside and it's dark at 4pm. But I was like, I spent all day outside being ridiculous, like wringing out my mittens because the snow was so wet.
00:55:53.440I feel great in a very different way than I would if I had stared at a computer screen all day and then looked up to that.
00:56:03.640Heather's going to stick around for the subscriber only ask an anything segment today.
00:56:07.420So this question, it's not about skiing, but it is about another area of her expertise, which is deciding where to live when you can technically live anywhere.
00:56:16.440If you want that part of the conversation, head to culturestudypod.substack.com and become a paid subscriber.
00:56:23.440Well, this has been fantastic and lived up to all of my expectations.