Snowboards put spin on skiing

Resorts invite clientel change

By Guy W. Chirico
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

The interviewer posed the question: ‘‘What change do you believe is most responsible for the rush of fresh faces to America’s ski resorts?’’

My father’s instant reply: ‘‘The advent of stretch pants for women.’’

The skiing industry seems to be constantly involved in self-analysis. Teaching techniques, resort ownership and marketing strategy are endlessly probed in the trade press for their impact on the industry as a whole and evaluated for their potential to catalyze the sport’s renewal. What’s hot? Who’s cold? What’s the next big thing? Where can you buy it?

Some contend that changes in equipment have cast the longest shadow. I started skiing in the mid-1960s in lace-up leather boots and cable bindings. Cubco plate bindings, screwless metal edges, buckle boots, step in bindings, long skis, short skis, curved backs, jet sticks, polymers, space-age metals and shaped skis followed in rapid succession. I’m sure one of these was the savior of the ski industry. I just can’t remember which one.

Those most knowledgeable about Eastern skiing cite snowmaking as the greatest influence.

‘‘There wouldn’t have been a single solid season of skiing in the last 30 years,’’ said Orville Slutzky, general manager of Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl, ‘‘if it were not for the advent of modern snowmaking equipment techniques, much of which was developed from the late 1950s on, right here in Hunter.’’

The sport morphed over time from one that was mostly about man-in-nature to one where technology played an increasing role. But with increased technology came vastly increased costs for the participant.

‘‘The biggest danger skiing faced was skyrocketing prices,’’ said Kerk Moore, director of the Greene County Promotion Department. ‘‘But we woke up just in time. Now price promotions for novice skiers, free lift tickets for children at many areas, and more modestly priced winter recreation options like snowboarding, snow blading (12- to 18-inch long mini-skis), and snow tubing bring the cost factor way down.’’

Our experience at Scribner Hollow Lodge certainly supports Moore’s conclusions. In the mid-and late 1980s, we rapidly lost family business at the lodge. Our clientele seemed to become predominantly singles and older married couples traveling without children. Cost was certainly a major factor in diminished family participation.

Our fear was that we were losing an entire generation of skiers. After all, many of our guests were returning as adults to the area where they had learned to ski as children in the 1960s and ’70s. Where would our guests come from if we raised an entire generation whose idea of winter sports simply never included on-mountain recreation, one which would rather watch the NBA than ski the K27, the most difficult double black diamond trail at Hunter Mountain and the most difficult in New York state?

What rough beast, slouching towards the mountains, would lead us to millennial deliverance? Pierced, hennaed, shorn and garbed in baggily multi-layered mufti, comes now the shredder! Snowboarding, with a high-energy transfusion from skateboarder culture, at first delivered more adolescents to ski resorts’ doors that they knew what to do with.

The kids moved to a soundtrack that made those of us who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s repeat parental imprecations about ‘‘damned kids’ music’’ that we swore would never come out of our mouths. They streamed from suburban malls and urban skate parks to clog lift lines, trails and cafeterias at every ski resort in the country, seemingly all at once, as if on cue.

Many ski areas reacted predictably, at first trying to bar snowboarders or segregate them to different sections of the mountain. But snowboarders would not be denied. And, for that matter, neither would those of us in the ski resort lodging business.

Ski resorts experience boom

Going away with your parents for a winter weekend suddenly was cool again. You didn’t even have to change out of your Saturday-at-the-mall outfit. (A fact which was not lost on parents checking out the prices on conventional ski attire). Hotels saw an instant upswing in family business. Ski resorts’ cash registers rung. Mountain management rapidly developed an open-arms, come-as-you-are policy toward this modern Gothic invasion.

The snowboard revolution was the harbinger of changes that bode well for the future of our ski resorts: The development of attractive, pedestrian-friendly mountain villages, with cultural, shopping, entertainment and fine dining amenities; the integration of more low-cost beginner-friendly on-mountain and near-mountain winter sports experiences like snow tubing, ice skating, snow shoeing, cross-country skiing and even old-fashioned tobogganing.

So now that we have a new generation involved in mountain winter sports, with their music, their clothes (and sometimes even their own credit cards), let’s look into our crystal ball. What changes will they bring, what choices will they make as they age, mature, choose careers, raise families? What will be the biggest change in skiing in the next 25 years?

Did anyone say stretch pants?

Guy W. Chirico, an attorney, is the second generation of his family to own and operate Scribner Hollow Lodge, a deluxe hotel in Hunter in the northern Catskills.