Skiing's Gender Gap Widens with Age

[marzNC]

It's interesting that the weekend program at Liberty in central PA (close to DC/NoVA) isn't done elsewhere. The lessons are in the mornings over two consecutive weekends. Students can either do two consecutive day trips or stay overnight on Sat. Can add in 4 lift tickets if needed (Liberty is on Epic).

 

[skinnyfootskis]

This is why I always encourage people to go out in every condition, and do so myself. I have felt as time goes by that I am more able to deal with bad snow, and that makes things that weren’t fun before more fun now. Still plenty of bad snow to work through though, and if it’s awful well it might be a shorter day! I figure if I keep skiing the “good for me” snow now, I hope for all of the more challenging conditions to be easier and more enjoyable down the road.

I’m 40.. but most of the fabulous instructors in my seasonal program are PSIA level 3 and in their 60s-70s. I am so inspired by their ease, efficiency, and all around badass skiing all over the mountain in any condition we see. Men and women. I want to be them someday. Well, I don’t aspire to the teaching piece, but I would love to be able to ski like them eventually.

Thank you!

 

[horsepowered]

It's interesting that the weekend program at Liberty in central PA (close to DC/NoVA) isn't done elsewhere. The lessons are in the mornings over two consecutive weekends. Students can either do two consecutive day trips or stay overnight on Sat. Can add in 4 lift tickets if needed (Liberty is on Epic).

View attachment 22343

Seven Springs in Champion, PA has a nearly identical program (a little more expensive than Liberty, though). I haven't participated before, though, so I have no idea how good the instruction may be.

 

[SnowMom]

Park City has a Sunday Women's program but they have early registration for certain groups and it sells out weeks before regular registration.

 

[snoWYmonkey]

For the moms with kids in programs it is crucial that start and end times provide enough time to drop off and pick up the kids.

 

[SnowMom]

For the moms with kids in programs it is crucial that start and end times provide enough time to drop off and pick up the kids.

2nd this one. There were so many times when a child was in lessons but the adult program started and ended at the exact same time but in a different place on the mountain. In those years, I would have loved an adult program that started 10-15 minutes later and ended 10-15 minutes earlier & I would happily have paid a premium for it.

 

[KathrynC]

Park City has a Sunday Women's program but they have early registration for certain groups and it sells out weeks before regular registration.

I do find some this with some women's programmes.

There is a mountaineering school in Scotland that provides courses and tuition in all aspects of mountaineering, including ski mountaineering. Each year, they hold a two-day "Wild Ski" festival during a March weekend, where they have workshops and guided/instructed groups you can join during the day, and then lectures, socials, films and so on during the evenings.

For the day time activites, they have three self-selecting groups, "Discover" for people new to ski touring, "Adventure" for people who are somewhat comfortable with ski touring and primarily want to go exploring, but are not averse to some guidance along the way, and another one that I forget the name of for people who want to go and ski big couloirs. There are options for womens' groups and for mixed groups. All evening activities are fully integrated.

The problems I have with the way it's set up are:
- The women's groups are early sign-up. Blink and you miss it. The mixed groups are open for registration much longer
- There is a women's Discover group and a women's Adventure group, but no women's advanced group
- The official photographer tends to follow the advanced group and the mixed Adventure group around, and therefore tends to capture proportionally fewer women. The only woman routinely photographed is one of the guides, who happens to be a well-known freeride athlete
- Women joining the mixed groups are sometimes made to feel like they are letting the side down because they didn't join the women's groups

I've joined the women's groups for a couple of years. It's great to meet a like-minded bunch of women, and ski with some extremely inspirational female instructors and guides (and other attendees). However, I'm increasingly feeling like this set-up is not promoting equality in the sport the way it should be because of the problems highlighted above.

This year, I missed the early registration for the women's groups (because I was skiing in Chamonix!), so I'm joining a mixed group instead. I'll be interested to see how it compares.

While I'm not averse to women's events - in fact I regularly attend women's rock climbing events - I feel like in this specific case, it would work better to have a completely separate women's event, rather than trying to combine it with the mixed event. However, on the other hand, I can't deny that they probably get more women signing up than they would if they didn't have women's groups.

Anyway, sorry, that was a bit off-topic, but I do wonder if these sorts of issues play into this discussion, in addition to the more obvious inequalities highlighted by others like not having adult classes that fit around children's classes.

 

[IceHeeler]

So as I sit here drinking my morning coffee I think I might have a confession to make
I'm not sure I would still be skiing if I didnt live where I live. I'm super lucky to live within a 1/2hr to 40 minute drive to a number of ski areas ie I am a local.
If I didnt live in such close proximity I dont think I'd still be skiing anywhere near as much or be as passionate as I am about it, in fact I dont think I'd be skiing at all !!
It just seems so much hassle to have to travel and the costs involved seem to be exhorbitant for those that do travel to ski and I salute those that commit to the cause but I dont think I would be one of them .... there I've said it !!

I'll admit if I had to drive hours to ski, I wouldn't do it anywhere near as often. Being local, I see a lot more women my age (49) and older on weekdays. I've been doing much more uphill as part of my rehab from last year's TPF. It's interesting to me that my male friends are more into the "earn your turns" aspect vs. myself and my female friends "let's do the hardest thing we can until we drop."

 

[Amplify]

Joined up just to contribute to this discussion! Hi, I’m in my early 40s and ski almost exclusively in the Northeast at this point in my life.

I grew up skiing recreationally with my family, and then like many women fell out of it during the pregnancy/young-children years. I am now skiing more than I have probably ever in my life. It’s tempting to pat myself on the back for not letting my hobbies fall away due to having kids, but when I look at what brought me back to skiing? It was my kids. Their school does a ski program and needed parent chaperones to ski with groups in the afternoons. So I signed up and fortunately they loved it just as much as I do, and now we ski quite a bit - mostly weekend/local stuff but always a big trip to Vermont every February on top of that. It chagrins me to realize that I probably would not have ever worked up the effort to take my kids skiing that first time, without the school prompting me to.

My kids are 6 and 9, and even though I have worked hard to try not to overschedule my kids, there are somehow still so many things for them to be taken to. And that means that a lot of hobbies that I love but they either don’t like or it’s hard to bring kids along to – those have fallen by the wayside. Like, I tried hard to get them to love rock climbing, or even just gym climbing, but no dice so far. So, absent a few weekends a year, I don’t really climb a lot right now. I’m just so busy, between work and handling everything in my kids’ lives, feeding all of us, etc. Trying to fit in regular time and money for hobbies that are ONLY for me is just way too hard at this stage. It has been an incredible gift that they love skiing and that I can make it “our time.” It makes it somehow worth all the work and effort and expense and time, much more than if it were just for me. And it has been more amazing as they have gotten onto the kind of terrain I like skiing.

I tried to find, like, adult multi-week ski courses near me – ideally just for women – but they are almost all during the day on weekdays. I could do a single-day clinic on a weekday as a one-off, but I work full-time and can’t just take off half a day every week.

I do have a lot of thoughts about how I ski way more days per year than my husband does, since I am almost always the one going with the kids and he only sometimes is able to join – and yet he has far fewer qualms about spending money on gear for himself than I do. I have hated my ski jacket setup for as long as we’ve been skiing in this stage of life, but technically it works – just looks bad, makes me feel bad about myself when people take photos/videos, etc – so I just never get around to buying myself a jacket. Whereas he’s very much, like, he wants a better jacket? He’s buying a better jacket. He doesn’t tell me I can’t buy myself a jacket – it’s ME telling myself that. It’s me looking at the budget and looking at my ugly, bulky belay parka layered over top of puffer, and saying, “this is okay.” Whereas for less than 10 ski days per year he would be like, “this is not okay” at that same level of compromise. It is so hard to prioritize my wants when the resources – financial, time, logistics, etc – are finite and so my wants often seem to come at the expense of someone else’s.

 

[MaineSkiLady]

And now — the truth:

Blink once - and they will be driving themselves to their ski competitions, or similar.

Blink twice: they will be gone, on their own.

Spoken by one who has “been there/done that” - and would like to have just one day of it back.

Tempis fugit.

 

[floatingyardsale]

OMG, the husbands and the gear. DH is learning to snowboard. He gets the learn and earn, he gets the rental board, he is BAD,* he doesn't schedule his third lesson and wants upgrades to the bindings.

I spend three years trailing the kids on secondhand gear and then blow up my knee just as they're getting good. If I'd spent $1500 on lessons I probably could have avoided the fall. Maybe.

*Don't learn to snowboard at 45.