How to Afford Nature

Learning from the Pros

It’s Friday morning and there is a pile of gear strewn around the living room. Which honestly, is how most weekends start; gathering of all the required equipment from the garage and depositing it haphazardly into the apartment until it can be packed into bags and cars.

This afternoon we will load all of this gear into Starman’s comically small Mini Cooper and, with skis on the roof, drive north to Vancouver, BC, Canada where we’re taking our level one avalanche safety course from Avalanche Canada–the national non-profit dedicated to educating the public about avalanche safety. This weekend represents the start of a journey into ski touring. Something that I have been eager to dive into for a very long time. The ability to replace snowshoes with skis on winter backpacking, mountain climbing, and day trips will give us greater access to the astonishing number of natural spaces near Seattle. Plus, it’s more fun.

Of course, it is not necessary for us to drive to Canada to take this kind of class. America has avalanches too and the resultant courses for learning to navigating them safely. The American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) is the primary educational resource in the states and offers avalanche safety courses multiple times each winter in the mountains around Seattle.

Which begs the question: why are we driving four hours to Canada to take a nearly identical class to the one that is offered in our home city? It’s actually quite simple, really: because it’s substantially cheaper for the same education. Even after we throw in the cost of gas, and an AirBnB for the two of us, it’s cheaper. And sometimes the only way to afford your passions in the outdoors is to look for a bargain.

Accessing the Outdoors

There is a common refrain in the outdoors community that nature is for everyone. That trails, mountains, and rivers don’t care about your gender, sexuality, race, or religion. And while that sentiment may be objectively true, it ignores the very real barriers that keep many folks from accessing the wild places that belong to us all. A huge one  of these barriers is cost.

My parents taught me to ski around the time I was entering kindergarten. At that age I never wondered at the monumental effort and cost that is required to get a small child to the ski hill. Now that I have grown to the age of undeniable adulthood I am astonished that my parents ever took me and my sister skiing.

Of course, I learned to ski more than 25 years ago. Before skiing started to transform into something that only the wealthy can afford.

During the death of the Mom & Pop ski area as mega resorts grew to prominence I was sliding around on plastic skis in red nylon pants. This was before Vail Resort in Colorado began charging $200 for a single day lift ticket at the window. Before a lesson, rental, and day pass at Breckenridge Ski Area ( a Vail Resports property where I personally taught for five years) could run you $450 for a single child. To me, these are literally unconscionable amounts for a ski area to charge. And it is one of the primary reasons Starman and I have begun aggressively pursuing backcountry ski touring.

Yes, two white, middle class professionals have decided that we cannot afford to ski in-bounds anything but infrequently. By all rights we are a marketers wet dream, we should be the ideal people they are selling vacation packages to. And yet, we’re opting to leave the area behind in favor of affording things outside of skiing. As ski areas continue to increase prices they are dividing their consumer base into two groups while driving out anyone who might have a passing interest in the sport.

A Numbers Game

Visit any ski area this winter and you will notice two distinct groups. The first are the tourist–often called gapers for their tendency to stand in the middle of the sidewalk and gape open-mouthed at the mountains. Aside from the open mouths, the tourists are easy to spot because by and large they are the ones queued at the day pass window, eating in the fancy restaurants at the base area, and staying in the mega-rise condos that crowd the bottom of so many ski areas. They are the people that ski areas are looking to retain as customers.

It is not uncommon for families, who typically take one or two ski vacations annually, often drop $15,000 for a family of four to vacation for a week.This money generates thousands of jobs, and the management of every company knows it. When I worked as a snowboard instructor at Breck I was repeatedly told by managers that a ski vacation should be seen as akin to a trip to Disneyland, and bearing an equally high price tag. Ski areas understand that skiing and snowboarding are expensive sports and have decided to cater their offerings to clientele who can afford the high prices and demand a premium experience in return. And the marketing of ski area as premium vacation is working. Last year saw a 6% increase in skiers and snowboarders from households earning more than 100,000 annually.

If your local ski hill has a large luxury hotel, a spa, and has recently started offering kale salads in the lodge on addition to the standard burger. Well friend, your area is looking to attract the affluent.

However, it’s unlikely that locals are using these amenities. These are people who live within a two hour drive of the ski areas and have managed to afford their skiing through the economy of scale. You see, skiing only becomes affordable when done in bulk. Buying a $700 season pass is an absurd amount to spend unless you’re going to be skiing 20 or more days a year. Of course, the cost doesn’t stop there.

If you’re skiing 20 times a year you’ll have to mortgage your kidney in order to afford rental fees. So now instead of renting, you buy your gear. Programs like season rentals, end-of-season discount sales, and used stores have all risen to the needs of your weekend warrior. But it’s unlikely you’ll get a slope-worthy kit for less than $500. Still, people are willing to pay the cost for access to something they love and they’ll carpool and pack their lunch to be able to afford that annual pass.

How I Make it Work

In 2018 as I prepared to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail I applied and was accepted to be part of the PCTA’s P3 Hiker Program. A group of aspiring thru hikers who would serve as volunteer journalists and photographers documenting their time on the PCT through the lens of preservation, promotion, and protection of the trail. Through this program I was put in contact with the employees at Salomon who manage athlete and ambassador relations. After the trail I very nicely asked for a pro deal and they gave me one. These deals are often what you see when you look on someone’s Instagram account (like mine) and they say they are a brand ambassador. In exchange for rights to images, tags in social media posts, and a body bedecked in logos I am given a steep discount on Salomon gear.

To me, this is a totally fair exchange. I would be taking and posting these images anyway, so throwing on an @SalomonFreeski tag isn’t a huge ask, and I genuinely like their gear. And if I’m going to be truly candid, I would not be skiing this year were it not for this partnership. Why? Because ski gear is outrageously expensive. My current touring set up would run upwards of $4,000 retail. I don’t have that much money. Especially after my thru hike as I desperately attempt to rebuild my savings account.

The rest of the equation in affording my outdoor habit comes from a near disregard for everything else. Sexy, no? I drive a used car and do as much maintenance as I can myself, I take public transit, I don’t eat out much or go to happy hours, and I’m pretty sure Starman and I are still mooching off his parents Netflix account (hi, Carol!). In some ways it’s simple, I prioritize going outside over almost everything else. In other ways it’s a much more complicated daily calculation where I am constantly assessing what I value. It takes a lot of savings and effort to get outside as much as I want to.

While my financial priorities work for me, I think this points to a larger issue within the outdoors community as a consumerist society. Can we really say that the outdoors is for everyone where there is such a high price tag on getting in the front door.

Who is Welcome

I can hear the inner workings of an argument prone mind saying “But Kara, skiing and snowboarding are outliers, they don’t represent the cost of the outdoors at large!” And I hear your point irate reader, I do. Certainly skiing and snowboarding are substantially less expensive than motorized outdoor sports such riding snowmobiles or ATVs, paragliding, SCUBA diving, any sort of sailing, and trad climbing. And skiing is certainly far less expensive than day hiking—unless you don’t have access to a car in which case you can’t get to the trailhead, but that’s a post for another day.

However, unlike all of the activities listed above, skiing and snowboarding require the average user to pay for access to the means for skiing in the form of lift passes. This distinction is what ski areas are now exploiting with exorbitant lift ticket prices. And what I, and an increasingly large numbers of skiers and riders, are attempting to avoid by pushing into the backcountry.

Needed Change

So what? So ski areas want to charge $200 for a lift ticket. So some people won’t pay that and the ski areas are contented with the affluent few who will. This is how capitalism works, the suppliers can raise prices in response to demand and people will adapt. Is this really a problem?

Yes, yes it is; if you want there to be a future of skiing.

From a purely economic standpoint, ski areas literally cannot afford to follow their current business model. In the last decade the average age of people on the slopes has increased from 34 to 38. Meaning that the skiing population is aging and not being replaced by new, young people. Furthermore, as Baby Boomers reach geriatric age skiing may experience a massive drop in participation. The model of catering to the wealthy is certainly not new, but that doesn’t mean it’s a sound, or even moral, long term strategy. If ski areas want to survive they will need to adapt, embrace new people, and lower the bar for entry.