Featured Image: Tommy Joyce
It’s an argument for the times. One you’ve likely heard from one side of the fence or the other, and no, I’m not talking about pow surfing. Sentiments like ‘wealth is ruining our ski towns’ and ‘if you can’t afford it, leave’ have seemingly divided the ski industry in two.
There are those who work to live—and by live, I mean ski—and those who live to work but also enjoy the occasional winter schuss. You would think skiing as the shared interest could unite the industry, but I would argue that we have never been at a more economic stand-off.
While fine dining and second vacation homes at first legitimized a ski town’s success of establishment, it’s clear we’ve reached a tipping point. Affordable and even employee-specific housing options are becoming few and far between. Friends are squeezing eight in a four-bedroom house, renting out their closets, living out of their cars or commuting over a mountain pass every day. I’m not here to say f**k the rich, but I am here to say there is a middle ground we could all agree to settle on.
I will be the first to admit that fat wallets feed all of our pow-hungry souls. Who else would be able to afford a $200 day ticket? And those parking fees, rental skis and $30 cheeseburgers? That goes back into the resorts we love to rip, keeping the lifts spinning and cats grooming. Beyond ski areas, think about your favorite outerwear or ski brand. How could any business in this industry possibly keep its doors open without a robust customer base? But let’s also not forget about our resort employees, shop owners and restaurant servers—they need a comfortable and affordable place to lay their heads every night, too. Otherwise, who will be there to stop the lift when you accidentally kick a shoe, groom your favorite blue square or pour you an overpriced stout?
As much as we don’t want to admit it, we are all better off together, and efforts to further separate ski bums and the financially elite—literally and figuratively—will only hurt the industry. So, here’s what I’m thinking and hear me out. It’s a novel idea. What if we just…coexisted? The wealthy can enjoy their pricey accommodations and fancy amenities, but it can’t be at the expense of the fiscally less fortunate. Designated overnight camping in parking lots shouldn’t be an anomaly or scoffed at—there’s a reason places like Mt. Bachelor, Whitefish and Grand Targhee are so popular for van-dwellers—and every resort employee should be guaranteed a reasonable place to live. Because if you can’t live there and enjoy the same prosperity as everyone else, you damn sure shouldn’t work there.
Whether you’re stepping out onto the slopes from a ski-in-ski-out condo or the public bus, we all ride the same lifts and seek the same thrill of balancing on top of millions of frozen water molecules. There is no price to that indescribable feeling we all get when we point our ski tips down the fall line and allow gravity to take the lead. Skiing in and of itself is an expensive and admittedly exclusive sport as it is. Let’s allow more of the world, from all levels of the economic ladder, to understand why we all love this silly sport so much. The more people that invest in this industry, however much or little, the more lift-served powder days we all get to enjoy. So do me a favor this winter and try to meet me in the middle.
