Young snowboarders were once considered the saviors of the ski industry. Without that influx of stoked shredders (the reasoning went), the mountains would have reverted to empty, windswept wastelands. Abandoned chairlifts rusting in the thin mountain air. The Boomers who had built the industry in the 60s and 70s were now too old and feeble. They had been to the mountaintop, and didn’t need to keep going back.

 

Except that they did. Credit new ski designs or more attention to grooming. Credit healthier seniors.  Credit fickle youth. Whatever the reason, the National Ski Area Association says there’s been an 11 percent increase in skiing and snowboarding among people 45 and older. At the same time, there’s been a decrease in skiers 35 and younger.

 

Resorts have reached out to the geezer trade, providing special programs (yoga classes, food and wine tie-ins, the venerable Bumps for Boomers classes to learn or re-learn mogul skiing) and tweaked their bar playlists to embrace the olds along with their younger (and presumably harder drinking) patrons.

 

This is touched on in a sad little feature on the Huffington Post’s “Post-50” subdomain. The story is nominally on the Best Ski Resorts for Senior Skiers, but is not. A real analysis—one that looked at the top 25 resorts in America and spelled out which ones had the best discounts, the best grooming, the best lessons and maybe the best restaurants—would be welcome. But this is a random assortment of links that have something/anything to do with older skiers.

 

(It’s also predictably hilarious and patronizing: two Woodstock references and one quote from a communications coordinator at Keystone, who notes that the parking is free and close to the lifts, because if there’s one thing old people really care about, it’s the damn parking. Also, there’s a link to a seven-year-old MSNBC article on how some resorts are doing more grooming.)

 

The takeaway here is that seniors are adding knee braces instead of kicking off their boots. They’re emboldened by the equipment and their own good health and the realization that they aren’t alone out there. Which means more olds spending more hours on the hill. Which means fewer discounts. And if there’s one other thing old people care about, it’s the discounts.

Photo: Chair lift in Bad Gastein, Austria, by Babbsack, via Wikimedia Commons