What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the snowboarding community, or even snowboarding in general? The answer to that question depends on who you’re asking. If it were an outsider of the community you’d probably hear an answer of either uncertainty or a negative response. That’s why I chose to do my research based on the question of why their are still such negative bias towards the snowboarding community and where they came from? When snowboarding was created in the late 60’s it wasn’t even originally called snowboarding, they referred to the boards as snurfers. Since snowboarding originally stemmed from skiing, why are skiers snowboarders biggest enemy? Thats what i’m here to find out.
Snowboarding started in the late 60’s when a Michigan father fashioned two snow skis together and attached a rope to the nose of the board. He made it for his daughter to play with in the winter. His wife called the board a snurfer since it resembled surfing on snow. Over the next decade it caught on and companies sold millions of these boards. The vast majority of people riding snurfers were younger kids and teenagers since adults had already learned to ski and didn’t feel like crossing over. The first source I found was a article published in 2000 written by Rebecca Heino. It describes the cycle of new sports and the cultural problems that come with it, which is perfectly embodied in the sport of snowboarding. “Snowboarding was born in youthful resistance to the popular sport of skiing and the values of sport it represents” is a direct quote from the journal describing how the sport itself was created. The original snowboarders almost could’ve been considered a rebellion against the way skiers carried themselves. At the time skiing was a very ritzy sport reserved for the upper middle class and those above them, and others were not welcomed warmly. When snurfing started to pop up in the media it started a rift between snurfers and skiers. Snurfers were portrayed in the media as rebels of mountain life and what it stood for. This was the beginning of snowboarding and the bad reputation that has been given to it. (Did this paragraph wrong going to rewrite it)
My next source I located is a news segment from 1985. It was produced by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation at a local mountain in Canada. The video was made just as snowboarding was blowing up in the states and crossing the boarder to Canada, which at the time had a large skiing community already in place. The video shows the locals and mountain owners reacting to the new fade on the mountain, which was extremely negative. The owner himself had banned snowboards from the slopes for being too dangerous and would not let them use ski lifts. He said they were to dangerous to be out there interfering with skiers trying to enjoy themselves on the mountain. Several ski patrollers that were interviewed in this clip claimed they were “missiles” flying down the mountain and endangering the lives of everyone out there. The patrollers were given instructions to kick them off the mountain but claimed that the snowboarders were uncooperative, disrespectful people when told to leave. Even in 1985 a national broadcasting company was portraying them as the bad guy. When the interviewer talked to people trying to snowboard they were nothing but nice and claimed they just wanted to enjoy their new sport. Yes these riders in the beginning might have been a little reckless but if you compared them to new skiers they weren’t any worse. This video supplies amazing insight to the struggles that early snowboarders had to deal with and overcome just to be accepted on the mountain. One of the snowboarders summed up the hate in this video perfectly, he said that skiers that think they can over come the world and ride outside of their capabilities which makes them just as if not more dangerous to patrons of the mountain. Overall in the video skiers and the media projected disdain towards snowboarders when all they were asking for was a chance to prove themselves.
My third source was provided by Snow Sphere magazine and their writer Sam Baldwin. It gives a thorough background on the sport itself and the cultural problems that came with it. It states that “right up until the late 1970s, snowboarding was cast out into the wilds”, unwelcome at almost all resorts and forced to ride the back country. This made the sport available only to those truly dedicated to their newly adopted mountain life. It wasn’t until the late seventies that the first resorts finally got snowboarders covered under their skiers liability insurance that snowboarders were welcomed back to resorts. This is when the sport truly hit its first rapid growth period and gained popularity. Accompanied with this new surge of snowboarders came “droves of teenage skate punks” that already had quite the reputation around the country. With them they brought a new style to the sport, they rode with the lawless of skating in a place where this was not welcome. This did not sit well with skiers and their ritzy attitudes that believed the slopes were a place of order. This sparked the original beef between the two sports, the rich snobby skiers versus the original snowboarders who they claimed were disrespectful hoodlums that did not belong on the same mountain as them. With such an outcry from both the skiers and the snowboarders the media was split and both sides were firing off at the other. It seemed almost as if the sports identities relied on hating the other and what they stood for. In the middle of this heated debate was the ski resorts, many siding with their already known patrons and “proclaimed snowboarding nothing more than a passing fad”, which we know today is not true. The source claimed that with the growth of snowboarding and terrain park riding, skiers also flocked to the park claiming if snowboarding can do it so can skiing. This attracted many new recruits to the skier side in the process seeing as how they can do the same stunts that snowboarders could. With the two sports having a place of bonding, they learned to live together and most of the hate is from the older generation of skiers who don’t even like the skiers in the parks. This whole article I found to be incredibly informing to the older generations situations on the mountain and how they came together. Since the skiers of the seventies and eighties were ritzy type they always portrayed the snowboarders as being disrespectful and hoodlum like and that’s where the original prejudice came from. With the newer generations coming from all backgrounds to both sports theirs much less of this talk but it is still brought up.
For my interview I interviewed my brother, Nick Stiller, who is quite possibly one of my most credible sources. He worked in the industry from the time he was fifteen as a snowboard instructor all the way till he was thirty-five and running grooming forces. He lived and worked at over five of the biggest resorts in the country, and has snowboarded at almost major resort in North America. When asked about prejudices across the country against snowboarders he said “it’s not what it used to be, their used to be a huge rift between the two sports” but went on to say “everyones treated the same now and for the most part gets along”. When I asked him to elaborate he went on a rant about how skiers used to get mad at snowboarders for tearing up the mountain and would verbally yell at you. It didn’t matter if they were grown men and he was just a young teen he said. He even said that skiers used to not get on the chairlift with him even when he was alone on a four person chairlift. My next question was more targeted towards the research questions, “How do you think the nation viewed on snowboarders has changed through your life time”? Too which he responded “it used to be hard to be a snowboarder because of the reputation they have, but in recent years its definitely gotten better theirs less of a stigma around the sport”. I think this is because the whole perception of snowboarding has been under a gradual change since the early eighties for the better with more people picking up the sport as an extra hobby. When I asked “where he had the most problems with snowboarders reputations” he responded with “Vail definitely has the largest skiing population that still don’t want to accept snowboarders on the mountain”. Which does make sense for the research i’ve done, they are one of the top destination for ritzy skiers which appear to have to biggest problem with snowboarders. After multiple more questions to try and understand the feel of the nation on snowboarders I came to the summary that overall they’re more widely accepted now than ever before which makes sense. This is the largest the snowboarding community has ever been and it’s still growing at a steady rate.
My next few sources are more focused on the current situation on snowboarding and how its still affected. I found an article on Transworld Business, one of the most respected and viewed sites in the action sports community about the growth of winter sports. It was written by Mike Lewis and titled “Snowboarding Participation Increases 10%”. It reports that “SnowSports Industries America’s 2011 SIA Snow Sports Participation Report, snowboard participation rose over 10% to nearly 8.2 million” in a years span from the 2009 season to the 2010 season. The article mostly relays facts about winter sports, including “30% of all snow sports enthusiasts” which is an incredible feat for a sport thats been around for less than fifty years and has only started to be taken seriously in the last twenty-five years. While snowboarding jumped over ten percent that year, alpine skiing only jumped 5.4 percent which makes snowboarding the fastest growing winter sport discipline. The article only reinforces the early research done by stating that forty seven percent of alpine skiers compared to thirty-two percent of snowboarders have a high annual income. It also confirms that “Snowboarding is a young man’s game, two-thirds (66%) of the participants are males”. Snowboarding seems to attract the largest young male population of any of the six winter sport disciplines, which would make sense considering our hoodlumism reputation. Mike then goes on to state that “Snowboarders participate, on average 58% more days (11.7) than alpine skiers (7.4)” which makes it not only the fastest growing discipline but the most used hobby. This growing of the sport does nothing but help eliminate the negative bias that have been in place since the eighties. While alpine skiing still makes up about thirteen percent more of the total winter sports population than snowboarding, it gets closer every year considering snowboarding is growing at almost double the pace of alpine skiing. It seems that the longer its around the more snowboarding sheds its reputation of the disrespectful sport on the mountain.
My next two sources are revolving one of the biggest problems still surrounding snowboarding. Their are still three ski resorts that don’t allow snowboarding on their mountains. How this is possible i’m not quite sure considering snowboarding is almost as big as skiing all around the world now, but it needs to be addressed. Kristen Wyatt of U.S. News wrote an article on November 17th of 2015 regarding the court case Wasatch Equality versus Alta Ski Lift Company, and the second source regarding this topic is the actual manuscript of the court case itself. Alta is one for the four resorts that still doesn’t allow snowboarders to visit their mountain. The snowboarders of Utah are fighting for their right to snowboard at an amazing resort that discriminates against them just because of what they ride. The article states that “four snowboarders, who say the ban is based on incorrect stereotypes that cast them as reckless and inconsiderate” are appealing Alta’s skiers only rule. The fact that this resort still won’t let snowboarders attend their facilities tells us that there is still a terrible reputation among snowboarders. The judge ruled against them on the basis that if they make them allow snowboarders then it would be a “slippery slope for others to claim discrimination against private companies”. The judges logic is true, but in this case the snowboarders are being unfairly discriminated against. It’s a private business that still runs its business model off the fact that they don’t let snowboarders ride their slopes is crazy. Not only this one resort but two other ski only resorts also use this business model to promote their business. The lawsuit came about in early 2014 and “renewed attention to a feud between skiers and snowboarders that seemed to have thawed”. These resorts are part of the problem when it comes to our reputation as disrespectful punks on the slopes. Snowboarders and the other winter sports get along perfectly fine at resorts all across the world but Alta still has patrons who prefer to ride without snowboarders. The biggest problem with the Alta case is that its public land that congress designated for skiing and other resorts, where the “119 other ski resorts that operate on public land and allow snowboarding”. 119 resorts that except snowboarders with open arms while three shun the sport like its an ugly step child. If that number alone isn’t enough to understand that the reputation of disrespect that follows snowboarding is almost nonexistent now then nothing will convince you then nothing is. But with those three resorts operating as they are now the stigma will always be there. The basis for Alta’s case is that since snowboarders have a sideways stance it leaves them with a blind spot while riding, which was disproven quickly by proving that snowboarding is actually safer than skiing. What did work was “Alta Ski Area argued that they’re allowed to discriminate against equipment — just not the people using it” and then argued if they let snowboarders they would have to let toboggans and snowmobiles on the mountain. The lengths that this ski resort is going to just to make sure snowboarders aren’t allowed on their premises is astonishing. Then the government pretty much said just visit a different resort that is approved for snowboarding. With resorts like these out there still giving snowboarding a bad name it’s hard to not see that people still see the sport as disrespectful.
When I started the paper the question I was trying to answer was, why are their so many negative bias in the snowboarding community and where do they stem from? Over the course of eight pages and multiple different sources I believe I have come to a conclusion. It started with the reputation that skiers gave to the original snowboarders as disrespectful punks that the media snowballed out of control till the whole community had a negative stigma surrounding it. I would like to do more research on why there are still resorts that only allow skiers and why they don’t accept the snowboarding community. I believe that in the coming years snowboarding will surpass skiing as the dominant winter sport and would like the see the reputation following them abolished in the process.