When I was growing up, any kind of skiing holiday came across as elitist and the purview of the wealthy. Perhaps that's a symptom of an upbringing in a less affluent town in northern England...
When I was growing up, any kind of skiing holiday came across as elitist and the purview of the wealthy. Perhaps that's a symptom of an upbringing in a less affluent town in northern England (although in a distinctly middle class house), where anything that could be labelled "posh" was derided and disparaged. But it seems to me that a skiing holiday has always been expensive and slightly elitist? Between equipment, lessons, slope passes, flights, accommodation, food, aprés ski, and so forth, there are a whole lot of things you're paying out for. Inflation is obviously biting hard, and close to €40 for a pizza is obscene. But that level of expense has always been my perception of a skiing trip, to be perfectly honest.
I imagine it depends entirely on where you live, and the availability of ski hills in that region. England isn't exactly known for its mountains, or skiing, so I'm not surprised it's seen as more...
But it seems to me that a skiing holiday has always been expensive and slightly elitist?
I imagine it depends entirely on where you live, and the availability of ski hills in that region. England isn't exactly known for its mountains, or skiing, so I'm not surprised it's seen as more elitist there. But here in Canada, I grew up in Vancouver and Calgary, both right next to the Rockies where ski hills (public and private) are practically everywhere. So skiing and/or snowboarding is something a lot of families do there, regardless of their socioeconomic status. And public elementary and high school ski trips weren't even uncommon either. If someone had a membership at Banff Sunshine or Whistler they were likely loaded, since those are super posh resorts. But there are plenty of affordable options too, like Nakiska just outside Calgary, where my family usually skied when we lived there.
p.s. Even where I live now in Southern Ontario there are a bunch of affordable public ski hills too though, like Boler Mountain where my sister, BiL, and nephew regularly go. Blue Mountain, where I used to frequently ski before my knees exploded, is a bit more expensive but still pretty reasonable. Whereas Mont Tremblant in Quebec, which I've only been to once, is the extremely posh and expensive resort in this region.
I'm someone who lived in SWO too and I'd hesitate to even call Boler affordable. My parents would send me there in middle school with a $100 bill when I went with my friends. This was enough to...
I'm someone who lived in SWO too and I'd hesitate to even call Boler affordable. My parents would send me there in middle school with a $100 bill when I went with my friends. This was enough to cover a day pass, equipment rental, and a meal. That's a ridiculous price for a child to do something for 4-5 hours. It's hard to justify even for a middle class family like mine, which is why I only went a handful of times.
I went on a skiing trip with the school when I was a kid, from the UK, must have been in the early 90s. They didn't go to Austria that year because it was too expensive, instead we went to...
I went on a skiing trip with the school when I was a kid, from the UK, must have been in the early 90s. They didn't go to Austria that year because it was too expensive, instead we went to Bulgaria. I said early 90s because according to wikipedia, communism fell in Bulgaria in 91, and I can't imagine we went while it was still part of the Eastern Bloc. But maybe. I remember we flew into Sofia and drove forever, and then loads of the older kids were going to this little shed bar thing by the hotel to buy vodkas and coke. Until the next day when the police showed up.
Speaking of pizza, they had the best pizza ever for next to nothing at this place on the slopes. It was about 50p or something dead cheap, and you watched them cook it on this amazing conveyor belt oven. I think we got our food included with the hotel, but it was pretty horrible and these pizzas were like manna from heaven in comparison (the hotel food was probably fine, but I was an obnoxious fussy eater). The skiing itself was OK, I can't remember much except the slopes were very steep, had huge piles of collected snow at the sides and it was very scary. One kid twisted his ankle and couldn't ski, and instead had to sit out for the week. He got an absolute bollocking for going down the slope on a tray from the cafe because he was bored out of his mind.
Bulgaria was communist and while closely allied, not part of the USSR. I'm not sure how they did foreign affairs but it may have been possible to access it easier than you would other countries....
Bulgaria was communist and while closely allied, not part of the USSR. I'm not sure how they did foreign affairs but it may have been possible to access it easier than you would other countries.
Question is: did you drink any branded softdrinks? If yes, the communist leadership had fallen.
Growing up in a country that mostly consists of mountains I associate skiing with something you had to do, culturally, because of school-orgianzied ski trips and all your friends constantly...
Growing up in a country that mostly consists of mountains I associate skiing with something you had to do, culturally, because of school-orgianzied ski trips and all your friends constantly talking about how their family goes skiing (and then snowboarding because somehow that was cooler). I hated it. I knew it was expensive but that mostly were the prices of day passes which were high but not absurd. The rest was like any other holiday. It might have been a slight bubble, still, it took me up until my 20s to realize that a vacation (any kind of it, really) could be considered a luxury by itself. But my association was always that skiing was the trash holiday option that ruined winter and summer beach vacations were the real vacations you looked forward to.
Forgive me if this question is ignorant, but couldn't that also be cultural? It's always been my understanding that Brits identify a lot with their class, so any behavior that isn't "fitting in"...
Forgive me if this question is ignorant, but couldn't that also be cultural? It's always been my understanding that Brits identify a lot with their class, so any behavior that isn't "fitting in" is frowned upon. Skiing was definitely not seen as elitist nor something only wealthy people did in Denmark. I had a middle class upbringing (solidly lower class now lol) and sure, my parents had money for holidays, but skiing was not that much more expensive than any other type of holiday. Just gonna address your points one by one:
Equipment: not very expensive to rent
Lessons: my dad taught us
Slope passes: also not very expensive
Flights: we only ever drove by car or bus
Accommodation: maybe more than other types of holidays, but not by much
Food: we'd mostly shop at a grocery store and make meals at home - and picnic on the mountain with homemade sandwiches - a €40 pizza definitely seems outrageous and not something I've ever seen
Aprés ski: never did that
I can't speak to what skiing is like now though because I haven't been for 10 years. Just comparing what it was like growing up for me!
I think a lot of that is cultural, absolutely. We don't have a major culture of winter sports in the UK, and to my knowledge there aren't any outdoor ski resorts anywhere in the country, so...
I think a lot of that is cultural, absolutely. We don't have a major culture of winter sports in the UK, and to my knowledge there aren't any outdoor ski resorts anywhere in the country, so international travel is a necessity for skiers. Class will definitely have a lot to do with it too, there's a lot of middle class embarrassment in the UK, which I felt very keenly going to a heavily working class school and living in the town that I did. But skiing was always something that came across like an explicit signal of wealth, rather than just an activity that anyone could do. Maybe that has something to do with the necessity of international travel. And as we don't have a culture of skiing, it's more likely that British people would be learning from paid teachers, rather than their parents. There's probably a bit of a feedback loop of circumstance, class, and culture going on here.
Above all, neither I nor any of my immediate family have ever once been skiing, and so my mental model of it being "the thing that rich people do" has never really been updated. It's been interesting to read the other comments in this thread which argue against my position.
There are five ski resorts in Scotland and two tiny ones in Cumbria. Day passes are £30-50ish per person. I have no idea how good the skiing is though, I imagine the English ones are terrible....
to my knowledge there aren't any outdoor ski resorts anywhere in the country
There are five ski resorts in Scotland and two tiny ones in Cumbria. Day passes are £30-50ish per person. I have no idea how good the skiing is though, I imagine the English ones are terrible. Scotland has some good mountains but they're not in the same league as the Alps.
Lots of dry slopes which are pretty cheap but unless the technology has come on drastically in the last few years, are a very pale imitation of the experience of snow.
I just finished a half day skiing at Glencoe - not fantastic snow in Scotland, but still fun. A day pass is £30 for an adult (£37 during school holidays), so a day skiing costs us about the same...
I just finished a half day skiing at Glencoe - not fantastic snow in Scotland, but still fun. A day pass is £30 for an adult (£37 during school holidays), so a day skiing costs us about the same as two meals of fish and chips.
I think absolutely there's a huge cultural factor where skiing is much more of an everyday thing in the Nordics than elsewhere. I think its cultural legacy there and the accessibility of doing it...
Skiing was definitely not seen as elitist nor something only wealthy people did in Denmark.
I think absolutely there's a huge cultural factor where skiing is much more of an everyday thing in the Nordics than elsewhere. I think its cultural legacy there and the accessibility of doing it in the Nordic countries is a big factor there.
I bet there are cultural factors affecting this pretty much everywhere -- the perception of whether something's elitist or not is inextricable from cultural factors -- but I don't think the UK perception is strictly because of their weirdly intense class system. I'm from the US (not super near anything great skiing-wise, but there was a slope in our area that I remember passing on the highway growing up) and ski vacations definitely seemed like a "rich person thing" to me growing up. Day trips to something relatively local if you were into skiing as a hobby and joined a school or community winter sports club or something were a different story -- those don't come off as elitist to me at all and I had a friend in college who was into that. But a proper ski vacation, like with a lodge or whatever, I definitely would have always perceived as something for wealthy people.
Yeah. Growing up low income, any kind of ski trip seemed like an elitist/luxury thing. Unless one already lives in an area where one can ski in a small local family-run ski area. But most of the...
When I was growing up, any kind of skiing holiday came across as elitist and the purview of the wealthy.
Yeah. Growing up low income, any kind of ski trip seemed like an elitist/luxury thing. Unless one already lives in an area where one can ski in a small local family-run ski area. But most of the time, "ski trip" tends to imply a fancy ski resort to me.
The title of the article made me laugh and reminded me of the astronauts in space meme. Ski vacations in the Alps are becoming increasingly elitist? Always have been. It feels so out of touch for the vast majority of the population.
It's definitely elitist in a UK context, I think less so in countries with mountains e.g. France, Austria and Switzerland (the last two have government programs to encourage people to learn how to...
It's definitely elitist in a UK context, I think less so in countries with mountains e.g. France, Austria and Switzerland (the last two have government programs to encourage people to learn how to ski). Still expensive and an activity that people who are wealthier participate in, but not as much as in the UK.
and close to €40 for a pizza is obscene
I've never been charged close to €40 for a Pizza in many years of skiing, thankfully! I agree that lunch is pretty expensive though (usually around 20-30CHF in Switzerland although you can often get a "Kalbsbratwurst" – veal sausage – for under 10CHF). I usually take some food from a breakfast buffet to eat for lunch :)
I'll echo the comments about skiing being elitist and I grew up about an hour from some regionally decent slopes. 'Becoming' elitist? That's like saying Porsche ownership is increasingly becoming...
I'll echo the comments about skiing being elitist and I grew up about an hour from some regionally decent slopes. 'Becoming' elitist? That's like saying Porsche ownership is increasingly becoming elitist. I guess this being a French piece it might have different connotations though.
They're saying French attendance is dropping - so elitist seems to say that the locals are getting priced out, which I understand better... But that's every 'resort' town.
I couldn't read the full article but I agree that they've always been elitist. There's your problem right there: skiing means getting a parent to wake up in the middle of the night to drive the...
I couldn't read the full article but I agree that they've always been elitist.
For instance, the cheapest packages (including accommodation, skis and passes) for a week at La Plagne during the school vacations start at €2,600 for a family of four.
There's your problem right there: skiing means getting a parent to wake up in the middle of the night to drive the kid and their poor friends up to the slope to play. We will use the public ski lunch shelter where we'll bring our own hot chocolate powder and plug in the water kettle that we brought, and eat our packed lunches. We won't even look inside the village restaurants, let alone sit inside to eat $60+ pizzas. Maybe we'll buy a tray of hot poutine to share. But that's it. Skii till we're exhausted and our friend's dad will drive us home.
Staying ANYWHERE near the slopes for a week has always been crazypants expensive. Even after we all got jobs as young grads and could afford less expensive mountains, we lived off mountain and it most certainly wasn't for a week either.
Maybe someone who can read the full article fill me in on what they mean by "increasingly" elitist
Where are you from? I'm from Czechia and here skiing was always seen as a pretty normal thing. And many I'd say lower-middle class people could afford going on a week long skiing trip to the...
I'll echo the comments about skiing being elitist and I grew up about an hour from some regionally decent slopes.
Where are you from?
I'm from Czechia and here skiing was always seen as a pretty normal thing. And many I'd say lower-middle class people could afford going on a week long skiing trip to the Austrian or French alps when I was still a skier myself, which was 15+ years ago when the prices were lower, but we were also poorer. Maybe not every year, but it was relatively common. There were always reasonably priced ski slope restaurants and accommodation that we could afford, despite being from a country considerably poorer than the Austrians and the French.
I think a lot of folks are pointing out that skiing has always been elitist and to some degree that's true. But in my own short experience there were "elite" resorts and then there were "dumpy"...
I think a lot of folks are pointing out that skiing has always been elitist and to some degree that's true. But in my own short experience there were "elite" resorts and then there were "dumpy" resorts. I grew up in a family that went to the latter. Take this with a grain of salt though as I'm in California, not the Alps. From when I was 7 to around 20 you could always find a cheap option if you wanted to get on the slopes. Until I was 13 years old I could snowboard for 5 dollars if I brought a helmet, we pushed this until 15 as I was a late bloomer. We weren't at a premier resort, but we had access to some pretty nice slopes and even a terrain park. When I turned 15 we started going to an even cheaper resort, one where a day ticket was 35 and a half day was 25. We these were almost always day trips, waking up at 6-9 am and either getting there just after opening or when we could buy half day tickets. If we did stay, there were plenty of dumpy little motels that you could book a night in for $50-80 dollars. I carried on like that until I was about 23 and moved away from the sport when I sold my car and there wasn't an easy form of transit to get there.
Fast forward to today (12ish years later). Vail Corp and Alterra Corp, owners of the epic and icon passes respectively, have bought up nearly every little mom and pop resort across the country. Prices are through the roof, near $200 dollars for a day pass - even at some of the "dumpy" resorts I grew up going to. It has removed the "cheap" option. So now every year I gamble. I buy the "Tahoe Local" pass for ~$600 and try to make it as worth it as possible. But I get to cheat. My partner's parents live in Tahoe so we can make the most of it. But while gas is over $5 a gallon, lift tickets prices are effectively controlled by a monopoly, and the price of rentals is through the roof! It truly is now an elitist sport.
It was the same thing in the Alps 30 years ago. The development was a little different, though: the little "dumpy" resorts where often a bit lower altitude. Today, they just don't get enough snow....
But in my own short experience there were "elite" resorts and then there were "dumpy" resorts. I grew up in a family that went to the latter. Take this with a grain of salt though as I'm in California, not the Alps.
It was the same thing in the Alps 30 years ago. The development was a little different, though: the little "dumpy" resorts where often a bit lower altitude. Today, they just don't get enough snow. The rule of thumb is you need 100 days of operation per year to make investment into new lift equipment profitable. For the last couple of winters, those resorts didn't even get half of that - which means they either closed down or got super dumpy, running 40, 50 year old hardware.
The very few dumpy high altitude resorts I can think of all build more lifts, and all to the same purpose: to connect to a neighboring resort, so together they would become not-dumpy. Which mostly succeeded (since density in the Alps is much higher than in the Rockies - if you build a lift over to the next valley, you almost certainly connect to the next resort), but is a real shame in cases where small, cheap, secret powder ski resorts got connected to elite on-piste resorts.
Luckily, we managed to avoid monopolization à la Vail and Alterra. And since here, often enough the resort is owned by the municipality directly, we'll probably have a chance to continue to keep the corps out.
There are fewer and fewer independently owned resorts, though I just went to one the other day. $51 day lift ticket, and I rented a pair of skis from a local gear shop for $21/day. But that is...
There are fewer and fewer independently owned resorts, though I just went to one the other day. $51 day lift ticket, and I rented a pair of skis from a local gear shop for $21/day. But that is pretty rare. Any more, a day pass under $100 seems like a good deal, and most gear rentals are quite expensive.
I've never been skiing and it's not my thing, but it's something of a national sport here so you hear about it quite a bit. A colleague of mine once explained that a pass to access the piste can...
I've never been skiing and it's not my thing, but it's something of a national sport here so you hear about it quite a bit. A colleague of mine once explained that a pass to access the piste can typically cost around €100 per person, per day. My eyes nearly fell out of my face. €400 for a family of 4 just to access the piste for a day. Doesn't include equipment rental, transport, food, accommodation, etc. For the equivalent amount of money I'd rather go somewhere warm over winter, but to each their own.
I've been skiing for nearly 30 years, and I go to my local mountain 3-4x per week during the winter. Skiing costs really vary - a single day of skiing for people who don't ski often can be very...
I've been skiing for nearly 30 years, and I go to my local mountain 3-4x per week during the winter. Skiing costs really vary - a single day of skiing for people who don't ski often can be very expensive (ski area dependant), and if you have to travel it's obviously a significant commitment, as it always has been.
If you ski frequently at a local mountain though, the math isn't too bad. Buying your equipment and a season pass is a moderately large initial outlay, but the per-day rate drops dramatically - particularly if you pack a lunch.
That said, I do miss the days when it was more affordable for locals to get a day pass, and most ski areas had a more down-to-earth culture (or really just a distinct culture at all). I see the changes every time I ski - people are much less friendly in general (particularly on lifts) now and engage in more antisocial behavior like blasting music from backpacks with built-in speakers with no regard for those around them.
In my opinion, a significant part of the problem here in the US is the explosion of multi-resort passes like Epic and Ikon. They have made skiing accessible to many people, which is great, but it's gotten to the point where overcrowding of the participating ski areas is a massive issue. Day rates have gone through the roof because so many tickets will be claimed by people on a loss-leader Epic/Ikon pass. Some ski areas have even begun charging for parking and "fast lanes" to skip lift lines, which is abhorrent to me.
It sucks to see the changes in the sport, and to know that my kids won't experience it as I did. Broadly increased accessibility is a net positive for the industry, but I wish it wasn't at the detriment of affordability for your average local family who aren't diehard skiers. The mountains were better when everyone was invited.
You're certainly right and I can't speak to what it's like in the US (or skiing in general to be fair). I'm in France which is the article's main focus, and from discussions I've had with people...
You're certainly right and I can't speak to what it's like in the US (or skiing in general to be fair). I'm in France which is the article's main focus, and from discussions I've had with people here it seems the only reasonably affordable option is if, like you, they already live close by and are willing to drive over. The other common scenario is they own a chalet in the area (bought/built by previous generations of family). And in either case you have your own equipment, and of course prepare your own food. Still, that's going to be around €1.6k for four days worth of just the passes for a family of 4. Also, those scenarios aren't an option for many people, especially as people come from pretty much all corners of the country.
There is one other option, which is going to areas lower down the mountain that get less/no guaranteed snow, or where you're skiing in less than ideal conditions.
Yeah I guess what I'm saying is there are two sides of skiing. The first is the "elitist" perspective that people broadly seem to have here, which involves travelling across long distances or...
Yeah I guess what I'm saying is there are two sides of skiing.
The first is the "elitist" perspective that people broadly seem to have here, which involves travelling across long distances or internationally for a days or week long trip, where you're renting gear, staying at a high end resort, and paying a day rate. That's always been expensive - the same way any major vacation to do any specialized activity would be.
The other side of the sport is a much more affordable story, where normal local people who live in snowy areas that have hills/mountains can participate. This is (was?) a much more significant percentage of skiers/snowboarders, and it sucks to see the passionate local scene dying in favor of wealthy vacationers who couldn't care less about the impact they're having.
Skiing/snowboarding is not elitist if you're lucky enough to live in the right place. I grew up in the Rockies and I grew up skiing. Yea, skiing can seem expensive when you talk about rentals....
Skiing/snowboarding is not elitist if you're lucky enough to live in the right place.
I grew up in the Rockies and I grew up skiing. Yea, skiing can seem expensive when you talk about rentals. hotels, lessons, lift passes etc. But if you have access to a ski hill and want to ski a lot it's not bad because those costs get amortized. A decent setup can last you 5-10 years if you're not hard on your equipment and don't chase the latest trends. A $2000 season pass isn't bad if you're skiing 30+ times. For me, when I go snowboarding I probably pay around $75 per trip when you average out the cost of gear/gas/lift pass. I certainly wouldn't say it's overly accessible but I wouldn't say it's elitist.
In Utah, 30 ski trips per year would be one trip every week that the ski resorts are open. $75/trip isn't bad, but you really have to like skiing to get the price that low.
In Utah, 30 ski trips per year would be one trip every week that the ski resorts are open. $75/trip isn't bad, but you really have to like skiing to get the price that low.
That's interesting to me because European ski resorts are a bit cheaper, which surprises me a bit. For context in Avoriaz (a massive ski resort in Frace) a lift pass costs 54 EUR for the day. In...
That's interesting to me because European ski resorts are a bit cheaper, which surprises me a bit.
For context in Avoriaz (a massive ski resort in Frace) a lift pass costs 54 EUR for the day. In Switzerland (not exactly a super cheap place) you can buy a season pass which covers 69 different ski resorts for ~500CHF (something like 568 USD), and I think the Davos, Arosa and Laax ski pass is like 1300 CHF for the year.
In my opinion it has been elitist for the last 20, 30 years. Compared to to other mountain activities like hiking and spot climbing it's just very expensive to try out/maintain as a hobby. Of...
In my opinion it has been elitist for the last 20, 30 years.
Compared to to other mountain activities like hiking and spot climbing it's just very expensive to try out/maintain as a hobby.
Of course for me this might be because I'm from the Netherlands and most of the cost are for the trip itself (food, sleeping, travel, et cetera). And not so much about the cost of the gear itself.
As a Californian who "went to the snow" every few years growing up, skiing always felt elitist, and going to The Alps was a "rich people" thing. We were poor, but my immigrant family tried to keep...
As a Californian who "went to the snow" every few years growing up, skiing always felt elitist, and going to The Alps was a "rich people" thing. We were poor, but my immigrant family tried to keep up with the Joneses (which made things worse financially). We did go skiing once or twice because my parents bought into a timeshare in Lake Tahoe, but It was never for me. The people learning to ski and those who did the real slopes were very much not in my league of people.
I can only imagine what it's like in some of the best ski resort/most well-known places.
I prefer sitting inside watching snow fall with hot cocoa or playing in the snow at the bottom of the hill, or sledding.
When I was growing up, any kind of skiing holiday came across as elitist and the purview of the wealthy. Perhaps that's a symptom of an upbringing in a less affluent town in northern England (although in a distinctly middle class house), where anything that could be labelled "posh" was derided and disparaged. But it seems to me that a skiing holiday has always been expensive and slightly elitist? Between equipment, lessons, slope passes, flights, accommodation, food, aprés ski, and so forth, there are a whole lot of things you're paying out for. Inflation is obviously biting hard, and close to €40 for a pizza is obscene. But that level of expense has always been my perception of a skiing trip, to be perfectly honest.
I imagine it depends entirely on where you live, and the availability of ski hills in that region. England isn't exactly known for its mountains, or skiing, so I'm not surprised it's seen as more elitist there. But here in Canada, I grew up in Vancouver and Calgary, both right next to the Rockies where ski hills (public and private) are practically everywhere. So skiing and/or snowboarding is something a lot of families do there, regardless of their socioeconomic status. And public elementary and high school ski trips weren't even uncommon either. If someone had a membership at Banff Sunshine or Whistler they were likely loaded, since those are super posh resorts. But there are plenty of affordable options too, like Nakiska just outside Calgary, where my family usually skied when we lived there.
p.s. Even where I live now in Southern Ontario there are a bunch of affordable public ski hills too though, like Boler Mountain where my sister, BiL, and nephew regularly go. Blue Mountain, where I used to frequently ski before my knees exploded, is a bit more expensive but still pretty reasonable. Whereas Mont Tremblant in Quebec, which I've only been to once, is the extremely posh and expensive resort in this region.
I'm someone who lived in SWO too and I'd hesitate to even call Boler affordable. My parents would send me there in middle school with a $100 bill when I went with my friends. This was enough to cover a day pass, equipment rental, and a meal. That's a ridiculous price for a child to do something for 4-5 hours. It's hard to justify even for a middle class family like mine, which is why I only went a handful of times.
I went on a skiing trip with the school when I was a kid, from the UK, must have been in the early 90s. They didn't go to Austria that year because it was too expensive, instead we went to Bulgaria. I said early 90s because according to wikipedia, communism fell in Bulgaria in 91, and I can't imagine we went while it was still part of the Eastern Bloc. But maybe. I remember we flew into Sofia and drove forever, and then loads of the older kids were going to this little shed bar thing by the hotel to buy vodkas and coke. Until the next day when the police showed up.
Speaking of pizza, they had the best pizza ever for next to nothing at this place on the slopes. It was about 50p or something dead cheap, and you watched them cook it on this amazing conveyor belt oven. I think we got our food included with the hotel, but it was pretty horrible and these pizzas were like manna from heaven in comparison (the hotel food was probably fine, but I was an obnoxious fussy eater). The skiing itself was OK, I can't remember much except the slopes were very steep, had huge piles of collected snow at the sides and it was very scary. One kid twisted his ankle and couldn't ski, and instead had to sit out for the week. He got an absolute bollocking for going down the slope on a tray from the cafe because he was bored out of his mind.
Bulgaria was communist and while closely allied, not part of the USSR. I'm not sure how they did foreign affairs but it may have been possible to access it easier than you would other countries.
Question is: did you drink any branded softdrinks? If yes, the communist leadership had fallen.
Growing up in a country that mostly consists of mountains I associate skiing with something you had to do, culturally, because of school-orgianzied ski trips and all your friends constantly talking about how their family goes skiing (and then snowboarding because somehow that was cooler). I hated it. I knew it was expensive but that mostly were the prices of day passes which were high but not absurd. The rest was like any other holiday. It might have been a slight bubble, still, it took me up until my 20s to realize that a vacation (any kind of it, really) could be considered a luxury by itself. But my association was always that skiing was the trash holiday option that ruined winter and summer beach vacations were the real vacations you looked forward to.
Forgive me if this question is ignorant, but couldn't that also be cultural? It's always been my understanding that Brits identify a lot with their class, so any behavior that isn't "fitting in" is frowned upon. Skiing was definitely not seen as elitist nor something only wealthy people did in Denmark. I had a middle class upbringing (solidly lower class now lol) and sure, my parents had money for holidays, but skiing was not that much more expensive than any other type of holiday. Just gonna address your points one by one:
Equipment: not very expensive to rent
Lessons: my dad taught us
Slope passes: also not very expensive
Flights: we only ever drove by car or bus
Accommodation: maybe more than other types of holidays, but not by much
Food: we'd mostly shop at a grocery store and make meals at home - and picnic on the mountain with homemade sandwiches - a €40 pizza definitely seems outrageous and not something I've ever seen
Aprés ski: never did that
I can't speak to what skiing is like now though because I haven't been for 10 years. Just comparing what it was like growing up for me!
I think a lot of that is cultural, absolutely. We don't have a major culture of winter sports in the UK, and to my knowledge there aren't any outdoor ski resorts anywhere in the country, so international travel is a necessity for skiers. Class will definitely have a lot to do with it too, there's a lot of middle class embarrassment in the UK, which I felt very keenly going to a heavily working class school and living in the town that I did. But skiing was always something that came across like an explicit signal of wealth, rather than just an activity that anyone could do. Maybe that has something to do with the necessity of international travel. And as we don't have a culture of skiing, it's more likely that British people would be learning from paid teachers, rather than their parents. There's probably a bit of a feedback loop of circumstance, class, and culture going on here.
Above all, neither I nor any of my immediate family have ever once been skiing, and so my mental model of it being "the thing that rich people do" has never really been updated. It's been interesting to read the other comments in this thread which argue against my position.
There are five ski resorts in Scotland and two tiny ones in Cumbria. Day passes are £30-50ish per person. I have no idea how good the skiing is though, I imagine the English ones are terrible. Scotland has some good mountains but they're not in the same league as the Alps.
Lots of dry slopes which are pretty cheap but unless the technology has come on drastically in the last few years, are a very pale imitation of the experience of snow.
I just finished a half day skiing at Glencoe - not fantastic snow in Scotland, but still fun. A day pass is £30 for an adult (£37 during school holidays), so a day skiing costs us about the same as two meals of fish and chips.
I think absolutely there's a huge cultural factor where skiing is much more of an everyday thing in the Nordics than elsewhere. I think its cultural legacy there and the accessibility of doing it in the Nordic countries is a big factor there.
I bet there are cultural factors affecting this pretty much everywhere -- the perception of whether something's elitist or not is inextricable from cultural factors -- but I don't think the UK perception is strictly because of their weirdly intense class system. I'm from the US (not super near anything great skiing-wise, but there was a slope in our area that I remember passing on the highway growing up) and ski vacations definitely seemed like a "rich person thing" to me growing up. Day trips to something relatively local if you were into skiing as a hobby and joined a school or community winter sports club or something were a different story -- those don't come off as elitist to me at all and I had a friend in college who was into that. But a proper ski vacation, like with a lodge or whatever, I definitely would have always perceived as something for wealthy people.
Yeah. Growing up low income, any kind of ski trip seemed like an elitist/luxury thing. Unless one already lives in an area where one can ski in a small local family-run ski area. But most of the time, "ski trip" tends to imply a fancy ski resort to me.
The title of the article made me laugh and reminded me of the astronauts in space meme. Ski vacations in the Alps are becoming increasingly elitist? Always have been. It feels so out of touch for the vast majority of the population.
It's definitely elitist in a UK context, I think less so in countries with mountains e.g. France, Austria and Switzerland (the last two have government programs to encourage people to learn how to ski). Still expensive and an activity that people who are wealthier participate in, but not as much as in the UK.
I've never been charged close to €40 for a Pizza in many years of skiing, thankfully! I agree that lunch is pretty expensive though (usually around 20-30CHF in Switzerland although you can often get a "Kalbsbratwurst" – veal sausage – for under 10CHF). I usually take some food from a breakfast buffet to eat for lunch :)
I'll echo the comments about skiing being elitist and I grew up about an hour from some regionally decent slopes. 'Becoming' elitist? That's like saying Porsche ownership is increasingly becoming elitist. I guess this being a French piece it might have different connotations though.
They're saying French attendance is dropping - so elitist seems to say that the locals are getting priced out, which I understand better... But that's every 'resort' town.
I couldn't read the full article but I agree that they've always been elitist.
There's your problem right there: skiing means getting a parent to wake up in the middle of the night to drive the kid and their poor friends up to the slope to play. We will use the public ski lunch shelter where we'll bring our own hot chocolate powder and plug in the water kettle that we brought, and eat our packed lunches. We won't even look inside the village restaurants, let alone sit inside to eat $60+ pizzas. Maybe we'll buy a tray of hot poutine to share. But that's it. Skii till we're exhausted and our friend's dad will drive us home.
Staying ANYWHERE near the slopes for a week has always been crazypants expensive. Even after we all got jobs as young grads and could afford less expensive mountains, we lived off mountain and it most certainly wasn't for a week either.
Maybe someone who can read the full article fill me in on what they mean by "increasingly" elitist
Where are you from?
I'm from Czechia and here skiing was always seen as a pretty normal thing. And many I'd say lower-middle class people could afford going on a week long skiing trip to the Austrian or French alps when I was still a skier myself, which was 15+ years ago when the prices were lower, but we were also poorer. Maybe not every year, but it was relatively common. There were always reasonably priced ski slope restaurants and accommodation that we could afford, despite being from a country considerably poorer than the Austrians and the French.
I think a lot of folks are pointing out that skiing has always been elitist and to some degree that's true. But in my own short experience there were "elite" resorts and then there were "dumpy" resorts. I grew up in a family that went to the latter. Take this with a grain of salt though as I'm in California, not the Alps. From when I was 7 to around 20 you could always find a cheap option if you wanted to get on the slopes. Until I was 13 years old I could snowboard for 5 dollars if I brought a helmet, we pushed this until 15 as I was a late bloomer. We weren't at a premier resort, but we had access to some pretty nice slopes and even a terrain park. When I turned 15 we started going to an even cheaper resort, one where a day ticket was 35 and a half day was 25. We these were almost always day trips, waking up at 6-9 am and either getting there just after opening or when we could buy half day tickets. If we did stay, there were plenty of dumpy little motels that you could book a night in for $50-80 dollars. I carried on like that until I was about 23 and moved away from the sport when I sold my car and there wasn't an easy form of transit to get there.
Fast forward to today (12ish years later). Vail Corp and Alterra Corp, owners of the epic and icon passes respectively, have bought up nearly every little mom and pop resort across the country. Prices are through the roof, near $200 dollars for a day pass - even at some of the "dumpy" resorts I grew up going to. It has removed the "cheap" option. So now every year I gamble. I buy the "Tahoe Local" pass for ~$600 and try to make it as worth it as possible. But I get to cheat. My partner's parents live in Tahoe so we can make the most of it. But while gas is over $5 a gallon, lift tickets prices are effectively controlled by a monopoly, and the price of rentals is through the roof! It truly is now an elitist sport.
It was the same thing in the Alps 30 years ago. The development was a little different, though: the little "dumpy" resorts where often a bit lower altitude. Today, they just don't get enough snow. The rule of thumb is you need 100 days of operation per year to make investment into new lift equipment profitable. For the last couple of winters, those resorts didn't even get half of that - which means they either closed down or got super dumpy, running 40, 50 year old hardware.
The very few dumpy high altitude resorts I can think of all build more lifts, and all to the same purpose: to connect to a neighboring resort, so together they would become not-dumpy. Which mostly succeeded (since density in the Alps is much higher than in the Rockies - if you build a lift over to the next valley, you almost certainly connect to the next resort), but is a real shame in cases where small, cheap, secret powder ski resorts got connected to elite on-piste resorts.
Luckily, we managed to avoid monopolization à la Vail and Alterra. And since here, often enough the resort is owned by the municipality directly, we'll probably have a chance to continue to keep the corps out.
There are fewer and fewer independently owned resorts, though I just went to one the other day. $51 day lift ticket, and I rented a pair of skis from a local gear shop for $21/day. But that is pretty rare. Any more, a day pass under $100 seems like a good deal, and most gear rentals are quite expensive.
I've never been skiing and it's not my thing, but it's something of a national sport here so you hear about it quite a bit. A colleague of mine once explained that a pass to access the piste can typically cost around €100 per person, per day. My eyes nearly fell out of my face. €400 for a family of 4 just to access the piste for a day. Doesn't include equipment rental, transport, food, accommodation, etc. For the equivalent amount of money I'd rather go somewhere warm over winter, but to each their own.
I've been skiing for nearly 30 years, and I go to my local mountain 3-4x per week during the winter. Skiing costs really vary - a single day of skiing for people who don't ski often can be very expensive (ski area dependant), and if you have to travel it's obviously a significant commitment, as it always has been.
If you ski frequently at a local mountain though, the math isn't too bad. Buying your equipment and a season pass is a moderately large initial outlay, but the per-day rate drops dramatically - particularly if you pack a lunch.
That said, I do miss the days when it was more affordable for locals to get a day pass, and most ski areas had a more down-to-earth culture (or really just a distinct culture at all). I see the changes every time I ski - people are much less friendly in general (particularly on lifts) now and engage in more antisocial behavior like blasting music from backpacks with built-in speakers with no regard for those around them.
In my opinion, a significant part of the problem here in the US is the explosion of multi-resort passes like Epic and Ikon. They have made skiing accessible to many people, which is great, but it's gotten to the point where overcrowding of the participating ski areas is a massive issue. Day rates have gone through the roof because so many tickets will be claimed by people on a loss-leader Epic/Ikon pass. Some ski areas have even begun charging for parking and "fast lanes" to skip lift lines, which is abhorrent to me.
It sucks to see the changes in the sport, and to know that my kids won't experience it as I did. Broadly increased accessibility is a net positive for the industry, but I wish it wasn't at the detriment of affordability for your average local family who aren't diehard skiers. The mountains were better when everyone was invited.
You're certainly right and I can't speak to what it's like in the US (or skiing in general to be fair). I'm in France which is the article's main focus, and from discussions I've had with people here it seems the only reasonably affordable option is if, like you, they already live close by and are willing to drive over. The other common scenario is they own a chalet in the area (bought/built by previous generations of family). And in either case you have your own equipment, and of course prepare your own food. Still, that's going to be around €1.6k for four days worth of just the passes for a family of 4. Also, those scenarios aren't an option for many people, especially as people come from pretty much all corners of the country.
There is one other option, which is going to areas lower down the mountain that get less/no guaranteed snow, or where you're skiing in less than ideal conditions.
Yeah I guess what I'm saying is there are two sides of skiing.
The first is the "elitist" perspective that people broadly seem to have here, which involves travelling across long distances or internationally for a days or week long trip, where you're renting gear, staying at a high end resort, and paying a day rate. That's always been expensive - the same way any major vacation to do any specialized activity would be.
The other side of the sport is a much more affordable story, where normal local people who live in snowy areas that have hills/mountains can participate. This is (was?) a much more significant percentage of skiers/snowboarders, and it sucks to see the passionate local scene dying in favor of wealthy vacationers who couldn't care less about the impact they're having.
Skiing/snowboarding is not elitist if you're lucky enough to live in the right place.
I grew up in the Rockies and I grew up skiing. Yea, skiing can seem expensive when you talk about rentals. hotels, lessons, lift passes etc. But if you have access to a ski hill and want to ski a lot it's not bad because those costs get amortized. A decent setup can last you 5-10 years if you're not hard on your equipment and don't chase the latest trends. A $2000 season pass isn't bad if you're skiing 30+ times. For me, when I go snowboarding I probably pay around $75 per trip when you average out the cost of gear/gas/lift pass. I certainly wouldn't say it's overly accessible but I wouldn't say it's elitist.
In Utah, 30 ski trips per year would be one trip every week that the ski resorts are open. $75/trip isn't bad, but you really have to like skiing to get the price that low.
That's interesting to me because European ski resorts are a bit cheaper, which surprises me a bit.
For context in Avoriaz (a massive ski resort in Frace) a lift pass costs 54 EUR for the day. In Switzerland (not exactly a super cheap place) you can buy a season pass which covers 69 different ski resorts for ~500CHF (something like 568 USD), and I think the Davos, Arosa and Laax ski pass is like 1300 CHF for the year.
In my opinion it has been elitist for the last 20, 30 years.
Compared to to other mountain activities like hiking and spot climbing it's just very expensive to try out/maintain as a hobby.
Of course for me this might be because I'm from the Netherlands and most of the cost are for the trip itself (food, sleeping, travel, et cetera). And not so much about the cost of the gear itself.
As a Californian who "went to the snow" every few years growing up, skiing always felt elitist, and going to The Alps was a "rich people" thing. We were poor, but my immigrant family tried to keep up with the Joneses (which made things worse financially). We did go skiing once or twice because my parents bought into a timeshare in Lake Tahoe, but It was never for me. The people learning to ski and those who did the real slopes were very much not in my league of people.
I can only imagine what it's like in some of the best ski resort/most well-known places.
I prefer sitting inside watching snow fall with hot cocoa or playing in the snow at the bottom of the hill, or sledding.