Time for Change

Vermont is 94 % white and nation-wide, the demographics for skiing and riding remain 88.7 % white. Why is it taking so long to change?

There was a time when skiing wasn’t necessarily expensive or exclusive, it was just what kids in Vermont did after school.

Many of Vermont’s 251 towns had rope-tows or community hills where the rides up were cheap, if not free, and school programs helped ensure that every kid who wanted to had access to gear.

That’s how Bobby Roberts learned to ski in Stowe, as he explains in “Culture Shifters,” on p. 36, and how that led him into the ski industry and becoming a leader in the community.

Some of those school programs are still around and while only a few of the community ski hills remain (as we’ve written about in past issues), more and more backyard rope tows are popping up.

But for those who didn’t (and don’t) live in Vermont and don’t have access to gear or car rides, skiing and riding have remained sports largely for rich, white folks—the demographics don’t lie. And that is a shame, in the most literal sense of the word.

This winter marks 50 years since The National Brotherhood of Skiers gathered its clubs together in Aspen to address issues that were (and are) unique to the Black skiing population. It also marks the third year that Burton has held its Culture Shifters event.

While more and more organizations are working to change the dynamic, it’s up to each of us to make our sports more accessible and more welcoming to all. —Lisa

Lynn, Editor

Contributors

p. 30 p. 14

Kim Brown has skied all Vermont ski areas as well as many private rope tows, something he writes about in this issue. Brown has penned The Ski Bum Corner for The Stowe Reporter since 1985. He also provides architectural services from his Waterbury Center home.

Elsie Lynn Parini is a writer, designer and all-around Swiss Army Knife for her family’s business, The Addison Independent. p. 57

Winter play includes finding sweet pow with her husband Oliver and young kids at the Middlebury Snow Bowl or at Cochran’s.

Rich Holschuh chairs the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs and is a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Elnu Abenaki. Holschuh is founder and co-director of the Atowi Project and resides in Wantastegok (Brattleboro).