Has Skiing Become Too Complicated?

As usual, I arrived at Montana Snowbowl late, maneuvering my car through the mostly empty, dust-caked parking lot. The forecast hinted that the upper mountain might be skiing well, but it was late in the season, and the rest of Missoula had moved on to different, more seasonally appropriate pass times. The lift line for the Grizzly Chair was desolate.

From there, I sped to LaVelle, where I found—surprise!—that the forecast hadn’t lied for once this season. Unrestrained by the crowds you might find elsewhere, I lapped, and lapped, and lapped.

I likely wouldn’t have had this privilege if my current local was a major ski area, where powder frenzies can quickly turn into Jerry of the Day’s next viral clip. You’ve seen the videos: a freakishly long lift line that stretches towards the horizon—or the nearest highway—whatever comes first.

Strategies to amend these crises vary, but they share a few commonalities. They tend to make skiing more inconvenient—think resort reservations and dynamic pricing—and initially piss off skiers (many have come to appreciate reservation systems), sometimes more so than the crowds themselves. But the hard truth is this: operating like it was still 2000 would turn major resorts into skier-choked nightmares that rival Taylor Swift concerts in sheer human density.

No one, including on-the-ground ski resort managers, seems to love the situation we’ve found ourselves in. Sure, there’s probably a venture capitalist in New York that’s laughing their way to the bank. But your ski hill’s social media person isn’t gleefully posting about parking reservation policies on Instagram. They’re doing their job, and getting flamed by the internet at large isn’t their favorite part.

Against this backdrop, the halcyon days loom large. You can sense mourning in the outcry against overcrowding and ensuing attempts to tame it, particularly among those old enough to have seen skiing change.

Beneath the frustration, many skiers pine for something that, at many resorts, is now an oxymoron: cheap tickets, uncrowded slopes, and the flexibility to call up a friend on a snowy mid-winter Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and say, “Hey, I know it’s late, but do you want to go skiing today?” Skiing, they posit, used to be simple.

Those living in skiing hubs now operate like master tacticians. When the news of an impending storm hits, they marshal their resources, securing rides, refreshing parking reservation web pages, and checking forecasts. After the post-pandemic ski traffic upswing, skiers and resorts have learned to contort themselves to a new normal, but not without one eye firmly trained on what once was.

Yes, you can jet off to the backcountry, but we’ve become accustomed to the ease of riding chairlifts. Skiing is unique in the action sports world. Unlike skateboarding or surfing, a vast majority of its participants rely on enormous pieces of infrastructure that would make F.D.R. giddy.

Every avid surfer is familiar with heading into nature unassisted; the same isn’t—and probably never will be—true for skiers. Backcountry skiing remains a niche within a niche. Resorts and their sprawling chairlift networks are encoded in our D.N.A.

The dream of no crowds and sleepy two-seaters isn’t dead, though. It’s a cliche, I know, but skiing’s relaxed, freewheeling soul lives on.

You hear that word thrown around a lot—soul—particularly in conversations about little mom-and-pop ski areas which, in defiance of the resort industry’s broader modern arc, remain inexpensive and uncrowded.

They’re the gold standard—the rare unicorns that operate the “right” way—but they’re almost contradictions, existing in a delicate liminal space of smaller operational footprints and less-trafficked geographic locations.

Their oft-lauded playbooks couldn’t be replicated elsewhere. Well, they could, but I think we all know how $45 lift tickets and no reservations would end during a mid-season powder day at a resort along the I-70 corridor. Supply and demand win again.

Each year, I return home to Washington from Montana for the holidays. Hitting my old haunts is always part of the plan, but during my initial return trips, I was naive, spoiled by the lax approach I’d taken to skiing in Missoula.

Suddenly, I needed to check several boxes before I went skiing. Advance tickets? Check. Parking reservations? Done. Alarm for God knows when? Set. Everything had changed so fast. Even with a strict playbook, we still dealt with lines and traffic.

But one day, after a storm, the crew headed for the edge of the side-country, stacking up above a cliff that we used to hit when we were 16 in the hopes that our somewhat secret stash would prevail. The play paid off.

Aside from our nervous murmurings—we now had to think about health insurance before going airborne—it was quiet, if only for a few blissful moments.

Like an old flame, skiing's magnetism was once again enough to make the complications worth it. The things we do for love.

Related: May Blizzard Intensifying, Multiple Feet of Snow Forecasted Across The West

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