Are We All Skiers Now?

A basic point of many studies in sociology is that groups of people go to great lengths to define themselves. Often this means making up or exaggerating differences with another group. So Group A goes to great lengths to define itself as being different from Group B. This is true even when the group speaks the same language, practices (by and large) the same religion, and so forth.

We see this phenomenon played out in the long-running theme of “skiers versus snowboarders.”

Some snowboarding folks have invested a great deal of energy in defining themselves in opposition to skiers. “We’re NOT skiers,” they insist. They chafe under the fact that in the Winter Olympics, snowboarding is a discipline within the umbrella of skiing. The International Olympic Committee decided to let the FIS (the international ski federation) decide who enters the games as a snowboarder.

I imagine that there is also a dispute within the U.S. Olympic bureaucracy over the distribution of training funds between the snowboarders and the skiers.

So what is the response of an ordinary guy who simply likes to ride, and talk about it?

When I take my gear out to the mountain, what am I’m doing? Am I “going snowboarding” or “going skiing?” Or should I comply with the snowboarding language police, and say that I will be “riding?”

What about my destination, that place with chair lifts, groomed trails, bumps, lodges, and the like? Are they “ski areas?” Or perhaps, in the spirit of inclusion, “ski and snowboard areas?” The latter approach is as clumsy as the “he or she” formulation that sometimes appears in attempts at gender-neutral language.

Here’s another question. Since some of these places seem to have more folks on snowboards than skis, are they actually “snowboard areas?”

Face it, the term “ski and snowboard area” is ungainly. Even worse would be “ski, snowboard, and tubing areas.” Some “ski” areas also offer rides on inner tubes, you know.

I’d say that most of the time, “ski” and its variants is good enough. If someone says “are you going skiing this weekend,” I don’t get indignant. Sometimes the person knows that I’m on a snowboard these days, but they resort to “ski” out of convenience. If they don’t know that, I may something like “yes, but I’ll be taking my snowboard.” I do that to introduce the idea that yes, grown-ups can ride.

I first was a skier for several years before I took up the snowboard, so that’s one reason why the “ski versus snowboard” controversy has all the reality of “professional wrestling” to me. But the reasons to be say “ski” or “ski area” have more to do with ease of communication than anything else.

Ski is one syllable. Snowboard is two syllables. Skiing is two syllables; snowboarding is three.

The term that some folks prefer to describe what happens on a snowboard–riding–is as long as the word skiing, and thus has no advantage in the ease-of-use category. Again, it comes back to that need to be different. Eh, if you wish.

Now there’s one time where the distinction makes a difference, when precision is important, and that’s when you are talking about techniques. In skiing, you make parallel turns. In telemark skiing, you have a free heel. In snowboarding, you alternate between heel and toe edge. And so forth.

Whatever you call it, go out and do it while winter is on.