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Sometimes the value of a ski area isn’t measured in its terrain, but in the support it receives.

The Ski Bowl at Mulligan’s Hollow is in Grand Haven, Michigan, perhaps two miles from Lake Michigan.

You won’t confuse the ski bowl for Vail or Stowe or even the typical Midwestern ski area. At just seven acres, it’s smaller than the parking lots at major destination resorts.

Even a slow double chair would be outsized. The bowl, which has six named slopes, is served by five tow ropes. The longest slope is 700 feet–about the length of two Wal-Mart or Target stores.

On the upside, there’s another small dimension: A season pass is $65. You can take lessons as well as develop your skills in slalom racing or in freestyle snowboarding or skiing.

You can also develop your muscles in civic participation by supporting the bowl, which has depended, in part, on the local Rotary, volunteer workers, area businesses, and the local community foundation.

Recently supporters held Burgers on the Bowl, one of several fundraising events that has helped pay for lighting, snow-making equipment, and a groomer.

The bowl has seen its share of financial difficulties through the years:

The city opened the Ski Bowl in December 1963, but the facility closed in the late 1970s because the city had higher priorities at the time than to repair the aging ski hill equipment. Several residents and supporters stepped in and raised money to reopen the Ski Bowl in 1981.

The adjacent Tri-Cities Family YMCA took over the operation in the early 1990s, which may have kept it from being closed down again. The YMCA ran it until 2005 when its own budget constraints became an issue, and the city took it over again. That’s when the group — many of whom were already involved in the support of the ski facility over the years — stepped up and asked to take over the operations.

By the way, the bowl is the ski “area” closest to Muskegon, the home of the Snurfer, the predecessor of today’s snowboard.

They’re be a party on the mountain tonight, and perhaps some snowboarding, too.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CU0VAAtpK8]

In New Hampshire, for example, Gunstock will offer skiing and riding until midnight, along with smores, jugglers, and music.

In Minnesota, the wheels will be turning at Afton Alps until midnight.

A number of Colorado resorts have events tonight, though most are of the non-skiing or riding variety. Beaver Creek, for example, will have a “glow-worm ski down from the top of the Buckaroo Express gondola.”

Northstar-at-Tahoe calls its event Fire & Ice. It features music and skating, but no skiing.

Many (perhaps most) areas don’t have night skiing or riding, and those that do may close the lifts at 9pm or even 8. At Squaw Valley, for example, skiing and riding end at 8:30 night. But a few–perhaps most commonly in the Midwest, where ski areas depend on evening customers–will let you ride until midnight.

Just two cautions: Be prepared for evening temperatures, and don’t drive–your car or your board–intoxicated.

Whenever the topic of bad behavior by the part of snowboarders comes up, you may hear someone point out that it’s an activity populated by young boys and teenaged boys, two groups not often thought of as models of politeness. In other words, the bad attitudes that some people see in snowboarding isn’t unique to snowboarding, but instead lies in its largest demographic.

Over the last few days I’ve been looking at some surveys conducted by the National Sporting Goods Association, and I thought of ways to test this theory. One of the NSGA surveys offers a gender breakdown for various sports, and for each sex, the median age of participants.

Of the 46 activities in the report, only nine are numerically dominated by women. They are: aerobic exercising, exercise walking, exercising with equipment, in-line roller skating, lacrosse, swimming, volleyball, working out at a club, and yoga.

Another nine favor men, though only slightly. They are: bicycle riding, camping, hiking, kayaking, running/jogging, scooter riding [what’s that?], cross-country skiing, softball, and tennis.

In the rest of the activities, men outnumber women, sometimes by very large numbers. Over 70 percent of the participants in the following activities are males 7 and up: archery, baseball, tackle football, golf, ice hockey, hunting (both firearms and bow and arrow), muzzleloading, paintball, skateboarding, target shooting, wrestling, and yes, snowboarding. Downhill skiing, for what it’s worth, is moderately though not overwhelmingly male, at about 60 percent.

It should also be no surprise that some activities have younger participants than others. The median age of the male golfer, for example, is 41.5 years. The median skateboarder is 16.3 years old. For snowboarding, the number is 21.6. (All numbers are from the 2007 survey.)

Are there any sports that resemble snowboarding in being both primarily male and beyond that, primarily young male? Perhaps one that has the same “bad boy” rap that snowboarding sometimes carries. So I looked for sports in which males made up 73.5 percent of participants, for whom the median age was 21.6 years, plus or minus 5 percent for both numbers.

Only one met both criteria: baseball. Does that tell us anything? I’m not sure. Baseball is a team activity, and the demands of being on a team may promote certain kinds of behavior that an individual activity doesn’t.

Three other activities came close on the percentage of male participants: golf, skateboarding, and target shooting. I don’t very little about target shooting, but when you consider golf and skateboarding, it would seem that age does play a significant role in setting the reputation of the activity and those who practice it.

Lacrosse players and inline skaters were on average the same age as snowboarders, but women were much more represented, with each activity nearly split down the middle on the gender line. To pose what may be the closest analogy in this whole comparison, do inline skaters carry the same rap among casual cyclists as snowboarders do among some segments of the skiing public? In both cases, enthusiasts use different technology in the same space.

Finally, the median age of participants in wrestling and paintball (individual activities) was similar to that of snowboarding, though much more male-dominated.

Rather than engage in further sociological speculation, I’ll leave it here for now. If you have any thoughts on this, please leave a comment.

Periodically I get e-mail from people–usually middle-school students, it seems–looking for information on the number of people who snowboard.

It’s hard to get definitive answers. Much of the information is from surveys taken by trade associations. Since the associations want to offer their research as a membership benefit, they are sometimes cautious about distributing their findings free of charge, and may give away some but not of the information you’re interested in. Further, different associations use different measuring tools, meaning that the results may not line up from survey to survey. Finally, the associations don’t always ask the kinds of questions you’d like answers to.

With those limitations in mind, today I’ll review a few findings from the National Sporting Goods Association.

Total number of riders nearing number of downhill skiers

First, the National Sporting Goods Association says, in its 10-year survey, that snowboarding is on an upward trend. It estimates the number of people, age 7 and up, who engage in a whole host of activities, ranging from aerobic exercise to yoga, at least twice in a year.

Here are the numbers for snowboarders:

YEAR … Participants (millions)
1998 … 3.6
2000 … 4.3
2002 … 5.6
2004 … 6.6
2006 … 5.2
2008 … 5.9

Despite snowboarding’s legacy as a “hot” or “sexy” sport, it draws a fairly limited number of people. There are many more people engaged in walking for exercise (96.6 million), bowling (49.5 million), and golf (25.6 million), among other activities. Among board sports, skateboarding draws more participants (9.8 millions), while surfing isn’t mentioned.

Among snow sports, downhill skiing is the biggest sport (6.5 million). Cross-country skiing (1.6 million) lags far behind both downhill skiing and snowboarding.

One interesting finding is that snowboarding is drawing closer to skiing in popularity. In 1998, there were 2,139 skiers for every 1,000 snowboarders. In 2008, that ratio has dropped significantly, with only 1,102 skiers for every 1,000 skiers. In 2004, the number of snowboarders was actually greater the number of skiers, though that may have been a statistical anomaly.

One fact to point out is that it’s possible for a person to participate in snowboarding, downhill skiing, and cross-country skiing.

Snowboarding still a niche sport among 45 to 54-year olds

How many of those snowboarders are 40 and up? The NSGA doesn’t provide those numbers. Instead, it provides estimates of the number of 45 to 54-year olds engaging in various sports, both in 1997 and 2008.

While the number of snowboarders in this age range increased 34 percent, its growth was far behind that of skateboarding, which at 243 percent was the fastest-growing of the 36 sports listed. (Snowboarding was 21st.)

In 2008, there were 146,000 snowboarders aged 45 to 54. That’s less than the number of people playing basketball (1.6 million), hockey (228,000) and even tackle football (275,000), though more than the number of skateboarders (127,000). Snowboarding is still a niche activity within this age group.

Snowboarding is still dominated by boy and young men

Overall, snowboarding is predominately a male activity, according to the NSGA report, “2007 – 2002 Participation by Mean Age – Male & Female.” The report, which measures participants 7 and up, says that in 2007, 74 percent of snowboarders were men or boys, with a median age of 21.6 years old. The median age of female participants was even lower, at 18.8 years. By comparison, 61 percent of downhill skiers were men or boys, with an average age of 33.6. The median age for females was actually higher, at 35.8.

In the ski world, Jeannie Thoren conducts clinics for women, as a representative of Dynastar. (I met Thoren a few years ago, and wrote a few words about my visit.)

Would women benefit from gender-specific snowboards and bindings? Thoren (who has tried riding a time or two) said yes. I don’t know enough about the design or physics of either bindings or boards to have an informed opinion.

But one thing I do believe is that you’ve got to have something that’s not just simply “pinked up.”

Last winter I received a press kit from ski-doo USA, one of the leading manufacturers of snowmobiles. A description of one of the company’s helmets had this groaner: “Women riders will also be drawn to the pink version of the new” helmet.

Really? I know plenty of women who like pink, but many who don’t. It will take more than “pinking up” to reach women.

But to get back to snowboarding, here’s a question for the ladies: Have you tried women’s snowboards or bindings? Do you see any value in them? If so, how does the gender-specific nature of the gear help you?

Some people take lessons, while others try it out on their own. How about you?

Feel free to leave a comment.

Sugar Bowl, a resort in the Lake Tahoe area, is offering a “Senior’s All Mountain Alpine Ski Adventure.” The camp, which comes in two-day and three-day versions, offers three hours of coaching and three hours of instruction each day. Video analysis is also available.

Despite the use of the word “ski,” snowboarders are welcome to join. The site doesn’t say whether snowboarders will be grouped together but with their own instructors, or whether they will have parallel sessions.

It’s common for professional athletes to change their roles as they age. George Blanda was an NFL quarterback who became primarily a kicker. As a result, he played 26 years in a league where the average career is only 3.5 seasons. In Major League Baseball, the designated hitter position, to quote Tony Gwynn, “allows older players to play a few more years.” Tennis players, for their part, can extend their careers by moving from singles to doubles matches.

Competitive snowboarding, too, may have a new career path for its old veterans, though as is the case with most sports at the highest level, “old” is relative.

Ross Powers won a bronze medal in the halfpipe competition of the 1998 Olympics–a distant era in the world of snowboarding. He went on to win gold at subsequent Olympic and World Cup events.

Now, Powers may compete in the 2010 Olympics. He just won’t do it in the halfpipe. He’s running in snowboard cross, which is something like a track meet on snowboards, with elbow jabs expected. He placed third in a recent qualifying event, in Telluride, Colorado.

According to the Ski Channel, Powers was inspired to take up snowboard cross while he was an alternate in halfpipe at the 2006 games: “I grew up doing a little of everything, racing gates, doing freestyle. In 2006, I was the alternate in the halfpipe, went over to Torino, watched these guys do snowboardcross, and I was fired up about it.”

Since Powers started snowboarding at age 9, he’s not exactly someone in my target audience–people who take up snowboarding after age 30. After all, he is … 30. But it’s good to see him adapt and succeed. I’m looking forward to seeing him race next year.

Earlier today I noted that whoever is running the official Facebook fan page for Welch Village wasn’t, to put it politely, using it well.

I just looked at the page a few minutes and noticed a few other choice items. For example, on December 7, a fan asked “Any more runs open today???” The official reply was “What does the snow report on our website say?”

I’ve been an Internet/e-mail user long enough to know that it’s hard to infer someone’s emotional state from the written word alone, but as I read it, that response conveys boredom, contempt, or both.

On December 8, in response to someone’s question, Welch replied “We will post the weekend outlook by Thursday. We should have about 20 runs or so.” That was a fine response. Then shortly after, the Welch Facebook person added, “I’m sure someone will ask why we won’t have more…”

Get snippy with your customers much?

On December 9, the tone continued to be less than responsive. In response to the question, “What’s your guys plan for opening runs?,” the Welch Facebook manager answered “We plan to open more.”

A better response, of course, would be something like “We’re aiming to open runs X and Y first,” or “We want to open these kinds of runs first” or even “Everything depends on the weather, but we think we can have all the runs covered in ___ days if all goes well.” Instead, the Facebook manager appears to have let the negative attitudes of a few people goad him (or her) into adopting a surly attitude.

And now for the fact that drove me to write this post: Someone at Welch Village has apparently removed some of the nasty back-and-forth exchanges that were previously on the fan page. In one exchange, someone said, in effect, “Hey, why are you insulting your customers?” That’s exactly what I thought. Even if your customers deserve to be insulted, you shouldn’t do it. Nor should you enter into new media if you’re going to whitewash history.

Wouldn’t you know it. Just after I criticize Welch Village for its surly attitude towards its (surly) Facebook fans, it comes out with an informative tidbit that gives us all a behind-the-scenes peek: “Snowmaking Science 101: Our fans might find this interesting. So far this winter, we have converted just over 35 million gallons of water into snow. That converts into just over 4 feet of snow coverig 160 acres of slopes. And…we are not done yet!”

Now that’s a positive interaction with your fans.

It really is remarkable what ski areas are able to do with the ever-advancing technologies involved in making snow. In the Midwest, we buy lift tickets not only so we can ride to the top of the hill, but so we can have snow when nature doesn’t cooperate.