How Black ski groups are promoting camaraderie and inclusion in the industry

Finley, co-founder of the NBS, said resorts should focus on offering internships to students at historically Black colleges to attract young people to work in the ski industry. Photos: AP

Ben Finley’s first exposure to skiing was comical in any telling. He was on a date to Yosemite National Park, California, the United States, in 1963 with a woman who, on the way home, suggested they visit the ski area in the park.

Finley is from Harlem, New York, and had never seen a ski slope, but he accepted the challenge and the two stopped at Badger Pass.

“The first thing that went through my mind was dollar bills and broken legs, in that sequence,” he said with a laugh recently in Snowmass, where he was socialising with members during the annual National Brotherhood of Skiers (NBS) Summit.

“We’re sitting out there at the bottom of the mountain, having margaritas in the warm California sun, watching white folks kill themselves coming down the mountain – and she says to me, ‘I want to learn how to ski'.”

A decade later, Finley helped organise the NBS, a group that for nearly 50 years, has helped other people find their way to the mountain, in part by helping them learn how to ski, and by offering membership and long-term friendship through the brotherhood’s many local ski groups across the country.

“We were basically introducing Black America to the sport of skiing at a very, very local level, where you could go out and recruit people using social techniques,” said 83-year-old Finley, a skier for 57 years.

“It tended to bring people together, and we transmitted that to the ski slope, and from there, we can now find money to support the National Brotherhood of Skiers.”

The brotherhood group now comprises 54 independent ski clubs scattered across America and has grown from 350 people at inception to about 5,000 members of highly skilled, predominantly Black skiers and snowboarders who descend annually on a single mountain to celebrate their unique presence in the ski and snowboarding industry.

The annual NBS summit is rooted in socialising and having a good time on the slopes, but the gathering also promotes a message that skiing should be open to all, at a time where many Colorado leaders are working to diversify the sport.

The skiing and snowboarding industry has historically been dominated by white and male participants, but industry leaders in Colorado are ramping up efforts to bring, especially, first-time skiers and snowboarders of colour to their mountains.

Many factors contributed to the lack of diversity in the snow sports industry. The sport has historically been advertised to white participants. Many buildings at ski resorts are named after white men.

The sport is expensive, which can exclude people of colour, who are disproportionately affected by the racial wealth gap, said Hannah Berman, senior manager of sustainability and philanthropy for Aspen Skiing Company, the parent company of all four mountains in the Roaring Fork Valley: Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass.

“There are so many components that most white people don’t notice,” Berman said. “When you don’t see someone that looks like you in our advertising or on our Instagram, you don’t necessarily know that you’re welcome or that you’re supposed to be there, if you’re not represented.”

At Aspen Snowmass, during the 2020-2021 ski season, 87% of skiers were white, 11% were Hispanic or Latino, around 4% were Asian, 1% were Black and 1% were Native American, according to survey results provided by a leader at Aspen Skiing Company.

Bryson became the first woman president of the NBS in 1994.

Retaining diversity

Finley hated skiing the first four times he went, but the fifth time, it clicked. He kept practising, and joined a club with other Black skiers who care just as much about the sport, before co-founding a Southern California ski and snowboard club called the 4 Seasons West, one of the 54 independent ski clubs under the Brotherhood’s umbrella.

Diversifying skiing and educating the public about the brotherhood has become a major part of Finley’s life. Access to the brotherhood gives people an opportunity to experience a different part of life and allows them to contribute to a cause that should run across the entire Black community, he said.

The current demographic makeup of skiers does not reflect the current US population and demographic data has not changed much in the ski and snowboarding industry during the last 10 seasons, said Adrienne Saia Isaac, director of marketing and communications for the National Ski Areas Association.

However, more than 30% of beginners and first-time skiers participated during the 2020-2021 ski season, suggesting there’s an opportunity to not only attract but retain a more diverse customer base, she said.

People aged 24 and younger make up the highest share of the US population and they’re the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in American history, claiming the highest share of skier visits during the 2020-2021 ski season, she said.

But adults who were not exposed to outdoor recreation as children are far less likely to participate in outdoor activities as adults, and so it is the job of ski industry philanthropy, marketing and policies to better promote inclusivity, a report by the Outdoor Foundation argues.

To help close the gap, Berman and her colleagues are leading different efforts to increase access by bringing more first-time skiers and snowboarders to their Colorado mountains. After George Floyd was murdered, Aspen Skiing Company owners and leaders decided to focus more efforts on racial justice work.

Aspen Skiing instituted a “school ski days” programme where students are invited to one of the four mountains in the Roaring Fork Valley and learn how to take part in winter sports.

Aspen Skiing Company offers lift tickets and rentals to those students for free and asks schools to pay what they can for students’ lessons at a discounted rate. The company also works with ski groups of colour, like the NBS and Ski Noir in Denver, to increase access to the sport.

Once those participants are there, industry leaders try their best to retain them, which is tricky, Berman said.

“I’ve gotten the question, ‘Why skiing? There’s so much inequity in society and education and economic opportunity’. And our answer is, because we’re a ski company. We love it. We’ve got problems in society, and we need to rapidly work to tackle educational and economic inequality in society, but that doesn’t mean we can’t drink champagne and be friends with folks on the mountain,” she said. “We need those celebratory moments, too, in skiing or in society.”

Finley, co-founder of the NBS, said resorts should focus on offering internships to students at historically Black colleges to draw in young people who want to work in the ski industry long term.

Naomi Bryson, now 81, learned how to ski when she attended the inaugural Summit in Aspen with a man who would later become her husband. She and her husband attended 48 annual Summit events before he died last year from kidney failure. Before he died, he asked her to continue helping the organisation as it continues to grow.

Bryson became the first woman president of the National Brotherhood in 1994. Years earlier, when she was a board member for the organisation, she fought hard to get the group to descend on Lake Placid in New York.

“This was the best political move we could make – to bring the summit to the East Coast,” she said. “Until then, we were ignoring the East Coast.”

After hearing about the event on the radio, Black skiers who were not a part of the NBS made their way to Lake Placid, some by private planes, to learn more about the group and its goals. After the event, many local chapters sprung up on the East Coast. Many of those people are still members today, Bryson said.

Bryson and Finley have introduced scores of first-time Black skiers and snowboarders to the mountain. But some of those introductions did not come without apprehension.

Neither has personally experienced overt racism while skiing but both described a “plowing” trend that happened to Black friends who are skiers when strangers on skis or snowboards intentionally plow into them on the mountain.

In years past, white skiers or snowboarders at lunch tables or on ski lifts would ask Bryson where she’s from, if she could afford skiing and what she did for professional work. Sometimes, when she would sit down at a lunch table with white people she did not know, they would pick up their belongings and leave the area.

Those experiences made her want to ski more, she said. The climate has improved, Bryson said, as more people of colour join in skiing and snowboarding,

The NBS will celebrate its 50th anniversary at the next summit in 2023 at Vail Ski Resort. While the NBS is working to bolster inclusion of Black people in the skiing industry, Bryson hopes the group will also become more inclusive of people of other races too.

In all his years of skiing, Finley’s best memory is from 1993 in Vail, where the brotherhood held a large event.

“It was 3,000 folks at the bottom of this mountain, at a picnic with the music going, and we had all of the staff there serving the event,” he said. “To see the enthusiasm that came from everybody that walked by that event, Black, white, green or purple, and them all dancing on that snow was powerful.”

His toughest memory is one he is experiencing now. He recently decided to hang up his skis.

“I’ve gotten to the point that I can no longer ski physically,” he said. “That is my worst memory. It’s horrible to look up that hill and know you can’t do it.” – AP