Rather than tourists, we all want to see ourselves as cool vagabond skiers, but if you take a look at the definition of tourism by the World Tourism Organization (UWTO) from 1991, it´s pretty clear that we´re all tourists when we travel to ski: “the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year.” Small, remotely located ski area with just a couple of t-bars – every “real skiers” dream? Location: Kirovsk, Russia. At the same time the tourists, who obviously know nothing about skiing, horde the big well-known mega resorts. On his or her holiday the ripper travels the globe in search of the next Valley X – a secluded place with as little skiers as possible: India, Japan, Iceland, Greenland, Kamchatka, or better yet – Antarctica. According to the fable, there are also two distinctively different breed of people within the sport: one is the real skier, able to rip up any slope or spin off any booter, the other is the loathed tourist – a kook who can barely stay upright in the lift queue.Īs a norm, when choosing a ski area, the real skier skis mostly cares about attributes like vertical and snow-record and chooses to ski in small ski areas with very little amenities – the fewer and older the lifts, the more street-cred it has. Although exaggerated a little, this is the lore that has been passed on to skiers by the ski media for years. Little ski areas rock, the mom-and-pop owned operations are keeping it real, saving the sport of skiing from McDonaldization by the evil empire, that the big ski resort corporations present.

The lore of real skiers and small ski areas that rock

Ahmet dadali bio