Bored with
your boards?

Older snow sports enthusiasts find other thrills at diversifying resorts

Smashing down mogul fields all day long sounds great to skiers and boarders in their 20s.

Get into your late 30s and 40s and those physical poundings are still fun, but the wear and tear can be daunting.

When each succeeding day on the slopes begins with increasing doses of Advil, it doesn’t take long for older skiers and boarders to start looking around for alternatives.

Surveys show older skiers aren’t giving up their rigorous sport - the lifestyle it signifies remains important to them even though their stamina flags. Besides, they often have kids of their own who are plying the same runs snowboards.

Amazing as it might sound, boredom may be a factor. Those who have been skiing for decades, often on the same slopes, may get that “been there, done that” feeling.

sleigh rideSki areas, increasingly called “mountain resorts” as a compromise nod to the growing hordes of snowboarders, have been catering to older, more affluent skiers for decades by offering plusher accommodations, better restaurants, more shopping and expanded facilities and services to care for children.

They’re also offering other things to do. Active older adults are joining younger ones in trying ski jumping, snowshoeing and even ice climbing (one of the most dangerous sports in the world).

Even family activities like sledding and tobogganing have been enjoying a renaissance.

Let’s take a look at some of the snowy activities that don’t involve riding chair lifts and navigating groomed runs, working from easy to difficult:

Sleigh rides and dog sleds. They sound nostalgic but they’re a great way to unwind in the winter environment. Feel the wind on your face as you dash across the “tundra” bundled on a dog sled between a musher and several muscular mutts.

The Big Mountain outside Whitefish, MT, has a nice twist on the traditional sleigh ride with a stop at a forest tent camp run by cowboys, who welcome visitors with warm drinks, cowboy poetry and lasso-twirling lessons.

Three-fourths of the mountain resorts in Colorado offer sleigh rides and half have dogsled rides.

SnowmobilingSnowmobiling is the Indy 500 of winter sports. These machines are noisy and smelly and can be painful to the posterior, but they’re a lot of fun.

Typical snowmobile excursions send escorted packs into isolated woodland settings where riders zoom about, testing their adrenaline supplies.

Many operators at mountain resorts offer guided excursions (there are eight tour operators near the mountain resorts of central Utah alone). One of the most interesting places to ride is Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming as well as Grand Targhee across the border in Idaho and Big Sky in southwest Montana.

Skating is an old reliable. Many larger resorts maintain a rink as an afterthought, but two of the best are Chateau Lake Louise’s rink on Alberta’s beautiful Lake Louse, which has its own sculpted ice castle every winter; and High Camp Olympic Ice Pavilion on a mountaintop that is reached by Squaw Valley’s tram and looks down upon beautiful Lake Tahoe.

Nordic or cross-country skiing has enjoyed a steady rebound, especially among women (who outnumber men as participants in the sport). Some trail associations, such as the Tenth Mountain Division hut system in central Colorado, have created hut-to-hut routes for multiple-day outings.

Snowshoes. Strap on a pair and no place is out of reach in the winter. New designs with foot pivots allow snow hikers to tackle almost any hill or valley. Resorts increasingly incorporate snowshoe rental into their mix, offering hikers a ride up the hill on their chair lifts and a variety of nature walks, complete with directional and informational signs, that zigzag through forest areas between runs for relatively easy and entertaining downhill strolls.

Bobsledding and ski jumping are winter’s versions of NASA space launches. Vail has a recreational mid-mountain run, and the Olympic complexes in Calgary, Alberta, and Park City, UT, offers rides on the same courses used in their Winter Games. Not crazy enough? They’ll also let you take a luge down the course in Calgary if you have nerves of steel.

Still not crazy enough? Try the even wilder, head-first belly-down version of the luge called a skeleton.

Park City’s Olympic complex even offers training in ski jumping.

Ice climbingIce climbing is not for the faint of heart or tentative of step. It has some definite pluses and minuses. Brandishing nasty-looking crampons with spiky metal toes and sophisticated ice axes, one can “walk” up walls of ice, often frozen waterfalls.

A guide goes up first, periodically drilling channels in the ice through which safety lines are threaded. A belay counterweight system is used as in rock climbing.

The main peril comes from above, usually, as ice, rocks and other heavy things crash down the steep pitches. Telluride, CO, and nearby Ouray’s box canyon are famous for their ice climbing terrain, as is the Ice Fields Highway in Alberta.

Copyright Gary Olson 2010.. First published in The Arizona Republic.