When Vivian Perez was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago as a first-generation Mexican American, sledding was the extent of her winter sports experience. Her parents weren’t raised with snow, so they couldn’t teach her skiing or snowboarding.
Perez didn’t even entertain those activities as possibilities during her youth, which revolved around academics and helping her parents support her brother, who has nonverbal autism.
“Our focus was elsewhere,” Perez said. “It was more like, when are we visiting family in Mexico? Who is picking up my brother? Who is taking me to my extracurricular activities?”
But this winter, she will hit the slopes for the first time — thanks to an annual program that provides more than two dozen women of color with a free Ikon Pass, season-long ski or snowboard rentals, and a half-day lesson.
Winter sports enthusiasts tend to be overwhelmingly white, with that group making up 88% of participants, according to this year’s demographic study by the National Ski Areas Association. The second-largest groups are Latinos and a combined population of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — both at 6%. African Americans represent 1% of participants. (Those surveyed had the option to choose more than one ethnicity.)
Downhill snow sports participants are also still mostly male, at 62%, the study reports.
But changes are afoot in Colorado’s ski towns. In recent years, Vail Resorts has set the intention of elevating women into leadership roles at the corporate and executive levels, as well as at resorts statewide. Organizations like the BIPOC Mountain Collective and the National Brotherhood of Skiers are welcoming people of color to the mountains.
And SheJumps, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit group, is seeking to do the same through its Ikon Pass Scholarship for Women of Color. Perez, 32, first came across an Instagram ad for the program while making content for her herbal apothecary, Magia Botanica.
With tempered expectations, she applied.
“I don’t have these opportunities often — or at all,” the Denver resident said. “I just want to see what everyone’s raving about.”
Once Perez was chosen as a scholarship recipient, preparations for the upcoming ski season soon began. Last month, she visited Christy Sports in Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood to pick up her Burton snowboard rental for the season.
While shopping, “complete imposter syndrome just sets in,” she said. “I was just (a) deer in the headlights.”
Still, Perez is ready to start learning. She even convinced a friend to join her — as she put it, “I’m already motivating others to try things that maybe they didn’t think they would ever want to try.”
Perez hopes to overcome her fear and get comfortable on her snowboard by next spring.
“I still remember my little-kid self, who didn’t know what sledding was,” she said. “And now here I am, 32 years old, saying: ‘You know what, let’s go snowboarding.’ ”
Drawing people into new outdoor experiences
SheJumps helps more than 4,000 women and girls, along with nonbinary people, through its outdoor programs each year. The Ikon Pass program awards 30 annual scholarships while drawing hundreds of applications. This year, seven Colorado residents were among those chosen.
Claire Smallwood, the executive director and co-founder of SheJumps, has made it her mission to diversify the slopes. The 17-year-old nonprofit started the Ikon scholarship program in 2019 after receiving a private donation of eight passes.
“We could give those passes to anyone we wanted, and we thought: ‘Well, who’s the most excluded from the demographic of people that are going skiing?’ ” said Smallwood, 39. “With our mission focus, we decided it was women of color.”
SheJumps now works institutionally with Alterra Mountain Co., which owns the Ikon Pass, on the initiative. In total, 106 scholarships have been awarded.
In Colorado Springs, the nonprofit Blackpackers aims to serve underrepresented communities by teaching outdoor skills like wilderness first aid, providing low-cost or free gear and excursions, and creating networking opportunities in the outdoor industry.
Among its programs, the group has partnered with Arapahoe Basin for four years to extend free lift tickets, half-day lessons, gear and clothing to participants in ski and ride days. Between 300 and 400 people sign up every year, though Blackpackers can take only up to 70 per day.
The organization planned to host ski and ride days on Dec. 21 and April 12.
Blackpackers is the brainchild of executive director Patricia Cameron, who founded it as a club in 2017 after her first backpacking trip. She invited friends on adventures, but they couldn’t afford the gear. So Cameron saved her overtime pay as an EMT to build up a collection of used gear.
“I created it to fill a need and be a part of my community,” she said.
Growing up as a Black woman in Maryland, the outdoors were familiar to her. She recalls family reunions hosted outside with food and activities. But she notes that the definition of “outdoorsy” has shifted over the years.
“We’ve always been going outdoors, especially recreating,” Cameron said. “Outdoor adventure is where most people kind of draw the barrier.”
For the broader Black community, one hurdle in trying winter sports is tied to the historic challenge of accessing wealth, such as loans, at the same rate as their white counterparts, Cameron said. This systemic wealth gap doesn’t encourage Black people to shell out hundreds of dollars to attempt skiing or snowboarding for the first time, Cameron said.
And they still face discrimination, even in the wilderness. Sometimes, it’s in the form of microaggressions, and, at other times, it’s overt racism, Cameron said. For example, when hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022, Cameron was told by a stranger that she didn’t belong there.
“That’s what can make the experience so tough,” Cameron said.
“Historically excluded from these sports”
Mma Ikwut-Ukwa, 26, didn’t spend her youth in Pennsylvania doing outdoor activities with her family. It wasn’t until her undergraduate years as an astrophysics major at Harvard University that she went camping for the first time. The experience inspired her to join a backpacking club and start leading trips herself.
Ikwut-Ukwa moved west after college to work in the outdoor industry. Now on a break from her doctorate program in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, she’s made Colorado her home for over a year, working backpacking trips and teaching wilderness medicine.
She learned about SheJumps’ Ikon Pass program on Instagram and applied. Earlier in the fall, Ikwut-Ukwa was selected.
“I’ve been wanting to learn how to ski or snowboard for so long, but it’s just so hard to get into,” said Ikwut-Ukwa, who lives in Estes Park. “The scholarship breaks down a lot of the main barriers to doing it.”
She highlighted major challenges including the staggering costs associated with snowboarding and the lack of mentorship available to marginalized people on the mountains, including herself as a Black woman.
People of color — “having been historically excluded from these sports,” Ikwut-Ukwa said — often don’t have the easy access that can be facilitated by friends who lend gear and offer tips.
But now she can put the money she’s saved through the scholarship toward more lessons.
Since picking up her GNU-brand snowboard rental last month, Ikwut-Ukwa has already hit the slopes at Eldora Mountain Resort. Her free snowboarding lesson is booked at Winter Park, and she hopes to make the trek to Steamboat Ski Resort — also on the Ikon Pass.
She’s looking forward to making progress and spending time with friends. Her long-term goal is to master backcountry skiing or splitboarding, which involves using a halved snowboard to climb uphill, then reattaching the halves to ride downhill.
Ikwut-Ukwa is excited — and keeping her schedule open for shredding.
“I have so many days that I can get out and go skiing this season,” she said.
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