KING OF THE HILL

Peace will settle over the Middle East. An Oscar will go to Pauly Shore. Pete Rose will be hired as commissioner of baseball.

And still snowboarders and skiers, wintertime’s version of Cain and Abel, will have less than warm and fuzzy feelings for one another.

To many snowboarders, skiers are uptight and pompous snobs, suburbanites intent on hogging every flake of snow on the mountain for themselves.

“Our problems are with the older skiers who have been out there for God knows how long,” said Todd Burnes, a snowboarder and employee of Val Surf in Woodland Hills. “They always thought it was their mountain to rule, and they’re going to be bullheaded about it even though everyone can see how much fun snowboarding looks. Maybe it’s jealousy or envy.”

But to many skiers, snowboarders are nothing more than a bunch of blank-faced slackers who are a step down the evolutionary ladder from skateboarders. Snowboarders, skiers say, run into you on the slopes and then again in the lift lines. Anyone expecting an apology should forget it--they aren’t going to get one.

“Snowboarders are a different [read: lower] class of people,” said a skier who works at an L.A. snowboard shop. “They’re up from the streets, heading to the mountains and no one can stop them because, let’s face it, they’re the wave of the future.”

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Snowboarding and skiing, now more than ever, are being forced to coexist. In this coming ski season, all but a handful of the major western resorts will not only allow, but welcome, snowboarding.

This is a far cry from a decade ago, when snowboarding was still largely an outlaw sport. But check out the numbers:

Between 1987 and 1996, the number of snowboarders in the U.S. grew exponentially from less than half a million to 3.2 million, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturer’s Assn.

At the same time, the number of skiers in the U.S. remained stagnant, hovering around 13 million.

But the really telling statistic, the one that reveals why many snowboarders and skiers would prefer the other group vanish, is this: Half of today’s skiers are older than 25 years old while 95% of snowboarders are less than 24 years old.

Or, to put it another way, a shredder might wake up, drink a couple of beers for breakfast and still manage to be on the mountain early enough to make first tracks. The skier, meanwhile, might sip a cappuccino and check a mutual fund portfolio on the business page before finally packing the family into the new Pathfinder and heading off to the slopes.

Part of the problem is that skiing and snowboarding represent two different body languages and styles.

Consider the physics of a snowboard. It can go virtually in any direction, allowing riders to be creative. It’s loud. Big air can be had. There are still new moves to discover.

“Snowboarding is one of the [most fun] things you can do,” said Burnes of Val Surf. “That’s why 90% of the people who get on snowboards will never go back to skiing. I first got on a snowboard when I was 8 and I know I’m not going back.”

But, even though many shredders see their boards as a symbol of freedom, skiers see just the opposite. Skiers see snowboarders wearing the same gangsta-inspired clothes, listening to the same thrasher tunes and talking the same talk.

And the skiers laugh because the snowboard phenomenon seems to be more the result of a clever marketing campaign, rather than anything to do with individualism and freedom. Even Burnes said, “I ride for myself, not because other people want me to.”

Of course, the snowboarders laugh right back because, to them, most skiers on the slopes are lumbering dinosaurs, lacking anything remotely resembling skill or grace. Innovations to the sport, snowboarders will say, are largely equipment oriented and don’t really add up to diddly. After all, a ski slalom in 1997 doesn’t look all that different from one in 1967.

Nevertheless, skiing is a big business and most resorts politely kept snowboarding at bay until it became abundantly clear that they couldn’t afford not having the snowboarders around.

Park City Ski Area, in the words of marketing director Charlie Lansche, “caved in this year” to snowboarders. “We bill ourselves as a family resort and with more and more youths taking up snowboarding and snowboarding becoming more mainstream, it became clear to us there was an opportunity we were missing,” Lansche said.

Snow Summit, at Big Bear, has pursued snowboarders more aggressively than most resorts, building a freestyle park from the top of the mountain to the bottom, along with a half-pipe. Several years ago, Snow Summit even began publishing separate brochures for skiers and snowboarders. It was a winning strategy: Last year, 50% of all customers at Snow Summit were snowboarders, according to director of marketing Chris Riddle.

“We probably lost a certain small segment of hard core skiers,” Riddle said. “But the snowboarders are now largely accepted and they’ve been assimilated into the mountain culture.”

Assimilated. Think about it. In most sci-fi movies, a common strategy for aliens is to first assimilate themselves into their new world--and then conquer it.

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In an effort to lure more people back to skiing, the industry last year introduced parabolic skis, which make it easier to carve and turn.

It hasn’t quite worked yet. While a lot of skis were sold, there is no evidence that the shaped skis brought a significant number of new skiers to the sport.

Meanwhile, skiers are getting older. So are children of the baby boom of the late 1980s. And, today’s snowboarders have yet to have little shredders of their own.

Thus, the million-dollar question: Will tomorrow’s children pick up a snowboard or skis?

“When something like skiing gets older, it gets harder to maintain and keep going,” said Kevin Kennair, the editorial director of Snowboard Life magazine. “But surfing and skateboarding, the roots of snowboarding, have a tradition of being something you do your whole life. Maybe it’s because those sports identify with youth and as people get older it gives them something to live for. Snowboarding allows people to be free again and to have some fun.

Said Kennair: “Snowboarding is like a virus--and it definitely spreads.”