Graying Membership Puts a Chill on Ski Clubs

Like tens of thousands of American skiers and snowboarders, I plan to make the Presidents Day pilgrimage to the slopes next weekend. But unlike many of them, I’ll pay only $240 for my four-day trip, including transportation, lodging and all meals except lunches. More important, I’ll be with friends.

How do I do it? I belong to a ski club.

My private, nonprofit club, Arriba!, geared to lesbians and gay men in the Los Angeles area, has been around for more than 25 years, members say. Besides the upcoming trip to Mammoth Mountain, it’s offering five other Mammoth trips this season, three out-of-state ski trips, a week of skiing in Austria and a 10-night holiday open house at Mammoth ($50 per person per night, Dec. 21 to 31).

Group buying power helps keep the prices down, especially for local destinations.

I’ve noticed, though, that our club is getting grayer and smaller. It has about 100 members; at one time it had 150 or so, long-timers say. And when I attended a monthly meeting after a two-year absence, I saw few new faces. My club is not unique in these respects.

“Ski clubs are in a state of turbulence,” says Terry Rowley, president of the National Ski Council Federation, which includes 25 regional councils. Internet deals and the prevalence of low, last-minute air fares are undercutting clubs’ advantage on prices, he says. As with other travel decisions these days, people seem less willing or able to commit months in advance to trip dates , he adds.

It’s hard to get statistics on membership because ski clubs are so local and grass-roots. Rowley estimates that 300,000 skiers are covered by his federation, which had 13 councils when it was founded in 1999.

Such councils may include “only a small fraction of the clubs that exist,” says Ed Knott, president of the Los Angeles Council of Ski Clubs. Arriba!, for instance, is not among the 30 clubs that belong to Knott’s council; Saga, another group geared to gays in Southern California, is a council member. Clubs formed at churches, schools or workplaces may never join a council. (Those that do join may get access to organized league racing, accident insurance at group rates and the chance to share information, among other benefits, Knott says.)

Although Rowley says he thinks membership may be fairly stable overall, Knott says, “I don’t think the numbers [in ski clubs] nearly approach the numbers of 10 or even 20 years ago.” And participants are “getting a little longer in the tooth,” he says, estimating their average age at mid- to late-40s.

The clubs are graying partly because skiers are aging. Between 1990 and 2000, the median age of a downhill skier in the U.S. rose from 26 to 30.1, according to the National Ski & Snowboard Retailers Assn.

In the same period, the number of downhill skiers dropped from 11.4 million to 7.4 million, it reported. By comparison, the number of snowboarders in the U.S. rose from 1.5 million to 4.3 million, and their median age was 15.7 years, the survey found. Nearly 81% of snowboarders are 24 or younger. In California, 40% or more of those on the slopes may now be snowboarders, by some estimates.

And snowboarders aren’t joining ski clubs in large numbers to replace the skiers who retire from the sport, Knott says, even though some clubs have added “and snowboard” to their names. That’s not surprising, given the age difference alone.

In the Los Angeles area, one club that focuses on snowboarding is the Executive Board Snowboard Assn., which says it has about 30 members and is devoted to teaching snowboarding to youth.

But if ski clubs take a powder, skiers will miss out on a range of benefits.

Depending on the club, members may get discounted trips and gear, access to ski resorts at peak holiday periods with no minimum-night stays, the chance to race against other clubs, the option to pay for trips in installments and the convenience of having someone else plan the trip, Knott says. Many also offer year-round activities such as hiking and theater- going.

Some are more serious about skiing than others. Knott jokes of one club: “They like to party a lot. They also like to ski occasionally.” Individual clubs in the U.S. may have from 20 to more than 5,000 members, Rowley says.

Choices abound. On the Los Angeles council’s roster there are clubs for singles, skiers with disabilities, Asian Americans, African Americans and aerospace workers. Most are nonprofit, with annual memberships that average $40, Knott says.

At the national level, the National Brotherhood of Skiers, geared to African Americans, claims more than 14,000 members in more than 80 clubs. An often overlooked resource is the Sierra Club. Its Orange County Sierra Singles section, for instance, offers weekend ski trips to Mammoth for $195.

In the end, the No. 1 benefit of belonging to a ski club remains camaraderie, clubbers say. “Most people, when they find the right club, it becomes their second family,” Rowley says.

Rowley was interviewed as he was getting ready to leave Albuquerque for a ski trip to Taos with an ad hoc ski club of 20 he formed at work. He was looking forward to after-dinner schmoozing with his colleagues.

“We’ll be lying--I mean, embellishing stories--about our great jumps, falls and conquests that day,” he says.

Finding ski clubs can be difficult. It’s often word of mouth because many can’t afford to advertise. Here is a sampling of some resources on the Internet:

* National Ski Council Federation, www.skifederation.org. Lists contacts for regional ski councils and provides documents to help form a club.

* Los Angeles Council of Ski Clubs, www.lacouncil.org. Has links to sites of member clubs, including Saga.

* National Brotherhood of Skiers, www.nbs.org. Lists clubs geared to African Americans across the nation, including the Inglewood-based Executive Board Snowboard Assn.

* Arriba!, www.arribaski.org. Longtime L.A.-area club geared to gay men and lesbians.

* Sierra Club, www.sierraclub.org. Known for its environmental activism, this organization and its member chapters also sponsor thousands of trips yearly, including cross-country and downhill ski trips. Basic membership is $39 per person per year.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.