chapotraphouse

I don't know where you are, but where I live this has never been the sort of second hand stuff that is even remotely accessible to poor people.

Good point, the availability of secondhand equipment isn't something that ever crossed my mind.

I grew up in the California Bay Area. The PMC types buy equipment, use them for a season or less, then get rid of them on Craigslist and/or yard sales—the surplus drives the prices way down, especially during off-season. It's still too expensive if you're struggling to put food on the table and pay rent, but it's viable if there's breathing room in the budget.

In the 90s and 00s a decent set up of used jackets, pants, helmets, skis, and boots could be had for under $100, and last you for well over a decade. Hell, my dad is still using gear he bought in the 90s.

Gear is more expensive now. We recently had to kit up my cousin's bf, and we managed to scrounge everything for $155. He's a min wage worker, but in our cultures multigenerational living is the norm, and that reduces the cost of living enough that spending that much won't put him in the red. He also didn't have spend everything at once, because our family could loan him whatever he was missing while we searched for good deals.

Lift tickets also aren't what they used to be. Growing up, lift tickets at smaller resorts could be had for $10-15, so overall the sport was affordable for working class refugees with only a highschool education and a middling income. Now the cheapest lift tickets at the smallest resorts are $25, and that price is only available once a month.

Had my parents fled to the US now or within the last decade instead of when they did in the 80s, we wouldn't have been a skiing family. With the increase of lift ticket prices, we remain a skiing family only because we have all the gear already, and living with my parents lets me save up enough to buy us season passes. If I were living on my own I wouldn't be able to afford it, nor would my parents since they're on a fixed income.

Skiing with family and friends are some of my fondest memories, and introducing new people to the sport and watching them fall in love with it is phenomenal. Watching year after year as that joy becomes increasingly out of reach for the working class is enraging. Don't even get me started on the insulting, increasingly low pay of resort workers, destroying another solid avenue that working class kids used to use to afford slope time.

You could never really be poor and ski around here, but to the average middle class family it was doable. Now only those in, just below, or above the upper middle class can afford it. It's only going to get more bougie from here on out, which is a travesty.

There are endless tax payer money maintained ski routes in this country during winter that take over walking routes, hiking routes etc. You are not allowed to do anything there but ski during the ski season. The people who do it are all upper middle class or otherwise in a position where they can afford the equipment. The poors don't even get to use the area for walking during this time.

That blows big time, I'm sorry. While the resort slopes are exclusive to skiers, the miles and miles and miles of hiking trails in the Sierra Nevada are open to regular and snowshoe hikers, as well as cross country skiers. Y'all are getting hosed. We're all getting hosed. Death to capitalism.