No Snowboarders, Please. That sign has come down, and now Alpine has officially joined its competitors in welcoming boarders. Our guests' needs have also changed. A lot of families have snowboarders in their midst, and we want to welcome them, too. Several times over the past few years, at resorts where the two groups mix, I've seen skiers and boarders almost come to blows.
Skiers usually couch their complaints in technical terms.
Snowboarders, they say, don't have enough control. The radius of their turns is too wide. They scrape off the top layer of snow. And I can recall a few speeding snowboarders who have used me and other skiers as human slalom gates. But most of the animosity, I suspect, has been cultural.