Poll How old were you when you started skiing?

[JMD]

First time trying to ski was around 30y/o. Spent the next 25 years enjoying a 1 week annual trip to many resorts around the globe along with the Jacksonville, Fl. Ski Club. Lucky to retire early from UPS and move to Summit County Colorado, and now really enjoy skiing around 125 morning each season.

 

[Tricia]

now really enjoy skiing around 125 morning each season.

Like Phil, you need to get home in time for your nap.

 

[VickiK]

27. I fell at 3-5' intervals all the way down the runs in the morning, then I took lessons. I was thrilled black & blue, and I loved it.

 

[Monique]

I started at age 13 in 1967 at a place called Blue Knob, PA. This is what it looked like back then, slopes go out of view to left.

BK is an "upside down" ski area with lodge, parking and service buildings at the summit, elev ~3000'. It had been a cold war USAF Air Defense Radar Station until the early 1960s when that closed and they started the ski area. A lot of the buildings in above picture from mid-1960s are leftovers from the USAF station. The ski area re-purposed many of them for a few years before they replaced them or tore them down. BK is a pretty cold and rugged place in winter by mid-Atlantic standards because of the exposed summit location. My family used to joke that the "Blue" in Blue Knob stood for the color of the ice on the beginner trails that was made from the crummy fire hose-like equipment that passed for a snowmaking system in the 1960s.

Here's another aerial view, I would guess from about 1980, summit is to the left:

Oooh, I remember skiing down a long green there in absolute terror!


I started skiing with my boyfriend's family in my teens. Mostly Roundtop or Liberty. Three or four days a season was pretty great; nine was a stretch goal. Fortunately, I was a teenager and also extremely active in martial arts, so I made up for lack of skill/time with what instructors kindly called "athletic technique" (took me years to realize how backhanded that compliment was!).

I didn't ski my first few years out of college. Then I moved to Colorado ...

 

[mdf]

My parents took the family skiing exactly one day when I was a kid, somewhere in Ohio or maybe Michigan. I have no idea how or why that happened.
We definitely had no idea what we were doing, and we were definitely a hazard. But it was enough to make me know I loved it.

So when I arrived at college and discovered I could take skiing as a phys ed course, wow! Bad snow (Greek Peak), bad rental equipment (Spademen bindings on leather boots), bad instruction (Graduated Length Method, GLM). But I still loved it.

In grad school, I went on one school-organized trip to Mammoth each year.

I started skiing a lot when I moved to the Boston area. Nearly every weekend at Killington, with a share in a house several years.

I didn't really start to learn to ski until I went to Steep&Deep camp at Jackson Hole when I was 49, and our instructor gently but firmly told us we didn't have a clue.

 

[Jellybeans1000]

The first year I could get in ski school (about 3 years old).

 

[Started at 53]

18. I recall wanting to ski in high school when my friends went on ski bus trips, but my parents were small business owners without health insurance and didn't want me to do anything so risky.
As soon as I was 18 I went skiing with my boyfriend.

Renegade

 

[SBrown]

4

 

[Snowfan]

5. Sugar Bowl. My Dad is smacking me in the head with the snowshoe and muttering something about the future chairlifts.

 

[surfsnowgirl]

Started snowboarding at 30, ski blading at 38 and longer skis at 42.

 

[Kneale Brownson]

My first experience sliding down a hill was in 1945 standing on the toes of my dad's boots at age 5. We slid on an open meadow next to a road that allowed our family and another to share using cars as the lift back to the top. Later, high school girls from the neighborhood would take all the kids to the golf club, where there was a ravine. We'd all share using toboggans, sleds and simple skis to slide down one side and see how far up the other we could get. Then we'd hike to the top of the other side and reverse course. I've had seasons as long as 141 days and as short as three (blew out an Achilles), but have skied some part of every year since. I got serious about it in 1969, when I joined PSIA and took an instructor training course.

 

[4ster]

I was 3yo at Badger Pass Yosemite. Weekend warrior on old hand me downs (leather lace-up boots, wooden skis & cable bindings) till I was old enough to get myself to the mountains & buy my own equipment...

...then things got serious !

Like @Kneale Brownson , I think I've skied at least part of every season since.

 

[Tominator]

In December of 1960 at Black Mountain in Jackson, NH when I was about to turn 12.

 

[graham418]

When I was 5 , I got skis and boots for christmas. the boots were rubber lace up things that were cold and miserable. the skis were wood with a painted base and screwed on edges. I went to to the park near our house and skied? there. It wasn't much fun as i recall. fortunately, the next year I had outgrown them, and graduated to leather lace-ups, and skis with a tex base and cable bindings. (still screw on edges. ) My dad had figured out the only way he was going to get let out of the house to go skiing was to take me with him. We would go to Blue Mountain in Collingwood.

 

[Muleski]

Family legend has it at not quite three, after playing around a lot on skis the winter before. I can't remember it. I do remember when I mastered riding a T-bar with my mom a year later at 4. I can't even imagine how low she had that bar on her legs {knees?}. Guess it was torture for my dad! I could also ride a rope tow by then as long as somebody was reasonably close to me to hold the rope up off the snow. Better if I had a bigger kid or adult both ahead and behind me. More of my ski memories start at about five. This was in the late 50's.

We shared a ski house that was literally about 100 feet from a rope tow, and maybe 100 yards from a T-Bar. Great for teaching little tikes. I think the spring that I was about to turn six, I was promoted to the car headed to the "real" mountain with the old kids and adults. Probably because my mom wanted to ski the real stuff! Looking back on it, making a lot of good consistent turns on gentle terrain as a little guy was probably very good for me. The area faced South so it was comfortable, too.

 

[Carl Kuck]

I was 3yo at Badger Pass Yosemite...

Badger Pass was also the first place I ever skied! Horrible black and grey K2 rental skis with Spademan bindings that would release if you looked at them sideways. My first run took over half an hour: skid a turn, ski releases, reattach ski, repeat. The next time I went back to Badger Pass quite a few years later I was on 210cm Fischer RC4/RS skis; 6:30 ride up, 0:45 ski back down...

 

[Jack skis]

Hard to figure out the exact year, but when I was 10 or 11 the family gave me ski, boots and poles for Christmas. Don't think I wanted them especially, but once I got them outside and on snow, it felt pretty good. It's 70+ years later and I'm still feeling pretty good about skiing and lucky enough to be able to be on the snow 100+ days per year. Probably getting close to converting to rocking chair days, but I'll resist as long as I can.

Jack

 

[Scotty I.]

Four (to think that I missed out on the three previous years). Our local Boys Club gave group lessons at the local ski area every Saturday for $.50 (yes, fifty cents).To this day I will always remember my first pair of skis under the Christmas tree - red Fischers. I still ski Fischers (have two pair).That "Fischer Feel" sure stays with you!

 

[ADKmel]

4YRS- on a Rope tow, (swear my rotator cuff was wrecked back then) & T-Bar was more like a chair lift we didn't weigh enough to keep it on the ground on some towers. all at Royal Mt where I still ski/teach. My Dad was Ski Patrol Examiner on East Coast, so I skied lots of 'big' Mts.going w/him to testings. (mom thought he wouldn't stop for beer if the kid was w/him LOL)

 

[Seve]

I started skiing at age 8 in the winter of 1968 so just completed year # 50.
Started at a now defunct little hill in S. Maine called "The Big A" which had a rope tow and a chair. Guessing the vert was about 800 feet but with ocean views to the East. It's on the NELSAP list.