It’s a conflicting question for mountain goers every year: to ski or to snowboard.
Skiing used to be more popular on the slopes until the late nineties when snowboarding started attracting more and more people. The trend has started changing back recently.
“Skiing is making a comeback. We used to be half and half, but you’re seeing more and more skiing,” Anders Svenson, Mission Ridge’s snow school director, said.
Svenson said skiing might be “cool again” because of new technology that makes it easier to learn and do tricks.
“How skis are developed now is based on how they developed snowboards, with shaped skis and twin tip skis. That kind of all started with snowboarding, so it’s taken a lot of elements out of that technology and put it on skis,” Svenson said.
Many parents on the hill said they were happy to see skiing back in “vogue,” so they could pass on their skills to their kids.
“I’ve never snowboarded. I grew up skiing, and I stuck with it ever since,” Doug Donbrook said.
“Now he’s passing on his knowledge to us and we get to have fun together,” Donbrook’s son Brody said.
Meanwhile, skiiers and snowboarders alike said the conditions on the hill at Mission Ridge were great over the weekend.
“Awesome, awesome. Couldn’t ask for anything better. Beautiful temperatures in the last couple of weeks, so we’ve been doing well,” Svenson said.
There is at least a metre of snow covering the entire hill, he said.