Carving a Niche

The U.S. ski industry should send a couple of season passes to downhiller Karen Harsch--gratis. The 38-year-old mother and ex--U.S. Ski Team member slaps on her sticks 50 times a season in Summit County, Colo., often bopping from Arapahoe Basin and Keystone to Copper Mountain and Breckenridge in a single week. Chances are her 6-year-old daughter will follow in her mother's boot steps.

Well aware that the mountains are not exactly teeming with aficionados like Harsch -- she and her family spend upwards of $5,000 a season schussing--the ski industry is investing a good deal to woo a long-underserved segment: women.

Whether it's hosting women-only seminars and on-the-mountain clinics, tailoring ads to a woman's sensibilities or designing stylish, high-performance equipment fitted to the female physique, many of the nation's 478 ski resorts, as well as skimakers like Head and Rossignol, are doubling down to persuade newcomers and veterans to "touch more powder," as the Swiss say, so the industry can touch more revenue.

At first glance, the raw numbers look good. Some 49% of last season's record 59 million lift-ticket buyers were women--up 5% from the 2004-05 season, according to the National Ski Areas Association. And the total dollar sales of female-related ski goods has grown 64% since the 2001-02 season, says the Leisure Trends Group, a research firm based in Boulder, Colo., that tracks outdoor sports.

But the ski industry has been forced to face the cold reality that women's commitment to a sport long dominated by men doesn't run as deep as it could.

"I started to talk to women who were successful in every area of their lives, and they just couldn't seem to get it when it came to skiing," says Claudia Carbone, a Denver writer whose groundbreaking book Women Ski was first published in 1994. "It ran from skiing on poor equipment or equipment designed for the male body to classes taught by men who didn't understand a woman's approach to sports."

Seeing aging baby boomers abandon the sport and the younger generation ignore it in the 1990s, a panicky ski industry finally realized that many women control the finances in families and relationships. Belatedly, if not reluctantly, skiing adopted the mantra "Whatever women want, women get."

Colorado's Keystone and California's Heavenly in Lake Tahoe, among others, brought in professionals who understand that women learn better at their own pace in small, friendly groups; are more interested in technique than in speed; and mostly just want to have fun. As Carbone puts it, "Women prefer to dance with the mountain rather than attack it."

Savvier resorts have since factored in spa jaunts, restaurant touring and ice skating, as well as amenities like first-class child care--whatever it takes to make a mountainside stay an experience instead of a mere visit.