How to make friends in a ski town, and how many ski days it takes
Updated
For a few winters I counted everything. I rode 153 days in 2018/19 and 114 in 2019/20, the season I moved to Colorado with one of my best friends, Michael, a move I wouldn't have made without SkiBuds. By the time I left in March 2020 I had met more than 60 people through the app. The photo at the top is from Keystone in 2019: seven riders on a snowy summit holding up a blue SkiBuds flag, two groups of new friends who had met through the app. A year later I had met more than 100 people and was, in my words at the time, "probably at 40 days (I don't keep track anymore)."
Moving to a mountain town can feel like everyone already has a crew, and they all seem to have been riding together for ten years. Meeting people on the mountain is the easy part, because you spend hours a day doing the same thing as everyone around you. Seeing them again is the part you have to arrange. The short answer is to find one place you can show up every week, ride a lap with someone there and ask for a second day before you split up. If you keep one count in your first winter, make it the number of people you've ridden with twice.
There is a reason to make a second plan. In research published in 2018, University of Kansas communication scholar Jeffrey Hall studied 355 recently relocated adults and 112 first-year students who had moved to Lawrence. More time together was associated with closer friendships. His models estimated that the chance of calling an acquaintance a casual friend exceeded 50% at about 43 hours in the student sample and 94 hours in the adult sample. These are estimates from particular groups, not a timetable or a promise that hours will produce a friendship.
People estimated their own time together, and the adult study looked back at relationships that had lasted, so the estimates have limits. Hall also found an association between shared leisure and closeness. A chair ride or lunch gives you room to talk, but neither a full day on the hill nor a particular number of hours guarantees a connection. The useful lesson is to make room for people you enjoy seeing again.
Show up somewhere twice
A busy bar on a Friday introduces you to a room full of people. A weekly club day introduces you to the same handful again and again, which is the only way those hours add up. Ride the same mountain on the same days and the faces in the lift line begin to look familiar.
So choose something you can return to, at terrain and a pace that suit you, such as a club or a weekly clinic. Ask the organizer where newcomers meet and whether people come alone. The ski club guide helps you compare the answers. If your work schedule changes every week, a group with several meeting days beats one you can rarely make.
One day at Heavenly, a long lift line turned into that kind of connection. In an older SkiBuds Instagram post, I wrote about talking with another rider who recognized the app and had used it to meet someone in Whistler. We rode a few laps together, then met up through SkiBuds for another day. A conversation in line became a reason to ride together again.
Yes, ski towns run on après, and a bar will introduce you to more people in one night than a club will in a month. That is probably true. Après is where the people you rode next to all day become people you know. It works best on faces you already recognize, which is the case for showing up somewhere twice. Housemates and coworkers count too, since in a mountain town many of them ride. A day on the hill gives you a different setting to get to know each other, so ask when they next plan to go.
Resort days cost money, and shift work can make a fixed schedule difficult. Look for a community event, volunteer day or local group with free activities as well as on-snow meetups. A walk, coffee or a shared ride to an event can give you time together when a lift ticket or a full day off is out of reach. Ask about dues, transport and any required pass before committing to a club.
Say hello first, then make it specific
I cannot even describe how much time I spent talking to strangers in those early seasons, on chairlifts and in online groups. Growing SkiBuds meant 130,000 stickers, flags, shirts and hats, and more trips to the post office than I can count. Not all of it led anywhere. Enough of it did.
You do not need 130,000 stickers. You need one invitation with enough detail to answer, because vague invitations get vague answers. Post something like this in a group where it belongs, and follow that group's rules:
New in [town] and riding [mountain] on [day]. I like [terrain] at a [pace] pace. Meeting at [busy base-area spot] at [time] for a couple of runs. Anyone want to join?
The meetup planner builds that message for you. When you are meeting someone new, pick a busy public spot and keep the first commitment to a run or two. Tell a friend where you are going and arrange your own way home until you know the group. The safety page has more on meeting someone new.
Let the first lap tell you whether the day fits
A run is an easier first hangout than coffee with a stranger, and it is easier to end. You can both love snowboarding and want very different mornings, so talk about the runs you like, how often you stop, whether you break for lunch and when you need to be done. Start on terrain you both want to ride. If the pace does not fit, thank them for the run. If it does, ask whether they want another. The mixed-ability guide has ways to share part of a day without either rider giving up the terrain they enjoy.
Ask for the second day
Riding one day with someone is a meeting. A specific invitation gives you both a chance to ride together again. Before you split up, ask whether they want to keep in touch. Then send one plan, such as the same mountain next Saturday, with the kind of riding you have in mind and an easy way to say no:
Fun riding with you today. I'm back at [mountain] on [day], probably [terrain] in the morning. Want to come? No worries if you're busy.
My own numbers point the same way, though I'd hold them loosely. SkiBuds reached more than 350 daily users by the end of the 2019/20 season and 100 to 150 the next winter. When I wrote that down in March 2021, I added that the people still using it were "much more active on the forum and I continue to hear of more and more meetups." Fewer people, more meetups. I can't prove one caused the other, since the people who stayed may simply have been the keenest. But it rhymes with everything above: a smaller group, and more of them riding together.
Saying yes counts as much as asking. In March 2020 I met Aodhgan through the app at Whistler, and after two days riding together he mentioned he was heading out to Kicking Horse. I took him up on it straight away: the last day at Kicking Horse before it closed, the last day at Lake Louise, then a day snowmobiling in the backcountry at Revelstoke. Two days became five, and a first meetup became a shared trip. Skiing alone and meeting people tells that trip in full.
A first-month plan
- Week one: find a group that meets regularly and ask the organizer how newcomers join.
- Your first visit: introduce yourself and ride one run with someone whose terrain and pace fit yours.
- After a good lap: ask to keep in touch, and send one specific plan for another day.
- By the end of the month: aim for one person you've ridden with twice. Go back to the group, or try a different one if the format does not suit you.
A quiet week does not mean you have done it wrong. People have jobs, and storms move plans. There is no deadline for finding your people, so a month in you are not behind. The worst case is still a month of days you wanted to ride.
Meeting people is what kept me building SkiBuds. In 2021 I wrote that I "would have given up many times," but that every time I met someone through the app it "re-grounds me and gets back to the purpose." The rebuilt app is coming soon for iOS and Android, but making friends in a ski town should not depend on an app, or on how many stickers you can hand out.
The line of mine I'd point a newcomer to is a caption from my quietest winter, about 40 days with no handing out stickers and no walking up to strangers. Under a photo of Shae and Larry at Park City in early December, I wrote: "Shae has become one of my good riding buddies and we have met up a couple times this season and plan on hitting Snowbasin this week." A couple of times was enough to make the next plan.