Kimberly Adams

This is APM.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Kimberly Adams.

Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

A couple of weeks ago, I went skiing, or at least attempted to ski, in Vermont.

And I got curious about the economics behind the snow sports industry.

Turns out it's an industry in flux, and it's getting more expensive, both for new people who want to try to learn snow sports and for folks who've been doing it for a while.

I heard about this a lot when I was talking to some folks on the ski hill.

Yes, climate change is one major factor affecting this industry.

So to get smarter about all of this, I spoke with Daniel Scott while I was up in Vermont.

He's a professor at the University of Waterloo, where he's an expert in sustainable tourism.

We got into how the industry is changing and what that means for casual skiers in the U.S.

So first of all, are you a skier, snowboarder, winter sport extraordinaire?

Which one do you do?

Okay.

The cost of a ski trip in the U.S.

has really shot up over the past decade.

What are you seeing driving prices?

If you could explain this past system a little bit more, because I actually did run into a lot of people talking about this, and I'm a very beginner when it comes to snow sports, and I

you know, was surprised at the cost of like the tickets to do it and the rental gear and everything like that.