Liftopia.com brings us this look into which states has the most skiers and snowboarders.
Which state has the most skiers and snowboarders?
The 2011/12 season was challenging weather-wise for many ski areas; one result was that fewer people came out to ski or snowboard, thus reducing the number of “active” participants in that season. For that reason, we looked at a five-year average, rather than the 2011/12 season, in terms of the number of active skiers and snowboarders living in each of the 50 states.
Over that five-year period, California has averaged the most active skiers and snowboarders, with over 1 million (including most of Liftopia’s staff). The number two state by this measure? New York, with almost three-quarters of a million people who ski or ride. Rounding out the top five are Colorado, Illinois, and Massachusetts. The first three states have a lot of ski areas, while the latter two have a few ski areas in their states, but are located near other states with more skiing and snowboarding options. Interestingly, number six is Texas, a state with no ski areas. Other well-known ski states like Vermont, New Hampshire, Utah, Maine, Montana, and Oregon actually have relatively few active resident skiers and snowboarders overall; at the same time, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio, which are generally not known as ski states, have a strong resident population of active skiers and snowboarders. To a large degree, these patterns are reflective of the individual state’s total population – big states like California, New York, and Texas have a lot of people overall, which contributes to the large total number of residents who ski and ride.
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