February 5, 2010 E-MAIL PRINT

Proper planning can make a ski trip affordable

by Tony Chamberlain/

The morning trudge to the ski lodge, for those not living slopeside. (photo: Tony Chamberlain)

The morning trudge to the ski lodge, for those not living slopeside. (photo: Tony Chamberlain)

In advancing an old theme, I would remind anyone who has never put together a destination trip for a family or even a larger group, to take the time to plan. What does planning mean exactly? It means discovering and weighing alternatives, matching them to the needs of your group.

Last week a woman wrote to scoff at the idea that the reason the ski industry has such a hard time increasing numbers of paying customers is the high price of the sport. The sport is “only for the rich,” she said. She then informed me that she had four children 5 to 15.

I could only sympathize. I don’t know how you organize and pay for a family of six to do anything, let alone a sport that is, if not only for the rich, is certainly not inexpensive.

How do you take six people to a Celtics game or a pay for six rounds of golf or take six people on a private fishing charter. For that matter, how do you take them all out to dinner?

The point is, if you are a family of six, you plan far differently than if you’re, say, a young couple off on a ski trip together (before they have their four kids). And here are the big variables in planning with a budget.

Lodging. Who doesn’t enjoy the freedom and convenience of a ski-in/ski-out slopeside condo? You get up in the morning, have a leisurely breakfast, dress in warm comfortable conditions, boot up, and then — only then — when you’re ready for the slopes, step out onto the snow.

At lunchtime, you ski back, peel off clothes and warming up in longjohns and sweats as you sip your noodle soup, you get some real muscle relaxing in before the second half on the slopes — which begins when you decide it does.

It’s way wonderful to live this way on the slopes. And it’s way, way expensive. The alternative we talked about last time is renting the house — in our case an old farmhouse in Intervale. You go through roughly the same morning routine, but then pack all your stuff in the car, drive to the slope, and boot up in the parking lot or up in a crowded lodge with a few hundred chock-a-block friends.

It’s hard to go home for lunch. If you’re thinking thrift, you probably have a brown bag lunch with thermoses of hot soup or chocolate. That could easily save a family of six $50 over the cost of cafeteria food. Check it out, especially the incidentals like drinks and a cookie. It’s huge!

Here’s just one little aside: A box of eight candy bars at the supermarket was on sale for $1.99. A single candy bar at a resort cafeteria sold for $1.39. Meaning the cafeteria bar cost $1.16 more than the supermarket bar — times six — a savings of seven bucks just on the lunch desert!

Of course, if you drove to the area, you can’t peel down at lunchtime and lounge on a couch with your book for half an hour before going back out. But this is where the nub of the process of choosing alternatives come in.

Maybe you can’t afford the high-priced spread — and that translates into anything the ski resort is selling you on their terms. But if you plan your trip by buying what you decide you need — your terms — to have a family winter outing on the slopes, that’s beginning to make the winter outing affordable for almost anyone.

E-MAIL PRINT