Skiing makes me feel really conflicted.

I wish I could say that I love skiing. That it's something I always wanted to do and I took to it quickly once I began the sport, but that's a lie. However, I am learning to accept skiing for what it is and find enjoyment in it.

I think I'll write up an actual post on skiing once the season ends and I have had a bit of time to reflect, and preferably after I've skied down Mt Hood. For now though, here's a list of bullet points that summarize my confliction about skiing:

• Barriers to entry. Extremely expensive. Hell, it took me three years just to buy enough cold weather clothing to stand on Mt Hood in January. A good AT setup is probably going to cost more than my car. Not to mention the cost of lessons and lift tickets.
• The gear is complicated! Even as a newb, there's a LOT to learn. And then learn again. I thought I just totally sucked at skiing for my first month. Turns out I needed to buy my own boots and modify them to fit my feet and then I could magically ski. I feel lucky to have access to so much awesome cheap used gear out here, but can't help but remembering how simple it was to show up at a bouldering gym and only need a 3 dollar rental for stinky shoes. Now I need to figure out what kind of skis and bindings and types of wax to use.
• Elitism. This could be subjective and probably says a lot about my insecurities, but I have yet to have a friend offer to ski a green with me. Only blacks. Black diamonds are everything. If I want to learn, I'm referred to paid lessons. And while that's AWESOME that people make their liveihood outside, lessons still cost $. Oh! and I also my college boyfriend's mom just KNEW we would never be a thing because I couldn't ski at the time and OMG SKIING WOO!!! SKIERS ARE BETTER THAN YOOOOOOOU!
• Resort culture is obnoxious. 
• White people everywhere.
• Less than ideal gender balance on the slopes. Also, online ski communities seem to have more misogyny. 
• Culture of elitism. If I hear someone call someone else a gaper one more time I think I'll scream. Also the amount of fancy extras that resorts try to sell you.
• Risk of injury. Ben tore his ACL a month ago. A lot of people tear their ACLs. Generally, ski injuries are sudden and catastrophic. Most climbing injuries occur from improper safety checks or are accrued over periods of overuse and can be mitigated by smart training.

Translated into climbing terms: learning to ski is like being forced to start leading trad the first day you put on climbing shoes and no one wants to climb 5.6 with you so you have to learn how to rope solo and then you go to lessons which are awesome but really only teach you how to tie into the rope and lock a carabiner. Everyone around you is a dude and kind of a jerk who just wants to talk about how good the rock is on his proj and they learned to climb when their parents took them to the rock gym when they were toddlers before they ever had a choice. Then you realize that the rental rack you've been climbing on is only tricams and if you spend a ton of money on cams you can climb easier and you stop freaking out because now you can make good placements in that vertical crack you were stuck on for a month. Then is becomes awesome and fun!