McLean, VA – SnowSports Industries America (SIA) on Tuesday released its 2011 SIA Snow Sports Participation Report detailing snow sports participation trends, participant demographic profiles and differences between core participants and casual participants through the 2009-10 winter season. The report covers alpine skiers, telemark skiers, park and pipe (freestyle) skiers, snowboarders, cross country skiers and snowshoers.

SIA works with its Physical Activity Council partners to survey more than 38,500 American households on their sports and leisure activities. This year, the participation data collected uncovered a number of burgeoning trends among snow sports’  21 million active participants, as well as information about  the 10.5 million Americans, who consider themselves skiers or riders, but did not participate in the past season and why.

The total number of individual participants in all six disciplines is 21,226,000, representing 7.5% of the U.S. population over six years old. Alpine skiing grew 5.4% and snowboarding 10.4% from the 2008-09 to 2009-10 winter seasons. Alpine skiers (44%) and snowboarders (31%) make up three-fourths of all participants.

Regionally, about 60% of the alpine skiers and 62% of snowboarders are concentrated in 10 states. Not unexpectedly, high income earners account for large segments of participants with 47% of all alpine skiers and 32% of all snowboarders respectively having annual incomes of $100,000 or more. The number of snowboarders who also ski went up from 26% in 2008-09 to 34% in 2009-10 although snowboarders participate on average 58% more days (11.7) than alpine skiers (7.4). Overall participation rates range from 9.0 days for cross country to 7.3 days for snowshoeing.

The report also uncovers the other activities snow sports participants like best including running, bicycling, skateboarding, surfing, walking, golf and crossover into more than 100 other activities. It also reveals increasing diversification in snow sports, particularly in the freeski and snowboard disciplines.