Fifty-one years in and the Park City Ski & Snowboard Swap expects 6,000 shoppers Friday and through the weekend. Some things you never tire of.
“We’ll never be able to stop,” joked Jana Dalton, development director for Park City Ski & Snowboard, as she stood in bluebird ski weather Monday beside a U-Haul at Skullcandy’s headquarters, a drop-off point this year for “gently used” ski gear. “It would be like a total uproar.”
She laughed because there’s no end to the swap in sight. It’s a community institution supporting another community institution: one of the largest ski and snowboard clubs in America, and a feeder for the U.S. ski and snowboard teams.
She’s been involved with the club about as along as anyone, she reflected. She was a parent in the club for 14 years while her boys went through the program. One coaches for the club now. And she came back to what she never really left, as the development director.
Her story is familiar to many Parkites. She came to town three decades ago for three months and then, oops, never left. She taught skiing for a couple of decades and devoted a significant portion of her life to the ski and snowboard club during and after raising her ski racers.
The best known of skiers from Park City of course is Ted Ligety, who grew up in the club, which had a little something to do with launching him into his World Cup and Olympic career. He’s a board member now, and his 5-year-old son has joined the program, another generational turn.
But Park City Ski & Snowboard itself is a relatively new organization, the result of five local ski and snowboard teams coming together in 2017 as one. The Park City Ski Team, which began in 1972, around the time of the swap’s start, had amassed a handful of competitors before the swarm found mutual strength in the one.
Today the club has 1,000 kids, somewhere around 2,000 parents and other family members, and 125 coaches across the gamut of ski and snowboard disciplines, along with youth development. The base of volunteers is around 1,000.
That’s what’s current. Multiply by 51 and you might have an idea of how far the heart for the organization goes locally. And a clue as to why the swap is so big, besides the bargains to be had with those gently used skis, snowboards and some other gear under 5 years old, and then the bargains on brand new stuff from vendors.
This is the largest fundraiser for the ski and snowboard club, raising around $100,000 a year to supplement the organization. Dalton said the all-hands-on-deck approach to putting on the swap has everyone pitching in. It’s a huge job.
The lines for Friday night got so long at the Basin Recreation Fieldhouse, 1388 Center Drive, the club has gone to hourlong time slots for opening night, with 500 in each period until midnight. The opening crunch from 7 to 8 p.m. is sold out at $15 a ticket, the rate for each shopping slot Friday. Then it goes to $12 for Saturday, when the swap is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and $5 Sunday, open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
There are some new wrinkles. One is free admittance if you spend $50 or more to eat at one of the participating restaurants around Kimball Junction. Another is free admittance Sunday if you bring cans of food for the Christian Center’s food pantry.
Another idea the club is trying for the first time is offering owners of that gently used gear the opportunity to give all their proceeds to the ski and snowboard club instead of the customary 30% cut to the club. Can always ask, and the whole event is about raising funds for a nonprofit, after all.
Meantime, it’s drop-off time for the gear for sale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Thursday at three locations: JANS, Cole Sport and Skullcandy’s headquarters.
Then will come Friday and the crunch, of which a large portion will be longtime friends seeing each other again. That’s part of the attraction, too.
For more information: www.parkcityskiswap.com