Something like schlitten were used to build the Pyramids. Sleds certainly predate skis everywhere they appeared. Recognizable rodels? A couple of hundred years. Modern sport rodels? The mid-90s. The Swiss snow rodeling boom? About five years. The big mountain revolution? It’s on, join it.

1) Topography. The Alps are steeper than American mountains with double the relief. Essentially every road there is perfect for rodeling and there are rodelhütte everywhere as a destination, versus dragging your children for and hour or two into a cold wilderness.

2) Skier prejudice and elitism. Let’s not pretend that’s not a thing.

3) The snow rodel innovations are recent and only in Switzerland.

4) Europeans have hobbled the sport by allowing ALL sleds on the rodelbahn then limiting proper rodels to ONLY the rodelbahn. That situation is currently evolving and the revolts have begun. Not going to be pretty when we introduce rodeling to Greece this year; have you seen Greeks riot?

Yes. Unlike the people you see wobbling dangerously and unpredictably around the slopes with swords on their feet and lances in their hands, a rodeler has three options available [with or without cleats]:

• Put the feet flat on the snow.

• Put the feet flat on the snow and lift the sled, digging the tails. You see this in the Olympics.

• Carve turns and/or hockey stop - exactly the same as all other ski-based sliding devices.

A rodel stops faster from the same speed versus any other device, is comically stable at high speed (I can sip a soda with my dog in my lap at 40mph) and can zap speed going in a straight line (or any direction) while you’re looking around somewhere else. Initiation of a turn is rarely necessary for a stop rather than being a mandatory condition of one. Honestly, we hockey stop most of the time for fun and to show off, not because we have to.

Put alternately, if I put twenty inline skate wheels on the bottom of each of your skis, would you get out on the highway and do 60mph like a rollenrodel? Probably not, because you don’t have the option of simply putting your feet down to stop.

Wait for it, folks… You can’t make this stuff up…

“We’re afraid everybody will want to do it.”

Uh, guys, in economics we say “demand”, not “want”. In this case, we would also use the words “market void” or a “supply gap”.

I’m a life long sledder. I never grew out of it, the equipment just wasn’t good enough. I met some of the people who build ski lifts, went to their village in Italy, and the first thing we did was hike 90 minutes to a rodelhütte for dinner.

A couple of dorks who like sledding as much as you do.

Singer is the kind of guy that goes into the Arctic alone for six weeks to camp on the side of a cliff. He goes alone because other people are lazy and whine about minor things passing out with their pack on and waking up with bugs all over their face. Sleeping in beds is not how goals get accomplished.

Crysta can be summed up as, “I’ll try anything.”

Who doesn’t? We took a family from Zimbabwe who had never seen snow before; mom grabbed the sled and dumped her kids on us like she’d never met them before. We had a woman track us down who spent four days stalking the parking lot looking for us after having caught a glimpse. There are particular demographics that are highly enthusiastic:

• People whowe knees are getting on a bit, they took early retirement, and now are afraid they won’t get to ski out the golden years as they had planned. They grin like children when they realize it’s back on.

• We actually feel really bad every time we pass crying children or girlfriends and hear them exclaim, “Why can’t I do what they’re doing?” The look that dads and boyfriends shoot us is really uncomfortable.

• People who love the mountain and resort atmosphere but actually don’t like skiing that much. I don’t. It’s not hard for me and got old a long time ago. I hate the boots, poles and everything else. I walk around barefoot most of the year, and like walking up to my snow device in a comfy pair of boots, having my thermos in a saddlebag, and being able to stop on the slope for a hibiscus tea without sitting in the snow with my knees being twisted off my body.

• People who are injured but still want to ride and not ruin everyone’s trip. So what if your knee is jacked, you can rodel just fine.

• Mothers and wives who were abandoned at the resort, are bored stiff, and are walking around talking to people looking for something to do.

• Anybody who likes going fast.

• Who does this really sum up to? The alternately abled, or whatever you want to call them. There is a wide spectrum of both ability and desire: there are a lot of people who sit between “able and wanting to ski” on one side, and fully “disabled and in need of other people to assist them down the mountain on any device” on the other. An enormous market void.

Fantastic! I was hoping you’d say that.
Let’s race.
‘Less you’re a fraidy cat…