This article appears in the January/February 2023 print issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.
Although it’s a chilly night in Boston, the first snowflake of the season is still yet to fall. Inside one of the city’s most popular gay bars, though, the crew behind New England’s largest LGBTQ ski and snowboard club is already preparing to hit the slopes.
“We’re super excited, and ready to come back bigger and better,” says Marty Smith, the new president of Outryders. The group is off to a great start, if the crowd jam-packed inside Cathedral Station, an LGBTQ sports pub in the city’s South End, is any indication. This is the kick-off party for the 21st season of Outryders, which organizes a full lineup of gay day trips and overnights to New England ski mountains every year.
It’s also a chance for the group to reintroduce itself to past and prospective members. Like a lot of volunteer-led LGBTQ social clubs, Outryders’ resilience was tested by the pandemic. Plus, its leaders admit, the two-decade–old ski group needed new blood and fresh ideas. “You have to bring in younger members,” says John Tirone, the group’s longtime former president and a continuing member of its newly expanded board. “People get older, they stop skiing, they move to Florida.”
Luckily, Outryders has come up with a few ways to keep gay snow bunnies hopping aboard the ski lifts at upcoming trips to Killington Ski Resort in Vermont, Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire, and Sunday River in Maine—where February’s WOW Weekend, a Pride-style partnership that includes nighttime parties and après-ski hangouts, remains the centerpiece of the annual schedule. For one thing, OutRyders’ now nine-person board is a step in the right direction, representation-wise: Twentysomething Jacob Fager brings youthful verve to the team, Smith says, and Outryders has its first lesbian board member in Annaellen Lenart.
Other members bring specialized expertise—like social media director Tim Pranaitis, who is amplifying OutRyders’ Facebook and Instagram presence, and Steven Nofziger, the group’s vice-president and communications expert. When he’s not kicking up powder, Nofziger is a director of digital marketing for a Microsoft company, so naturally, he’s the one responsible for Outryders’ refreshed and (much more functional) website.
Nofziger wants to make it as easy as possible for folks to find and join an outfit that made a big impact on him. “I moved here from California six years ago,” he explains, “and my first weekend here, the first thing I did was find Outryders. It’s where I met some of my best friends.”
All in all, there are about 600 people on Outryders’ mailing list, including some who travel from many states away for the chance to buddy up with other outdoorsy LGBTQ folks. (“There’s one guy from Maryland who is super involved,” Smith says.) This year, though, the group has introduced a tiered membership structure with Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels. Dues range from $35 to $100 for the season, and memberships include different combinations of guest passes and swag, including shirts bearing the new Outryders logo: a rainbow-colored ski trail carving its way down a mountainside.
The group isn’t just making tracks in New England anymore, either. This year, Outryders is organizing a January trip to Mont Tremblant in Quebec, generally regarded as one of the best places to ski on this side of the continent, as well as a February excursion to Elevation, a mammoth gay ski weekend held annually in Park City, Utah.
This is all just the beginning of a bright new future for Outryders, says Smith, who has plenty more ideas on the horizon. He’d like the group to launch a smartphone app, for one thing, and he’s keen to sprout a philanthropic arm that could, for instance, connect LGBTQ young people with opportunities to ski.
It’s about more than the sport, after all, adds John Tirone: It’s a chance to plant a flag of LGBTQ representation atop every mountain. And there ain’t none high enough.
“Outryders,” he says, “is a positive force in our community.”
More: outryders.org
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