And while Snoop (who's also rumored to be thinking about his own skateboard line) and the Black Eyed Peas are as likely to attract suburban thirty-somethings as inner-city teens, their presence in this arena is indicative of a more substantial shift. Nine years ago, a struggling ski spot outside of Los Angeles called Mountain High began increasing ethnic diversity on its staff and started advertising on hip-hop and Spanish-language radio stations. Last year the resort recorded the most skier days per acre in the country, with a clientele that's half nonwhite. "The vibe is definitely getting down to the kids in the urban markets," says John McColly, Mountain High's 36-year-old director of marketing.

According to the Boulder, Colorado–based Outdoor Industry Association, ethnic-American participation in outdoor activities is on the rise, from 16 percent of the total in 1998 to 21 percent in 2004. And the 10,000-member National Brotherhood of Skiers, a group that connects African American skiers and sponsors Olympic hopefuls, is the largest winter-sports organization in America. Still, 10,000 in sports that count nearly 13 million participants (skiing and snowboarding combined) is hardly representative of the nation at large. "The snow-sports industry has primarily catered to a fairly Caucasian audience," says Mary Jo Tarallo, director of education and special projects at SnowSports Industries of America, a trade group based in McLean, Virginia. "A lot of money is potentially being left on the table."

Even New York City, the most urban of urban environments, represents a massive untapped market. On January 21, the U.S. Olympic halfpipe team will be named at New Jersey's Mountain Creek, a resort with 11 lifts, five terrain parks, and a 425-foot-long superpipe—all less than 50 miles from New York's eight-million-strong multiethnic hodgepodge. "Emerging multicultural majorities exist in every U.S. metropolitan area that's close to mountains," says Moreno. "Unfortunately, even in a place like Colorado, defined by its mountains, most people never get there. The number-one culprit is that we have done too good a job selling the exclusivity of mountain sports."

Frank Tansey, the head of Pepsi's travel-and-leisure division, is on a crusade to turn that around. Pepsi handles 65 percent of resort beverage sales nationwide, and last year Tansey, 51, used that muscle to convene the winter-sports industry's first-ever diversity summit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He brought together the heads of major ski resorts and diversity-preaching executives from several national companies, including Sprint, American Express, and Budweiser, with a simple message: If you want to survive, hire minorities and market to them. "Why does PepsiCo spend millions of dollars to create a Spanish ad?" Tansey asks. "Because if you can adapt the message to that consumer, you are going to sell more product."

Beyond resorts, the related gear and apparel makers have historically been unsure of how, or whether, to operate within urban youth culture. Back in the nineties, the hip-hop appropriation of brands like Timberland and The North Face (TNF), fueled in part by artists like Fat Joe and the late Notorious B.I.G., launched these brands into a market they never planned on entering. "Being a company up here in New Hampshire, we weren't quite aware that we were part of this," says Jay Steere, Timberland's vice president of global product management. "Early on it was viewed as a phenomenon that turned into a lifestyle."

Timberland has embraced and fostered its hip-hop presence, advertising in New York subways, sponsoring inner-city community-service projects, and working with the entertainment industry to plant its gear in music videos and films. "If someone wants our three-layer Gore-Tex jacket or our backpacking boots," says Steere, "and instead of going up Katahdin this weekend they're using them in downtown New York, more power to them."

Other brands, while welcoming all new participants regardless of age or race, have chosen to base their marketing efforts solely on the sports that define their identities. The North Face, whose down jackets have long been coveted among inner-city teens, contributes to Big City Mountaineers but does not seek to leverage its urban credibility. "We do not do classic marketing tailored to any particular demographic," says Joe Flannery, TNF's vice president of marketing. "We only market to and through our sports."

As for turning urban buyers on to those sports, research shows that change is most likely to come from efforts that start young; according to the Outdoor Industry Association, 90 percent of adults involved in these pursuits were introduced to them when they were under 18. So efforts like Big City Mountaineers and Alpino may be the best place to start, and Snoop and the Black Eyed Peas may be the ideal messengers—but only if that message is hitting the right notes. When REI president and CEO Sally Jewell arrived at the company six years ago, she pushed for using more people of color as models after finding REI's catalogs to be largely white-only affairs. "Even if you don't have a very diverse industry," says Jewell, "you can at least use your marketing to say, ‘We welcome you to the outdoors.' "

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