Garrett Dempsey / Sierra Club
Skiing doesn’t appear to have been made for kids like the ones from Hamtramck, who live in a tight knit community outside Metro Detroit that is largely made up of newcomers to this country, from places like Bangladesh, Yemen, and Syria. The barriers to outdoor access are long and familiar: cost, equipment, distance, language, cultural unfamiliarity, and parents with every reason to be cautious about sending their children to a ski hill hours away with relative strangers. And yet, every winter for the past five years, a busload of Hamtramck teenagers has headed four hours north to ski at Crystal Mountain — and they all come home changed. Here's how that happens.
It started with a simple invitation. In 2021, the owners of Crystal Mountain learned about the Detroit Outdoors youth program, and wanted to share what they'd built. High school students from Hamtramck were a natural fit: the school was building an Outdoor Adventure Club, and students were already spending the winter learning to ski and snowboard with SOS Outreach at Mt. Brighton, about an hour outside of Detroit. Getting them four hours north to Crystal Mountain required one more partner — the Bus for Outdoor Access and Teaching (BOAT), whose leader Micah Leinbach and beloved bus Big Red the students already knew and trusted. With Crystal Mountain donating accommodations, SOS Outreach covering ski gear, Hamtramck High School fundraising for food, BOAT handling transportation, Detroit Outdoors sending mentors, and the Crystal Community Ski Club providing on-mountain instructors, something remarkable became possible.
The first trip was a smashing success — and gave birth to a tradition. Before leaving Hamtramck, students loaded Big Red with food from their home kitchens. After a full day on the slopes, the Crystal Mountain lodge filled with the smell of something unexpected: chicken biryani, perogi, basmati rice, cucumber salad, Yemeni tea, and Baklava. New friends gathered around a long table — instructors, mentors, teachers, and teenagers — passing around dishes that represented the flavors of home. Months later, one student reflected: "If I could go back in time to one day, it would be that day at Crystal Mountain."
That first trip was so meaningful that six months later, many of its key players reunited in a Hamtramck classroom to reflect on what they'd built. The students welcomed an amazing group of funders and partners — the owners of Crystal Mountain, the leaders of SOS Outreach in Colorado and the Outdoor Foundation in New Mexico, the past president of the Jim Dandy Ski Club (the first Black ski club in the country), and the Director of Michigan's Office of the Outdoor Recreation Industry. People who hadn't known each other before, bound now by something real.
Five years on, some of those original students are in college, but their younger siblings are now making the annual ski trip to Crystal Mountain. The founding partners are still showing up, and even dreaming about a full month of programming. What once seemed logistically impossible has become possible, through the steady contributions of many.
The bonds that have formed along the way are hard to quantify but easy to spot. At a recent party for a northern Michigan outdoor magazine, the DJ wore a T-shirt from the Hamtramck High School Outdoor Adventure Club. Marco had spent four winters becoming friends with those students on the ski slopes, and that shirt was a gift from them. He knew the power and pride that came from repping the shirt to a room full of outdoor enthusiasts.
At the end of this year's trip, one Crystal instructor told me: “I never would have thought years ago when I trained to be a snowboard instructor that I’d wrap up a day of work by having a wonderful dinner with students, teachers and a room full of amazing people from so many different backgrounds.” He looks forward to it every winter now.
No single person could have planned any of this. It grew from the genuine contributions of many — given not out of obligation, but out of joy. And we're all already looking forward to next year.