Ski instructor works to diversify the slopes

When Annette Diggs arrived at the slopes in the winter of 2017-18 for a Pacific Northwest rite of passage — a beginner ski lesson in the Cascades — the experience was not what she had anticipated.

"The first time I stepped on snow, I saw how exclusive and homogenous that space was," Diggs said. As the only Black person in her group lesson, she said, "My presence and ability was scrutinized by the people I was learning with."

Rather than be discouraged, Diggs, of Bothell, Washington, decided I wanted to become a ski instructor.. "I knew I wanted to provide that representation for people who look like me," she said.

Five winters later, the 42-year-old is a part-time ski instructor at Stevens Pass and the founder and CEO of EDGE Outdoors, a nonprofit working to diversify the stereotypically white, male space of snow sports — from beginners to  backcountry skiers to the people staffing the rental shop. 

Offering scholarships

This season, EDGE offers scholarships to cover ski and snowboard lessons, instructor training, avalanche education and freeride camps (skiing ungroomed terrain) for women, nonbinary or gender nonconforming people of color.

"We take people who've never slid on snow and give them a safe learning environment, then offer them ways they can maintain access to the mountain," Diggs said, with opportunities that rise to the upper echelons of snow sports. "Inclusion has to hit every level."

Growing up in poverty in Memphis, Tenn., in the 1980s, where she was sent across town for school desegregation busing, Diggs had little exposure to snow sports beyond white classmates returning from vacation with goggle tans telling tales of exotic destinations like Mammoth, Calif.

"My parents couldn't afford to take me to these places," she said.

Diggs' family later moved to Las Vegas, where she spent hours in the library immersed in National Geographic and adventure magazines.

"I was inspired by it all: seeing someone hanging from a cliff by their fingers, dropped off by a helicopter and sliding down a massive mountain, hiking in faraway places," she said.

But the outdoor media of the 1980s and 1990s featured few women, much less people of color. "I had no role model," she said. "I became my own sense of inspiration."

After graduating from the University of Memphis with a degree in biology, Diggs eventually took a lab job in Seattle as a microbiologist testing with foodborne pathogens in 2013. A colleague invited her to Mount Rainier for her birthday — Diggs' first visit to a national park.

"I didn't even know you can go and visit national parks," she said.

That trip led her to hiking and nontechnical mountaineering with local clubs.

"Every time I went outside, I saw how strong my body was and what I was capable of doing," Diggs said.

Becoming a teacher 

Eager to start on her quest to diversify snow sports, Diggs applied to teach at Stevens Pass the same winter she learned to ski.

"I'm an athletic person. I could ski greens and easy blues," Diggs said, referring to the least challenging downhill ski slope classifications. "I thought I'd be a good fit for youth programming, teaching first-time kids as an assistant."

Alicia O'Donnell, manager of seasonal programs and private lessons at Stevens Pass, interviews a lot of prospective ski instructors who have a simple reason for wanting the job.  

"The fact that she had a larger vision than just, 'I want a free season pass,' was refreshing," O'Donnell said.

From that first season, Diggs availed herself of employee skills clinics and ample time on the snow.

"The growth has been exponential in my skiing," she said, and she eventually became a certified instructor. "When I was hired at Stevens Pass, they believed in my vision of bringing more people out there," she said.

People like Victoria Ochido, 30, a nursing aide in Everett, Washington, originally from Kenya. Her first ski lesson didn't go well, either.

"It was a very awkward and uncomfortable situation," Ochido said. "All I wanted to do was learn how to ski, but I felt like I had to go through a lot of hurdles that took away the joy. I was one of the first Black people to ever take lessons from there. I got weird questions and felt a sense of loneliness."

In 2021, Ochido gave it another shot under Diggs' tutelage. "Annette is very wholesome in her teaching style, very easy, free, you can breathe," Ochido said. "I wasn't afraid to make mistakes.

"Her spirit is so vibrant it consumes your fear and exhaustion."

This winter, Ochido plans to work on weekends in the rental shop at Stevens Pass to get a free season pass and push herself to spend more time at the ski resort. After making the effort to learn something new as an adult, she said, "I don't want to disappear from the sport."

For Diggs, stories like Ochido's are part of a long game.

"We're talking about a culture shift," Diggs said. "Ski areas are actively working on it."