ALPINO was born in the back bowls of Vail Resort; the brainchild of lifelong Latino skiers, Roberto Lopez Moreno and Jorge Benjamin Haynes.

Legend has it that at the end of one very long, "snorkel quality" ski day, Roberto asked Jorge- who had just recovered from a major face plant in three feet of humbling powder on Rasputin’s Revenge, "Are you tired, or are you just making those pitiful gasps for air because you're too fat to breathe at 12,000 feet?"

Between Jorge's long and predictable gasps for oxygen, his response was, "No, I'm mostly just tired of you and both of us being bilingual, bicultural and all by ourselves at Vail and anywhere else we ski in the United States!"

Haynes was correct. Because except for a zaftik golden retriever named Becky Suarez, who used to hang around the base of the Vista Bahn, relying

on the "…kindness of strangers" leaving the Red Lion with leftover munchies, we were pretty much the only Latino or multicultural thing on the ski slopes.

Oh, well, we guess there is Vail's well traveled margarita bar "Los Amigos"- that was sort of Latino until they started "Martha Stewart-izing" the tacos with all that sour cream and serving shrimp fajitas.

Uh, by the way, just who came to Gringos in the middle of the night in a dream and said sour cream should be ladled all over Mexican food, and fajitas were made out of anything but skirt steak?

In any event, with Haynes' comment, the duo decided someone needed to create some organized national infrastructure to encourage increased minority participation in snowsports and mountain recreation. Since Becky Suarez couldn't talk, had feet like a small Hobbit and was an even worse skier than Jorge, Haynes and Moreno decided to take on the task. Haynes was a Texas banker and political consultant, Moreno a former IT President, hotelier and pro ski patroller- neither one of these guys was particularly well organized or adept at creating a non-profit. In fact, on most days, they're super challenged just remembering to pack all their ski stuff and mega doses of Advil. Still, undaunted, they decided to create ALPINO. Since Moreno was the only one of the pair who could breathe efficiently above 10,000 feet, he was picked to do the heavy lifting necessary to create an organization.

Between the two of them, Moreno and Haynes have six grown daughters and couldn't imagine how different their kids' lives might have been had they not included the mountain experiences they shared with each of them. Based on personal experience, they know snowsports and mountain recreation has the potential of creating options for kids, fosters extraordinary educational and health benefits, respect for the environment and creates lifelong bonds and experiences between parent and child. It's that simple. Or, as Jorge is fond of saying, “…skiing, snowboarding and mountain recreation is the best thing since store bought tortillas!”

Four years later, ALPINO has provided snowsports and mountain recreation experiences for over 10,000 Colorado kids and is busy making the business case for minority outreach to the snow and mountain sports industry. Click here to read press releases.

Why? Well because hundreds of thousands of kids of color (in fact most kids irrespective of color) are growing up in metropolitan areas throughout the United States- with close proximity to mountain areas- who never get to the mountains in their entire life.

That's right N-E-V-E-R!

In Colorado, according to the Colorado Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (COAHPERD), 75-80 percent of Colorado kids never ever get to the mountains during their entire life (perhaps as high as 90-95 percent in Denver)?

There is obviously something wrong with that picture!

And the problem is particularly acute in Colorado where ski areas reflect the lowest minority participation rate in the entire United States at 9.7 percent adjusted. Since Denver is now a predominately multicultural city and reflects a nationwide trend towards a multicultural U.S., ALPINO believes that if the U.S. snow and mountain sports industry doesn't abandon marketing strategies that perpetuate the overt white homogeneity of our sport- and get serious about reaching out to this nation's emerging multicultural majority- it threatens to turn our forests into exclusionary white enclaves where skiing and snowboarding turns into something akin to polo!

That’s O.K. if you’re Prince Charles and a member of the Windsor family. Not O.K. if you’re an American who believes our forests belong to everyone and the life changing joy of mountain recreation should be within the reach of all Americans- regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic class.