Rent vs. Buy: Kids Edition
The Skier's Dilemma: Rent or Buy?
“Should I rent, or should I buy?” Every skier wrestles with this question, especially when it comes to kids gear. In this post, BaseKamp is excited to finally offer a simple, clear-cut answer to this familiar conundrum. Our answer is: it depends.
On what exactly does this choice depend? Several factors must be considered before you can determine the best way equip your little ripper. These include:
• Cost
• Days Skied
• Skier Ability
• Maintenance
• Skier Age
• Hand-Me-Down Potential
• Travel Considerations
Cost
Here’s our BaseKamp cost comparison of daily rentals, season rentals, and equipment purchase for our two young skiers. Pricing in your area may vary slightly based on the rental and retail options available and/or whether you’re comfortable purchasing some gear online.
Daily Rental
$47/day (Cascade Mountain, WI)
Season Rental
$189/season (Viking Ski Shop, IL)
Purchase
$459 for H. Our 10-year-old boy is an aggressive skier with solid intermediate skills. He’s working on improving his technique on black terrain and learning to deal with variable snow. We purchased him:
• $229 Volkl Mantra Jr (2022) skis
• $100 Look NX 7 bindings
• $100 Fischer RC4 Podium 90 (2020) boots
• $30 Atomic AMT Jr. poles
$278 for Z. Our 8 year-old girl has solid beginner skills. She‘s working on keeping skis parallel on steeper blue/black pitches and linking varied sized turns. We purchased her:
• $149 Volkl Deacon Jr. (2022) skis with vMotion 4.5 bindings
• $110 Nordica GPX Team boots
Gear at Viking Ski Shop (Barrington and Chicago, IL)
Days Skied
If your family plans to make just one multi-day trip this season to a single mountain, daily rentals at or near the resort may make the most sense. Even if season rentals could offer modest savings, you’ll appreciate making your way through airports, Ubers, and shuttles sans ski baggage.
If your family will ski four or more days this winter at multiple destinations, though? We recommend shifting to season rentals from your local ski shop (or, if you’re committed to skiing throughout your kids’ childhood, perhaps purchasing equipment of their own). With multiple destinations on your ski itinerary, avoiding the rental shops, heading straight to the lifts, and skiing in equipment you know your kids are comfortable in will make every ski day better.
Skier Ability
While most reputable shops regularly check their equipment for wear and tear, the age and condition of rental equipment varies widely. Because this can impact performance, it’s important to rely on the recommendations of experienced friends in selecting the best rental shop. Additionally, rental equipment must, by necessity, fit a wide variety of skiers well enough to make their ski days enjoyable. Rental equipment can serve the occasional skier well for some time, but eventually, young skiers may want something that fits them a bit better. Personalization of boot fit, for example, really isn’t possible in a rental boot. As your kids become better skiers, they may also push the performance limits of rental equipment. At this point, you’ll want to better control variables such as boot fit and stiffness, ski length/width/shape, and tuning to help them ski their best.
Here at BaseKamp, we firmly believe that a good day on the mountain begins with the right boot. When you’re ready to purchase, consider working with a qualified boot fitter at a brick-and-mortar shop to find the best options for your kids’ anatomy, ability, and skiing style. You can fill out the rest of their gear closets from there, perhaps trying a variety of “demo” ski rentals until you’re ready to buy.
Maintenance
When you rent equipment, responsibility for its maintenance lies with the rental shop. If you purchase your kids’ gear, though, you'll need to take care of it yourself. While routine maintenance adds to ownership cost, it should also add equipment life, ensuring that everything can be handed down and used for several seasons. When you first buy skis, bindings, and boots, take them to your local ski shop to have the bindings mounted and calibrated to the boots and your kids’ specs (height, weight, skier type, etc.). Regular tuning throughout each season will keep bases smooth and fast and edges sharp. Local shops and tuning services like ours can help, or you can learn these skills yourself over time. Be sure to store your equipment in a dry, climate-controlled space. In my experience, you'll soon have an entire closet devoted to ski gear!
(Tuning image via Ski Magazine)
Skier Age
This season, H and Z will be ten and eight years old. After years spent skiing in rental equipment, Lea and I decided that both kids were ready for their own equipment this year. While we were thoughtful in all our selections for them, we were most careful in our approach to ordering and fitting their boots. First, I measured their feet to determine the right size to order. I had both kids try on their boots with the liners removed to determine if the shell size was appropriate. Since both H and Z had experience with this process at ski shops and had worn a variety of different rental boots, they were able to tell me if something didn’t feel right. They provided feedback on how the boot felt around their feet and legs. We actually returned one pair of boots and ordered a different pair for Z based on her feedback about the fit, making sure she was comfortable.
If you’re not comfortable doing this on your own, or if your young skiers aren’t quite as experienced and communicative about how their equipment feels, we definitely recommend seeking out the expertise of a qualified boot fitter at your local ski shop.
Hand-Me-Down Potential
More than one kid in the family? You’re in luck! As one child grows out of his or her equipment and becomes more proficient, you should be able to roll that equipment down to the next-oldest skier in line. We anticipate that our kids will each enjoy two seasons of use from the equipment we purchased this year. If we can make this happen, we’ll have realized more value from our purchase than had we chosen the season rental route.
Ideally, after two seasons, Z will then move into H’s larger equipment, enjoying another season or two of use from it. (We can find a new home for her outgrown equipment with friends or at a local ski swap.) We’ll continue this cycle for a few turns and see how it works. Boot sizing is, understandably, the wild card in our plan. Properly sized boots really are any skier’s most critical piece of equipment. By contrast, having skis 1-2 cm. short or long for a season is not that big of a deal.
H’s early rental adventures in Breckenridge.
Travel Considerations
If you’ve read this far, you’ve likely begun to formulate an opinion on whether daily rental or season rental/purchase is the best choice for your family. If you’ve decided to move forward with the latter option, you’ll need a way to transport your gear. We highly recommend a backpack-style boot bag for every person in your family and dual ski bags with wheels.
As Midwesterners, we’ve spent plenty of time flying east and west to ski. Know that unloading all of your gear and transporting it to baggage check will be a slog. Look for opportunities to check bags curbside whenever you can. Most airlines consider a ski bag and boot bag one piece of checked baggage, and Southwest remains incredibly generous when it comes to bag fees. Although heavy, dual ski bags with wheels allow parents to schlep two pair of skis through airport terminals with only one hand, and backpack straps on boot bags ensure that elementary-aged kids will learn to carry their own luggage from the very beginning of your ski adventures.
We’ve found that when our lodging has laundry facilities onsite, each person in our crew can fit ski boots, all ski attire, and all off-mountain clothing into his or her personal boot bag with relative ease for a trip of nearly any length. Remember that “dressing up” for dinner means something different in a ski town that it does in your city or suburb. A few mix-and-match pieces, a pair or two of jeans, and a good sweater should serve you well. We wear our snow boots on the plane to save packing space, and they’re generally the only off-mountain footwear we bring.
For road trips, you'll need want to invest in a ski rack or roof-top box for your vehicle. We bought a used roof-top box through Facebook Marketplace a few years ago that has been indispensable to our local skiing adventures.
While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to the rent-vs.-buy question, I hope we’ve given you the information to make the best choice for your family. Remember, just as every skier is different, every ski season is different, too. What works this year, given the ages and experience level of your kids and the travel you have planned, may not work next year.
Before each new season, take time to evaluate what you loved (and didn’t love) about the previous year’s adventures. As plans for the next season take shape, be sure to explore how revisting equipment choices might help smooth challenges and facilitate an even better winter to come!
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