Charleston, W.Va. ? Whenever Harold Spiker spots another cautious, gray-haired snowboarder at Snowshoe Mountain resort, he goes out of his way to offer an encouraging word.

Meet Snowshoe’s unofficial ambassador to the older snowboarder. The 60-year-old Spiker is not the anomaly he once was in a sport still dominated by the younger crowd.

“Evidently, it must be catching on,” Spiker said. “It’s amazing how many people you meet with common interests.”

The number of U.S. snowboarders grew from 2.8 million in 1995 to 6 million in 2005, according to the National Sporting Goods Association’s annual household survey. About 2.6 percent were age 55 and older in 2005.

Though small in numbers, baby boomers are big on influence. They represent an estimated $2.3 trillion in disposable income with the potential to drive businesses interested in their dollars.

“It’s silly to ignore them,” said Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project, a market research and consulting firm in Richmond, Va.

The challenge for reaching older snowboarders is to ignore their age, because it doesn’t indicate where they are in life – they could be grandparents, or first-time parents, he said.

“A way to reach these guys is to market toward their attitude, to their lifestyle,” Thornhill said. “They’re snowboarders. It doesn’t matter how old they are. They’re buying the same stuff that other snowboarders buy.”

Bill Langlands opened a snowboard shop in 1991 in Killington, Vt., and has opened two more since. A little less than one-third of his customers are over 40.

“We’re not a small segment in the market anymore,” said Langlands, 54. “Everybody thinks snowboarding is for 22-year-olds. But it’s not.

“For the baby boomers, it brings us back to our youth, that free living that we had back in the ’70s.”

Still, some want retailers to do more to fit their needs. Jim Brennan, a 67-year-old former Olympic ski jumper from Bend, Ore., started snowboarding 13 years ago and still has trouble finding boards with step-in bindings for boots.

“A lot of older people can’t bend down,” he said.

Even so, older adventurers consider snowboarding safer than skiing and easier on the knees. It also requires less physical conditioning, learning and equipment.

Spiker, a former ski instructor for the Army Airborne Rangers said he learned to snowboard when he was 50. Jim Parker, 63, is just getting started.

“There’s a lot more old-timers learning the sport than I would have ever imagined,” he said.

Spiker said he will try a jump with his grandchildren once in a while, “but I don’t attempt to get much air.”

“I try to go off it slow enough that I don’t get that board off the ground a couple of feet,” he said. “My days of air are over.”