Young snowboarders head out to the slopes for lessons at Gunstock Ski area in Gilford, N.H. The popularity of snowboarding that grew at a rapid pace in the 1990s and early 2000s may have reached its peak according to the National Sporting Goods Association.

KILLINGTON, Vt. — Aging athletes, new skis and a lack of snow are ganging up on the once-edgy sport of snowboarding, which has seen a marked drop in participation over the last decade.

Industry experts say it’s a sign of the maturing of snowboarding, which grew at a rapid pace in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Participation in the sport dropped 28 percent from 2003-2013, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. Downhill skiing also took a hit over that period but less of one — at 10 percent.

“Snowboarding has definitely gone through a maturation phase,” said Jeff Boliba, vice president of global resorts for Vermont-based Burton Snowboards, which pioneered the sport. “We’ve hit our phases where it’s been the fastest growing sport in the world. We’ve reached phases where it started to plateau a little bit, and then you reach phases where the economy crashed and snowboarders definitely were impacted.”

After Burton unveiled its first boards in 1977, snowboarding surged in the late 1990s. The sport exploded after making it into the alternative Olympic-styled X-Games competition and the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, with flames later fanned by Shaun “The Flying Tomato” White, Kelly Clark, Lindsey Jacobellis and other Olympic champions.

But early shredders have aged and had families which have kept them from the mountains. Some riders have returned to or taken up skiing or do both, a huge cultural shift from the “us-versus-them” mentality of skiers and snowboarders in the early days.

“It’s not tribal anymore.” said Kelly Davis, director of research at SIA in Washington, D.C. “It’s not ‘you’re either a snowboarder or a skier.”’

Last week, Kyle Skrzyniarz of Flemington, N.J., opted to ski with friends instead of snowboard so they wouldn’t have to wait for him to crank down his binding after getting off the lift.

But he’s not giving up on riding.

“I just got a new board, so I’m definitely going to do both,” he said.

The decline in snowboarding continued last season, with snowboarders making up just under 28 percent of visitors to U.S. resorts, down from about 31 percent the year before, according to the Kottke National End of Season Survey for 2013-2014.