Replying to Music playing devices and skiing ?

so i've had terrible luck taking my ipods skiing (ya i know terrible idea..... i've went through a 4g,20g,30g because of it probably )  but i heard the reason those have gotten ruined was because they all contain hard drives. I was thinking of getting a 2G because the use flashdrives or something ? i'm not very tech savy so i may be wrong there.... but is that true if i get a player that uses a flash drive versus a hard drive i should be alright ?