Whiteface, NY: Early Season Rewards

Posted on by midatlantico

Slowly but surely, ski resorts have been coming online this week like lightbulbs on an aerial map of the northeast. First a flash from central Vermont as Killington kicked off the region’s ski season, then a flicker from Maine as lifts began cranking at Sunday River.

Whiteface-NY-Summit

Even Governor Cuomo got into the act, announcing last Friday that Whiteface and Gore were opening for the season. In other words, it was time to get skiing.

The rain blanketing the Hudson Valley on Monday held the promise of snow further north, though with a warming trend that was likely pushing the rain-snow line at least as high as the Killington summit and possibly a good ways up Whiteface as well.

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Tagged: Adirondacks, Whiteface2 Comments

Portes du Soleil, FR: More Than Just Massive

Posted on by James Michaud

As someone who’s positioned himself as a fan of low-profile, off-the-beaten-path ski areas, I always feel a bit conflicted when visiting and writing about resorts that are big, popular, and for lack of a better descriptor “mainstream.”

Morzine
Morzine at Dusk ©Gilles Lansard

That said, a cigar isn’t always a cigar and on a handful of visits to the Alps, I’ve been to several major ski regions that are not only big, popular, and armed with completely up-to-date infrastructure, but also charming, full of local color, and with a number of worthwhile bail-out options to avoid the hordes. The Portes du Soleil in the northern Alps qualifies as one of these.

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Tagged: Interviews, Magazine

Stowe, Vt: Ignition 2014

Posted on by miker92

November is a dangerous time of year for productivity. If you’re like me, you’ve got a few extra tabs open in your browser at any given moment: one for NOAA, another for your blogging ski-weatherman of choice, and maybe another for a favorite mountain.

Stowe-Vt-November-2014

With rumors flurrying last week about a few inches here or a foot there and with Killington’s trusty machinery as a fallback, I knew I’d be on snow come Saturday morning. The question was where.

For the first time since I learned to ski at age five, the season snuck up on me. I’m usually watching powder edits by mid-August and scraping off summer wax in early October, just in case. Fresh out of college and living in a new town with a job, though, I had other things on my mind this year. When temperatures started to dip toward the end of last month and pictures of dusted peaks began popping up online, I almost wasn’t ready.

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Tagged: Stowe, VT7 Comments