The seatback flight map indicates we are flying over the Yukon Range as Maxime Letendre and I attempt to identify the peaks below. We thought the cirque of Sawtooth Mountain, with its unique, fang-like formations rising from a glacial plateau, would be easy to spot. Same with the summit of 6,900-foot Mt. Taiya, the highest peak […]

The cable car nudged out of the station building and dangled in relative safety for a brief moment before it soared skyward toward the towering spires of the Mont Blanc Massif. Three men in their mid-20s stood at the front of the car, faces pressed against the Plexiglas windows, jaws agape. Usually prone to the kind […]

Like a medieval aerie, the village of Mürren perches on a sunny terrace at the edge of a 2,600-foot cliff in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland. This lofty symbolism is no accident. Here, whether sightseeing or skiing, you’re both cradled by mountains and flying through them. In the spacious lounge of historic Hotel […]

At any point during the winter season, the daily snow report for Vermont’s Mad River Glen might reference the dreaded, drenched “r” word, and discuss how the “snow on the mountain needs to drain.” At Mad River, it’s not just a made-up term. After 40-degree temperature jumps and multiple inches of rain, the mountain must suspend […]

“The prophecy cannot fail that in a few years, thousands of Californians will learn to enjoy on skis the beauty of the snow-clad mountains, made doubly interesting by the contrast to nearby desert and southern sea, and that ski-mountaineering, as it did in Europe, will become one of the most popular sports.” —Walter Mosauer, 1935  A […]

The Finnish language has myriad words for snow, be it slushy, icy, powdery or sleety. There’s even one for the frost that develops on a car windshield after a particularly bitter night. Then there’s hanki. It has no English equivalent, but the closest we can get is crust not frozen enough to support weight, and just […]

The stats aren’t impressive. Two-inch powder days. Five-skier lift capacity. Two-hundred-fifty feet of vertical. Temperatures as low as minus 60-degrees Fahrenheit, and most days of the season are in perpetual darkness. With three runs—a green, blue and black—the trail map is best described as adorable. But stand at the top of the Castle Rock Snow […]