From the Travel Guide 2011 issue Serfaus, Austria, isn’t a popular destination for North Americans, but after days of powdery surprises George Koch and friends think that should change Hour by hour, day by day, Serfaus kept serving up the surprises, the delights, the jaw-dropping epic descents of which 50-year memories are made. You probably… More »
It’s the end of an era for the only privately run ski school at a major resort in Canada. He’d ride up the mountain first thing to work on his carving technique while his cronies were sleeping off their hangovers. He sweated in a steel mill to pay his way through university. He was born… More »
A roundup of 10 top resorts on the road from Calgary (from Buyer’s Guide 2011 issue) Last fall it seemed as if Divine Intervention itself was about to lift the Rocky Mountains region ski areas from the economic purgatory following the world ?nancial meltdown.The most copious early-season snowfalls possibly in our lifetimes slammed nearly every… More »
Breckenridge and Heavenly may share a lot in common with?their sister resorts of Vail, Beaver Creek and Keystone,? but they can quite happily stand alone. As a judge, I wasn’t accused of impartiality per se, it was more my observation skills that saw me lose my appointment. Or perhaps it was my math. Needless to… More »
10 great ski areas tempt locals and vistors alike with all that’s new and improved From Fall 2009 issue Ski resort marketing people are somehow psychologically wired to look ahead. Even at the best of times they’re not really interested in reflecting on last season. For much of the west, this particular last season was… More »
Alert readers will recall my chronicling of the Kicking Horse story since it began as a glimmer in the eye of Vancouver skier-visionary Oberto Oberti. I was an instant convert on the late spring day in 1998 when Oberti and local heli-skiing operator Rudi Gertsch flew me onto a peak thousands of feet above the… More »
In the 1920s an impecunious Ernest Hemingway bummed around the Italian Dolomites, hitching rides on pre-dawn milk trains chugging up to high farms, using them as ski lifts. Only a decade ago, the tourist director of St. Anton in Austria told me, “We open our arms to ski bums.” And one who took him up… More »
There’s a weird dichotomy in the way skiing markets itself. Our sport’s image is self-consciously elitist. Glitz, glam and bling. Celebrity athletes performing superhuman record-setting feats on the racecourse or off the cliff face. Resorts announcing multi-million-dollar (or half-billion-dollar) investments for ultra-modern conveyances, 300-hp snowcats, 200-room condo-hotels or Soviet-sized mountain restaurants. Super-cool tricked-out customers whisked… More »
In mid-August, the 20-year-long era of the company that operates Whistler-Blackcomb, Mont Tremblant, Panorama, Blue Mountain and numerous other resorts came to an end, or turned a page in its history. After appearing to have flatlined in the face of a rising Canadian dollar, stagnating skier-visits and a scarcity of lucrative new development projects, publicly… More »
I figured I’d have long been writing travel articles on riding Canada’s highest ski lifts and exploring almost 2,000 verical metres of dramatic, glaciated terrain. No such luck. Still, Vancouver architect and skiing visionary Oberto Oberti’s plan has made progress in the year since B.C.’s Cabinet accepted the recommendations of the province’s Environmental Assessment Office… More »
Loading ...