/

Grumpy Old Men

Reading Time: 4 minutes from Fall 2011 issue The other day I was out on the balcony of Mike’s $99-million chalet just blowing smoke with my buds. From the 4,314m summit of Grand Combin […]

Read more »
/

Switzerland on a budget

Reading Time: 4 minutes From the Fall 2009 issue Hard times need not rule out high times. Even if you’re on a gap year, don’t write off that dream trip to the Alps just […]

Read more »
/

Betcha didn’t know that!

Reading Time: 4 minutes From the Travel Guide 2010 issue So I am touring the fantastic Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva and surrounded by swank villas with swimming pools—perks for the […]

Read more »
/

Living the guide life

Reading Time: 4 minutes From the Buyer’s Guide 2010 issue More than a good life, “it’s a dream come true,” says Hans Solmssen. Hans is at the top of his profession, one of the […]

Read more »
/

European high life

Reading Time: 4 minutes Nothing defines the European skiing experience better than staying a night in a high-altitude hut. Variously called cabanes, refuges, rifugi or hütte, these shelters on the snow are unparalleled anywhere […]

Read more »
/

Building on success

Reading Time: 4 minutes 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 […]

Read more »
/

No fly zone for heli-skiers?

Reading Time: 3 minutes Recent headline news in my local newspaper read: Swiss government is considering banning helicopter skiing across the nation. It wasn’t the first time such a measure was officially considered. Back […]

Read more »
/

Swiss Village by Intrawest

Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s that good in Bruson. There are only two chairlifts and two brutal T-bars. The groomed piste skiing is distinctly limited, easy enough for an intermediate to exhaust in an […]

Read more »
/

Let the Games Begin

Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s a question I get asked often, and one that draws more discussion with readers and editors alike than questions of snow quality and slope inclination. (Not that I am […]

Read more »
/

Advice for the Europe-bound

Reading Time: 3 minutes Why travel all the way to Europe when Canada has some of the best skiing in the world? Well, you could ask any of the Canadians I wrote about last […]

Read more »
/

How sweet it is

Reading Time: 3 minutes It was Canadian mountain guide John Hogg, for example, who popularized ski safari routes across Switzerland and the Italian Dolomites, and who reconfigured the classic Haute Route ski tour from […]

Read more »
/

Rekindling an Old Love

Reading Time: 4 minutes Skiers suffer a curious seasonal dysfunction. Spring is the time of year, the poets tell us, when we are supposed to come alive with nature. But for skiers, spring is […]

Read more »
/

Letter from the Alps

Reading Time: 6 minutes “No pain, no gain,” I insist, somewhat self-righteously I know but desperate to claw back some ground in an argument I’m losing. “Just try it,” my interlocutor responds smilingly. What […]

Read more »
To top