Seclusion is a given. After a 10-minute drive through a gated forest of lodgepole pines, a valet struck a triangle iron bell to welcome me "home." I was escorted to a leather club chair beside a dark steel fireplace and offered a warm towel and a huckleberry-flavored mocktail. An expansive wall of glass framed Lone Mountain, the iconic centerpiece of Big Sky.
I grew up skiing. As in, we lived in the mountains and skied every weekend of winter, kind of thing. At one point, early in our relationship, my husband looked at me, semi-astonished: "I think you're better on skis than feet." So it was reaaaally important to me that, first, my then fiancé (now husband) and I could share this amazing sport together,
Multi-day ski trips, whether you're hitting two, three, four, or more days in a row on the slopes, are a ton of fun, but people who aren't used to skiing multiple days in a row start to get pretty sore pretty quick. This 10 minute recovery stretch routine from Outdoor Adventure Training is a great way to unwind and support recovery after a long day on the slopes, and all you need is a yoga mat and a small space.
While weather and snowpack obviously influenced snow and terrain quality, they also directly control crowd distribution. The most obvious example is early season when coverage is thin and only a few front side runs are open. Every person on the mountain ends up lapping the same narrow footprint of snow. Once the snowpack sets and resorts move into the core winter, different issues arise.
World renown speedrider (paragliding skier) Valentin Delluc couldn't help himself from using his unique combination of skills to spread Christmas cheers from the skies above Avoriaz Ski Resort in France. Valentin donned a Santa suit and wicker basket while buzzing the towns rooftops and tossing packages. He couldn't help himself but to get a little bit naughty and went in for a railslide on a chairlift haul rope. Wishing everyone a very merry and very rad Christmas!
Sometimes booking a ski trip means finding the largest possible area to explore and heading there, allowing for plenty of terrain choices, dining options, housing, and general adventure. If you're looking for the biggest resort possible, Les 3 Vallées in the French Alps is the place for you. Les 3 Vallées is the largest interconnected ski area in the world, connecting 25 summits with 161 ski lifts.
Skiing in Europe is often hyped up to be significantly cheaper than skiing in the United States, and that certainly seems true if you're looking just at the lift ticket costs. While some of Europe's largest and most well-known resorts cost less than $100 for a day ticket, many resorts not even a quarter of the size of Europe's largest will charge $200+.
Anticipation is a fickle feeling, a jittery mix of adrenaline and hope. Early winter used to make me excited, no matter where I lived in the West. I'd track storms coming in from the Pacific, waiting for Colorado's high alpine ski resorts to battle to be the first to open or watching the snowline creep lower in the Pacific Northwest.
Professional skier Alex Hackel went incognito as a beginner and signed up for some ski lessons in Austria, all just to see how long he could go before the ski instructor realized he was very, very far from a beginner. To pull off the hilarious stunt, he claimed to be a sports journalist from Boston who was filming a YouTube series titled "First Turns", covering the process of learning how to ski.
Skiing These snowy mountaintops are the perfect getaway for any skiers. The Pocono Mountains welcomed the first-ever commercial ski area in Pennsylvania in 1946 and have since been known for their perfect snowmaking abilities, stunningly groomed trails, and slopes of every level ever since. The Poconos offers 6 ski resorts, all of which have ski gear available for rent. For more information on skiing in the Poconos, check out their website, poconomountains.com.
Nestled in the Italian Alps northeast of Milan, Bormio may not be as famous as other Italian resort towns, but it has been drawing travelers for 2,000 years. During antiquity, the Romans loved to soak in the town's nine naturally occurring hot springs. More recently, Bormio has become a major hub for outdoor sports, including hiking, mountain biking, skiing, and snowshoeing.
Sasha Berkovich grew up in the Soviet Union at a time when nothing came easy, and nothing in skiing was handed to you. If you wanted gear, you had to barter for it. If you wanted to ride a rope tow, you had to build it, you had to scrap together old engines, scavenged parts, and whatever rope you could find. Sometimes the only currency that worked was vodka. Skiing wasn't a hobby for Sasha back then; it was something you earned piece by piece
Luckily, a small community ski area called East Hill was just five minutes from my house. Nestled beside an elementary school of the same name, it had about 100 feet of vertical drop, a rope tow without handles, and a perpetually idle T-bar. The hill was open nights and weekends and staffed entirely by volunteers from the Camillus Winter Sports Association.
Copper Mountain welcomed Guinness World Record Holder Thomas Hart, a.k.a. "Racer Tom", to their slopes this week as he pushed his vertical feet skied in 2025 up to 15 million. According to Guinness World Records, his record for the greatest vertical distance skied downhill in a year currently sits at 11,421,065 ft. Those numbers were put down between October 23rd, 2024, and June 15th, 2025.
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