Photo of the Week: Freedom of the Hills

Since returning last week from a month long, bicycle-powered skiing adventure in the Alps (more posts HERE), we’ve been thinking a lot about the incredible freedom, access and mobility that bicycles and camping make possible. (Caution: If you throw skiing into the mix, too, you might not ever come back.) During our recent adventure in [...]

Photo of the Week: Somewhere in the South Tirol

After pedaling our bikes out of Switzerland’s beautiful Engadin Valley and into the Austria-Italy border region, a week long corn cycle is luring us higher than usual into the mountains of the South Tirol and Ortler zones. Down in the valleys, fruit trees are blooming, cows are being turned out to pasture and people of [...]

Photo of the Week: Tasty Turns with Tom

Another heavy dusting of fresh snow arrived in the mountains near AdventureSkier headquarters (central Vermont) overnight, and with blue skies overhead and a fresh breeze out of the north, the mountains were calling more than usual early Monday. As much as we’ve loved riding lifts through the closing days at of our local ski areas [...]

What a Spring! Now, Back to Winter.

Sure, it was a thin-cover season here in the Northeast. Powder days were elusive. And dust on crust was often glorified with descriptions like “micro-pow”, “expert-powder” and “20-30!!….millimeters”. But despite the sparse offerings of the 2011-12 winter season in the Northeast, the last two weeks of nearly flawless spring weather helped to compensate by offering [...]

This Time, Last Year: Canoe-Ski

This time last year, a solid snow pack at river valley levels and easygoing river conditions (pre-snowmelt, with ice cleared from previous thaw) tempted us to head out on another canoe-skiing adventure – this time down Vermont’s White River Valley.  With our friend Justin Beckwith, we set off in our trusty 16′ river canoes, climbed [...]

Photo of the Week: March Madness

Did we all lose track of the calendar somehow? Or did that last solar storm turn up the Northeast’s thermostat? Considering that the weather and skiing is more typical of late April out there, it’s hard to believe it’s only mid-March. Still, until Old Man Winter returns with his usual late-winter antics, we’ll just have [...]

Photo of the Week: Last Gasps of Winter?

Although the forecasts are calling for unusually warm temps through at least the next seven days (with the exception of Wednesday pm – with snow possible in the mountains!), we’re confident that Old Man Winter will grace us with his presence again this season before spring takes over for good. In the meanwhile, it’s worth [...]

As Good As It Gets…

The skiing and riding is as good as it gets right now across the Northeast, with bottomless snows in the backcountry and perfect trail skiing conditions at the resorts this week. With more fresh snow piling up Thursday into Friday, there should be nothing stopping any of us from getting out there and making the [...]

Dodging Rain Showers

The resiliency of the ski season here in the Northeast never ceases to amaze us. Last Tuesday afternoon (1/17), when temperatures climbed above freezing and a steady rainfall ensued, it was hard to imagine that we’d be skiing such beautiful snow just a few days later. Then again, this is the Northeast – home to [...]

The Friday the 13th Storm…Honoring MLK

The storm we’ve all been waiting for dumped 10-20″ of fresh snow across the mountains of the northeast on Thursday and Friday, January 13th. By early Saturday morning, Vermont skiers like Justin Chapman and Dave Bouchard (ahead and back, in the first photo, respectively) were easily belly deep in powder on steeper, leeward aspects surrounding [...]

Photo of the Week: Freshies with Family

Every winter, my sister, Lindsay, and her husband, Sean, kick off nearly three months of “down-time” (from their gardening/ landscaping business on the MA coast), by skiing with us here in Vermont. Sean’s a ripping surfer with whom we’ve enjoyed some incredible swells over the years, and he’s skilled on both skis and snowboard. “Sis” [...]

Photo(s) of the Week: Shallow Powder and Alpenglow

Scattered snow showers continue to add precious white snowflakes to our relatively thin snowpack across the Northeast, with up to 4″ of Champlain Powder falling around VT’s Mt. Mansfield on Thursday. While most off-piste lines still need quite a bit of natural-snow base, others are really starting to take shape. The first image here was [...]