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 [...]

2 Wheels, 2 Planks: High Passes, Big Moon, Spring in Switzerland

Powder skiing during the 40-50cm storm that nearly broke the 20-day stretch of daily/nightly snowfall that welcomed us to the Alps. Between sunny days, snow fell for two more nights as we rolled east to Austria and Italy. Skiing as the 70-80 mph gusts of a good old fashioned foehn wind blew in, among the [...]

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 [...]

2 Wheels, 2 Planks: Mid-Winter in the Rhaetian Alps

If we didn’t take the snowflakes flying among the budding birches and blooming daffodils upon our arrival to Zurich back on April 7, we should have. For all but one of the last 18 days, beautiful fresh snow has been falling from the skies above us in the Swiss-Austrian-Italian Alps. And this past Sunday may [...]

2 Wheels, 2 Planks: Heftiger Schneefall

Relaxing back at camp in Switzerland’s Engadine Valley – Credit: EmberPhoto We’re pretty sure that’s German for “heavy snowfall”, and although we’ve managed to score some beautiful sunshine-filled days in the alpine over the last ten days in eastern Switzerland’s Engadine Valley, heftige Schneefall has been the norm here (stay tuned for some more photos [...]

2 Wheels, 2 Planks: Snowbound near St. Moritz

After landing in Zurich tempted to pedal our way straight for the mountains, a forecasted major winter storm had us throwing our bikes on a train bound for the Engadine Valley in eastern Switzerland – home to St. Moritz, several world class ski areas and endless backcountry skiing options. Our plan also meant experiencing one [...]

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 [...]

Ski It While You Can!

With the weather over the next week forecasted to be more like mid-May than mid-March, it’s time to put everything else aside for a little while and ski it while you can – before most of our precious snowpack here in the Northeast (at low to mid elevations, at least) is gone. Whether you feel [...]

Photo(s) of the Week: Vacation Week Storm!

A string of storms that began producing snow last Wednesday produced as much as 40-50″ of snow over the course of several days in some high elevation zones along the northern Green Mountain Divide. Generally, mountain areas in the Northeast picked up 10 to 25″ of fresh snow from these systems, which has improved snow [...]

Photo of the Week: Slip Sliding Away

The Adirondacks’ notoriously rock-, ice- and landslide-riddled terrain is finally starting to fill in with a respectable base of snow (better late than never!). It’s making for some incredibly fun skiing-oriented exploration of the many landslide paths opened and extended by Tropical Storm Irene last fall – like this little one featured here. Stay tuned [...]

Photo(s) of the Week: Fresh Tracks and Fresh Ice

The ice capping many ponds, lakes and slow-moving streams is as good as it gets right now in the Northeast, thanks especially to persistent cold temps and minimal snowfall at lower elevations. Meanwhile, a nice coat of powder snow, although seldom more than boot deep, continues to characterize the off-piste and backcountry skiing in the [...]