Some interesting comments on last week’s Short Swings! asking if older skiers and boarders are invisible to the people making business decisions about skiing. Reader Rich Spritz, a Breckenridge instructor, wrote that seniors don’t spend money and it makes sense that, resorts, being businesses, don’t give seniors their attention. There’s no question that the group he describes exists. I see[Read More…]
A Tell-Tale Sign To Watch For In Avalanche Country. As the weather in the Northeast has gradually become colder over the last few weeks, I have noticed the soil in my garden develops into crystalized patterns such as those in the picture below: Of course, as the weather starts to turn cooler, I naturally start to think about skiing. As[Read More…]
[Editor Note: From time to time, we’re going to dip into our extensive archives for a story that might be useful, interesting, or entertaining. Here’s one from 2014 from correspondent Harriet Wallis.] Starting right sticks all season. My friend says the same thing every winter. She says wants to take a lesson as soon as there’s more snow on the[Read More…]
Who Is She? What Makes Her Special? A competitor, a snowboarder (obviously), a woman. See if you can put these clues together. Once again, thanks to the Colorado Snowsport Museum in Vail, CO., for this contribution. Put your guess in comments below. Last Week This artifact is a United States Forest Service avalanche control gun sight. It was used by[Read More…]
Advice Jim Followed: When You Come To A Fork In The Road, Take It. From the time Jim was a youngster, his single goal was to be an Olympic ski racer. He lived for that. He trained for that. But when he was shut out of the Olympics, it didn’t stop him. He generated ways to help others in the[Read More…]
Cozy Feet. Happy Skier. That’s the headline for the APEX Ski Boot System advertisement at the right of this article. It’s worth taking notice…especially with the unusual, limited time 20% discount to SeniorsSkiing.com readers. In a reader survey from a few years ago, we asked which new equipment you intended to purchase in the coming season. 25% of you responded[Read More…]
Open The Archives, Technique, Mystery Glimpse, Gift Ideas With Serious Discounts For Readers. SeniorsSkiing.com’s fifth anniversary year has caused us to reflect back on the articles that have appeared on these virtual pages. Incredibly to us, we have posted almost 1,000 articles from professional journalists, ski business people, freelancers, readers, contributors-from-out-of-the-blue, and correspondents. Our archives is an amazing collection of[Read More…]
Here’s a picture of the birthday cake that, along with a lot of other things, surprised me last weekend. The side you don’t see had pine trees around the bottom. Looked good and tasted delicious. If you have a ski-related cake or other confection you’d like to share with the SeniorsSkiing.com community, send a picture to jon@seniorsskiing.com or mike@seniorsskiing.com.
No Matter What You Are Sliding On, Basic Athletic Principles Apply. When I was a boy, my dad knew a woman who was a former USGA Senior Amateur Champion from South Carolina named Carol Cudone. She constantly reminded my dad to finish his golf swing with his “belly button to the ball.” Ultimately she was trying to get my dad[Read More…]
Hint: It’s Government Issue. Thanks again to the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail, CO, for contributing this photo to our series. A special shout-out to curator Dana Mathios for picking some interesting relics and for providing answers to the “glimpse”. The collection at the Colorado Snowsports Museum tells the story of the explosive rise of skiing in the Colorado Rockies,[Read More…]
Are older skiers and boarders invisible to the people making business decisions about skiing? Unless, you’re a marketer selling reverse mortgages, extended care facilities, pharmaceuticals, or walk-in bathtubs, most companies ignore our market segment. In the world of skiing corporate ski area consolidators are eliminating senior discounts, and ski makers haven’t bothered to present a product designed and presented for[Read More…]
If you’re still looking for something different and/or special for older snow enthusiasts, the following suggestions are discounted for SeniorsSkiing.com followers and can be ordered online. APEX Boot System is offering 20% off retail for SeniorsSkiing.com readers. This is the boot many olderskiers are talking about. It’s a good performer, comfortable, and let’s you walk with ease. No issues getting[Read More…]
SKI Magazine Ski Testers Meet The Sundance Kid. Back in the early ‘70s, SKI Magazine (remember it?) developed a program called SKIpp that stood for “ski performance prediction” developed by the late John Perryman. He was a talented engineer who spent years in aerospace and worked with Howard Head at Head Ski Company. SKIpp had two parts, the laboratory analysis[Read More…]
Weather Factoids, Driving School, PA Trail Names, Utah Poet, Special Birthday For Klaus. Busy week here at SeniorsSkiing.com. We attended the Northeast Winter Weather Summit at Stratton Mountain, VT, and met with meteorologists, ski resort operators, and lots of journalists to discuss matters of mutual interest. And we picked up some amazing fun facts from hanging around with some weather[Read More…]
Twenty-seven thousand, three hundred and ninety-four days. Exactly, nine hundred months. On Wednesday I turned 75. For all but the first nine years, skiing has been my passion. Two things about me contribute to this craziness: I love being outside in the cold, and what I lack in athleticism, I’ve made up for with persistence. In Okemo’s early days, when[Read More…]
An Eye-Opening Lesson From Team O’Neil Rally School About Spinning Tires And Traction Control In Snow. At this past week’s Northeast Winter Weather Summit held at Stratton Mountain, VT., we had a chance to do some driving, spinning, skidding, and generally driving like a cowboy home from the range on a controlled, enclosed test area with mixed conditions: gravel, ice,[Read More…]
A Wonderful Cartoon From Mike Roth, Ski Journalist From Albany. Mike writes and draws cartoons for the Albany Times-Union Ski Blog. This one is about Smuggler’s Notch’s Doc Dempsey’s run.
Extrovert, Powder Puff, and The Elevator Spend a little time looking at resort maps and you’re sure to find some attention-grabbing trail names. When I looked at Pennsylvania resorts I found some beauties. Powder Puff and The Elevator at Jack Frost along with Extrovert at Blue Knob topped the list. Among the best is High Hopes also at Blue Knob.[Read More…]
Utah Poet Offers Instruction And Advice For Beginners In Sonnet. The following loosely-rhymed sonnet is by Utah skier and writer Emma Lou Thayne (1924-2014). It appeared in her 1971 book Spaces in the Sage and was once printed on a ski poster sent nationwide to advertise Utah’s “Greatest Snow on Earth.” Thayne earned a master’s degree in creative writing from[Read More…]
Who Is The Airborne Skier? What’s His Story? Do You Know His Hometown? This week, we made the Mystery Glimpse a little more challenging. Name this high flyer. Tell us about him and (hint) how he met his unfortunate and untimely end. Okay that’s hard. Here’s another one of this celebrated personage. These photos come from the collection of the[Read More…]
Klaus Obermeyer, the legendary skier and innovator, whose eponymous ski clothing brand is found almost everywhere, recently has his 99th birthday. The following interview with Klaus appeared in SeniorsSkiing.com, January 27, 2017: “It’s Easier To Ski Than To Walk.” Klaus Obermeyer is a skiing legend and innovator. The 97 year old founded Sport Obermeyer Ltdbased on insights about ski wear[Read More…]
Exercise And Be Younger, Ski Song Hits Academe, Remembering Friends’ Last Run, Skiing In Japan’s Hakuba Valley, The Mysterious Maud. Over the past week or so, the snowfalls in the most popular snow areas in the US and Canada have been meteoric. There is snow in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, Colorado, Utah, BC and the Sierras. Most unusual, no?[Read More…]
A friend recently commented that a key to greater happiness is to lower our expectations. It took a few days before I understood what he was saying. In some cultures, unhappiness can be traced to the variance between what we have learned to expect and what we have come to experience. Lowering expectations can change that, without lowering our standards.[Read More…]
A Senior’s Introduction To Some Of The Best Skiing In Japan. The Hakuba Valley sits three hours west of downtown Tokyo and boasts some of the best skiing in all of Asia. Host to the 1998 Winter Olympics, Hakuba offers a unique combination of diverse terrain spread out over 11 resorts, 12 meters of annual snowfall, world class facilities, and[Read More…]
