Editor’s Note: With this article, SeniorsSkiing.com begins a project of publishing interviews with snow sports leaders. We want our readers to learn more about the people who are influential in snow sports development and their views of the role of older participants in skiing, boarding and snow shoeing. Earl Saline, Director of Education Programming for the National Ski Areas Association[Read More…]
Ten Days of Ancient Cliff Dwellings and Thousand Year Rock Art. It’s the 100th Anniversary of the National Parks Service, so my wife and I invited a friend to join us on a ten-day road trip to the Four Corners where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. We spent two nights each in Mesa Verde National Park, Canyon de[Read More…]
Road to Resort Blocked. Winter shifted hemispheres quickly this week and delivered a 9-foot monster dump of snow on Ski Portillio. Resort operators there are ecstatic with the early season delivery. Dramatic satellite images show the day-before/day-after difference in coverage. If any readers are on their way or have plans to go this season, take some pictures and send a[Read More…]
Finally, Outdoor Summer Snow. It’s the invention of TechnoAlpin, an Italian manufacturer of snow making equipment. Its Snow Factory addresses warming trends challenging the future of skiing, allowing skiable snow to be made when air temps are warm. It will help areas extend their seasons or operate when nature won’t cooperate. The first application in North America is at Boreal[Read More…]
How the Magazines Get Their Boot Evaluations. Since the mid-80’s a group of serious skiers has convened at Mt Bachelor, in Bend, Oregon, to evaluate the boots store buyers have purchased for the coming season. This year the show, which is organized by MasterFit Enterprises, moved to Solitude in Utah. I was invited to participate. The collective impressions of the[Read More…]
SeniorsSkiing.com has a GREAT End-of-Season Ad Special! SeniorsSkiing.com is seeking advertisers and sponsors wanting to position their products and services to our audience of active, older snow sports participants. And we’re asking you, our readers, to help. At the height of the 2015-16 season we received almost 18,000 visitors and almost 59,000 pageviews.* Readers stayed an average of three minutes,[Read More…]
A Smart Ski Boot Jack That Really Works. They are the collective sounds of people removing their ski boots: the moans of agony and the sighs of joy heard in lots and lodges around the globe. I’m simply relieved to get the damn things off, but getting the top of my foot past those two nasty tabs of plastic are[Read More…]
$10K for Previously Owned Bombadiers Could Make Your Commute Interesting. For years, Yellowstone National Park transported winter visitors down snowy roads in large—no, humongous—Bombardier snowcoaches. Slow, noisy, and big-time gas guzzlers, their tank-like treads and heavy weight made them reliable. Now the fleet is being retired and auctioned off buy the Feds. The first batch fetched $10,000 to $12,000 per.[Read More…]
Incinerator With Skiable Roof to Open in 2017. For reasons I can’t fully explain, Denmark ranks at the top of the 2016 edition of the United Nations “World Happiness Report.” I’ve been to Copenhagen a few times and enjoyed the people and the food. Skiers there have painfully few options: a few tiny runs and an indoor facility. That’s about[Read More…]
Reduces Layering. Improves On-Hill Comfort. For the past several weeks, I’ve been skiing in a NuDown parka designed to keep you comfortable regardless of outside temperature and without dressing in multiple layers. It utilizes a hand-operated air pump system to create an adjustable layer of air, which, warmed by the body, serves as an effective insulator against the elements. It[Read More…]
Great Skiing. Terrific Views. America’s Fanciest Loos. SnowBasin is the expansive, exceptionally beautiful Utah area that most out-of-staters never get to ski. They’re attracted to the bigger name resorts just 45 minutes east of the airport. Head north, add 10 minutes, and you’re at MAGNIFICENT, SnowBasin—site of the 2002 Olympic Downhill events. At the top, looking over its 3,300 acres,[Read More…]
Vail, Are You Paying Attention? Remember Borat, the hilarious Kazakhstanian character created by British comic, Sasha Baron Cohen? His spoof helped define Kazakhstan in a way that has it trying to get respect ever since. The country has five ski resorts, at least one reaching higher than 10,000-feet. Now a proposed apartment building for Astana, the nation’s capital, would add[Read More…]
Rugged, Waterproof Snow Boots E-Z On/Off. My wife and I just returned from a pleasant hike in the snow, among cliffs and monoliths; sagebrush and Ponderosa pine. She wore sturdy hiking boots and gaiters. I wore the Muck Boot Arctic Commuter, a high-rise (mid-calf) fleece-lined neoprene boot. They were an ideal choice. For a hike on snow-covered, uneven, though generally[Read More…]
SeniorsSkiing.com’s Co-Publisher Jon Weisberg Has Heart Warming Ideas. As the count down to Valentines Day commences, Jon has collected a number of gifts from the expensive to the practical. What? You don’t think warm underwear is a lovely Valentine’s gift idea? Well, he has other suggestions. From the latest Huffington Post Post 50.
SeniorsSkiing.com Co-Publisher Jon Weisberg Remembers His Encounter With The Ski Legend. Several years ago, Jon Weisberg shared a chair lift ride with Stein and later on a dinner table. Here are his recollections as published in Huff 50.
SeniorsSkiing.com’s Co-Publisher Reviews The Newly-Combined Park City-Canyons Resort. Salt Lake City-based Jon Weisberg has been waiting all summer to explore the biggest ski resort in America. With this season’s huge—and apparently ongoing—dump of snow on the Wasatch Mountains, he makes his first visit and has some senior-focused suggestions for getting the most out of your visit. Here’s his report from[Read More…]
This Is The Utah Bucket List Resort Few Visiting Skiers Ever See. I kept hearing three sounds at Brighton on December 22, the first day of Winter, 2015. Early morning trail runs were knee deep. As more people arrived, I entered the forest. There were places where depths reached my thighs. Sound One: Teen-fueled screech of Yippee! HooHaw! YowWee! Sound Two:[Read More…]
White Christmas Ahead For Utah and The Rockies. Salt Lake City-based SeniorsSkiing.com Co-Publisher Jon Weisberg Reports: The biggest single dump since 2011 is how some observers characterize the mid-December storm that blanketed Utah’s Wasatch range with almost two feet over the past few days. Snowfall extended into Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. Individual resorts report impressive numbers. Brian Head, the state’s most[Read More…]
SeniorsSkiing.Com’s Co-Publisher Reports On Where You Can Get Free Skiing Huff Post’s Post 50 Blog features our own Jon Weisberg reporting on the 98 resorts in North American where seniors can ski for free. The list of resorts both large and small were compiled by the National Ski Area Association and also published in Ski History magazine. Regular subscribers to[Read More…]
Buy Before You Go And Save. We’ve just discovered GetSkiTickets.com, an online marketplace for advance purchases of discounted lift tickets, lessons, rentals, group lift tickets and season passes. The service is designed for people who know the specific dates they’ll be using the passes. Prices tend to be lower when purchased farthest in advance, somewhat like your airline tickets. Purchasers receive[Read More…]
Buy Stuff If You Can. The 2016 Gorsuch catalog just landed on our desk with a cover model wearing $4,487 worth of ski outerwear. Inside are pictures of parkas costing in the thousands and a four-way stretch insulated “ski jean” for $2,399. Choices for guys are pricey, but nothing like the trophy garments which, based on the Barbie-looking models, must be[Read More…]
Ski Younger Now is a retraining program for older skiers, and skiers returning to the sport after recovering from an injury. Developed by veteran instructor, Seth Masia (Seth is on the SeniorsSkiing.com Advisory Board), Ski Younger Now teaches low-impact, low-torque techniques to enable efficient skiing in all kinds of terrain. The approach works for anyone recovering from an injury and[Read More…]
And Other Ticket Pricing Ideas. Pre-season cocktail hour among veteran skiers often leads to talk of the new season’s pass prices. In 2001 or 2002, when Park City Mountain Resort changed its senior pass from free to $300, a flurry of letters to the editor registered collective outrage. Not to mention that even at $300, it was a great deal for a season’s pass.[Read More…]
A Good Idea For Apres-Ski Tailgating. When we picnic or party, we usually carry glass wine bottles like most people do. Well, the people at fiftyfifty have come up with a better way to transport wine. It’s a double-wall, vacuum-insulated stainless steel bottle that keeps wine at the perfect temperature—all day long. What’s unusual about the container is its[Read More…]
Perhaps One Of These Days. NASA spaceship New Horizon’s zoomed past Pluto in June. It’s the closest we’ve gotten to the dwarf planet. At 3,670,050,000 miles, Pluto is almost 40 times the distance from the Sun as Earth. This spectacular image shows a range of 11,000′ icy mountains. We don’t know if they might require very sharp edges to maneuver,[Read More…]
