Free skiing is available for older skiers at 145 resorts in 26 states and five Canadian provinces this season. Each resort requires a specific age for free skiing. The youngest is 55; the oldest, 90. Those 70 years and older have a choice of 69 ski areas. This is the first time Canadian resorts are included in the directory.[Read More…]
Halloween Skiing, Nor’Easter Brings New England Snow, Contribute To SeniorsSkiing.com, Stein’s Studebaker, Ultimate Ski Quiz. For the first time in a while, there will be skiing on Halloween. Resorts are opening in BC, Colorado, Vermont, Maine, and more snow is on the way this week in New England. Here’s the forecast for this Wednesday 10/25. Get your costume ready. We[Read More…]
Snow, Snow, Snow! So it begins. And it’s only mid-October. Who’s made a first run? Tell us about it! From East To West [Read More…]
Other Things To Do In Winter For Seniors (Part 2): On You Huskies. Ok, nobody says mush. Nobody, outside of maybe movies, has EVER said mush, though the folks who drive sleds are often called mushers. Mostly, people who run dogsleds just say, “Go!” And the dogs aren’t those black and white Siberian Huskies people expect. Your average sled dog[Read More…]
Warren Miller Film Tour, Other Things To Do Series Starts, Flat Light Polka. It is October and our natural, built-in annual calendar says it’s time for a Warren Miller flick to remind us how graceful, funny, and exhilarating snow sports can be. As long as we can remember, the official pre-start of the snow season has been the viewing of[Read More…]
It isn’t just senior skiers who suffer in flat light, but whiteouts may take a greater toll on our sometimes diminished vision and balance. Case in point: the few falls I’ve had in recent ski seasons were all in flat light conditions. One crash last February caused a minor injury and led to the realization that I shoulda known better.[Read More…]
Big BC Snow Beats Record, Colorado Senior Discounts, Conditioning Cautions, Ski Shows Coming. No doubt about it, snow is making a statement in the Northwest and Canadian Rockies in particular. Just this week, Calgary experienced a record-breaking snowfall, catching municipal snow removers a bit flat footed. Equipment had to be imported from local towns and cities to help clear the[Read More…]
Even Though You’re Not A Spring Chicken, You Can Still Do The Sports You Love. Don’t Let Your Past Hold You Back. To set the stage, I recently broke my wrist, so I’m sealed in a cast. Can’t drive. Can’t swim. Can’t this. Can’t that. Fortunately it’s temporary. Soon I’ll be back to doing the things I love. Meanwhile, I[Read More…]
Other Great Ski Publications, Protect Our Winters, Anticipation, Snowmaking As Fire Protection. As you may have read, SeniorsSkiing.com is entering its fifth season of publishing. Over these last few years, we have entered the amazing world of ski publications and their publishers, all of whom have been welcoming, supportive, and collegial to Jon and me as newcomers. You should know[Read More…]
A Chill Is In The Air. It’s usually the cusp of late summer and early fall when I first start thinking about skiing. All it takes is some cool days and seeing the first leaves starting to turn. Wearing long slacks for the first time, turning on heat for the first time, and the beginning of football season get me[Read More…]
Snow Is Happening Now, Winter Weather Prediction, Portillo Report, XC Binding News. So it begins. There’s snow in British Columbia, some parts of Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Check out the very recent snow map above from Snow-Forecast.com. The green represents snow; it’s not very much accumulation, —though we did hear Banff got blasted just today—but it’s there. Someone please ring[Read More…]
What Will The Winter Weather Be? There Are Many Ways Of Telling, So Place Your Bets. We grew up with several folk rules about forecasting the winter weather. Most people know about the width of the bands of Woolly Bear caterpillars and the increased frenzy of squirrels gathering nuts and stowing them away. But did you also know that folklore[Read More…]
Weather Perplexes, Forecasts Of El Nino, Conditioning Ideas, Interesting Articles. Ok, cut to the chase. This has been a weird summer, weather-wise. In the Northeast, unrelenting hot, humid, stormy, rainy, not just a little but a lot. Out West, dry, fires. In Europe, heat waves and drought. Big hurricanes in the Central Pacific. (Hurricane Lane is the latest taking aim[Read More…]
New Revenue Source For Those Beautiful Fairways. Cross country (XC) skiers hit a hole-in-one once their local golf course, which has been converted to an XC ski area, is covered in snow. Golf courses are ideal for XC skiing as they are often easier than other trail networks for skiers, and they provide easy access to people looking for a[Read More…]
Your Brain On Nature. [Editor Note: Roger Lohr, publisher of XCSkiResorts.com and SeniorsSkiing.com’s Nordic Editor, reports on the therapeutic effects of being outside. We thought it, now we know it.] The Nature Fix by Florence Williams, published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2017, provides the most compelling argument to date for people to spend more time outdoors in nature,[Read More…]
More On Skiing Chile, Fat Bikes For Seniors, Mammoth Invests In Summer, Lost Baby Robin, Alone In The Woods. Summer is in full glory as we write this. So far, in New England, we’ve had a massive, long-lasting heat wave, heavy rains, clear skies, and classic summer days. We’ve been hiking, riding our bike in prep for a charity ride[Read More…]
You Can Find Adventure In Your Own Back Yard. This Adventure Began In A Window Well. [Author’s note: I’m stuck at home with an arm in a cast. Can’t drive. Can’t hike. Can’t, can’t, can’t. The baby robin tale is a good reminder that adventure and joy can be right at home.] Laurie called to me: “A baby bird has[Read More…]
Southern Hemisphere Special, Safe and Sane Cycling For Seniors, Zany Videos, El Nino Coming. Yes folks, it’s the start of the ski season in far away places below the Equator. Here’s a picture of downtown Santiago, Chile, which received a highly unusual coating of snow for the first time in years. And in New Zealand, The Remarkables, those beautiful, mystic[Read More…]
Survey Results: Summer Activities, Summer Trail Prep, Sacropenia Defense. We are in high spring, as it were, as of this writing, and yet they are still squeezing out runs in Killington, VT, and will be until the end of May. Here’s a pic from last weekend from Aspen East Ski Shop’s Facebook page. And also at Killington, Scott Howard, (65)[Read More…]
Discount Reminders, Season Thanks, Washing Down, Stowing Gear, Abandoned Ski Area Movie, -30- This amazing season hangs on. Even as we write this on April 19 snow is falling in New England, in fact, right outside our window on Boston’s North Shore. We know that the Sierras and Rockies are also seeing spring snowfalls. It will be the last weekend[Read More…]
Only Two Guesses, One Was Correct. Apparently, our last Mystery Glimpse of the season was fairly esoteric. We salute reader Patricia Gottshalk for identifying Anders Olsen Haugen, the US Ski Team member who was the first American to win a Winter Olympics medal. He won medals in the 1924 Olympics in Chamonix and the 1928 games in St. Moritz. In[Read More…]
Looking Back, Mystery Glimpse, Spring XC Skiing, Riding With The Cats. It’s hard not to get a bit philosophical at the end of a season. And yes, we know that there are those who are still finding newly fallen snow out there, but we are done. Highlights for us: We re-discovered our interest in ski history, launching the Mystery Glimpse[Read More…]
Season Hangs On, Cross-Country Lessons, Apex Boot Highlights, Bob Beattie, Fun & Games, Mystery Train. Click Here To See Where Snow Fell Day By Day From Oct 5th to March 26th. A glance at the map shows where the season’s snow accumulated and where it didn’t. Clearly, the Far West, Upper Rockies, (and Canadian Rockies not shown), parts of the[Read More…]
To Make The Switch To Cross-Country, Please Start With A Lesson And These Tips. In the early 1970s, in a visionary but totally wrong-headed move, the fledgling Nordic ski industry declared that, “If you can walk, you can cross-country ski.” It would have been a lot more helpful to say, “If you can walk, you can learn to cross-country ski.[Read More…]
Easter/Passover/Spring Arrives, Song Sample, Stumped-The-Crowd Mystery Glimpse, New XC Editor, Ski Boot History, Season Pass Quandary Redux, Big Sky Report, Big Party At Alta For 94-Year-Old Skiin’ Guy. This week is a milestone pivot point for the 2017-18 ski season; it’s Springtime in full glory, and ordinarily parkas come off, t-shirts abound, zaniness ensues, and the snow sport world looks[Read More…]
