Included in the news that Colorado’s Echo Mountain was up for sale—we can’t give you a price because it’s going to be auctioned—was this nugget: the state has 140 abandoned ski areas. Turns out these ghost resorts have their own website…as do ghost resorts in other states, including Alaska and New Hampshire. And a book. And a poster.
All those photos of defunct ski hills put us in mind of winter. We don’t mean to cast too far forward, let’s live in the moment, all things in their season, turn turn turn, etc. Then we came across a very entertaining story in the Telegraph on resorts in Chile, including one at the base of a trinity of volcanoes and another that is serviced by a one-way road: it goes up in the morning and down in the afternoon.
Don’t miss the section on Portillo, “a cult destination for skiers” that feels like “a cruise ship somehow raised to the top of the world. There is a member of staff to each guest, and all visitors are on full board, with four meals a day (including British-style afternoon tea) being served by scrupulously efficient red-jacketed waiters in a wood-paneled dining room with mouth-watering views.”
All that would be justification enough for a few minutes of summer day-dreaming of winter. Then we found more justification in this series of interviews with sky-skier Luis Stitzinger on his attempted ascent-descent of Nepal’s Manaslu, the eighth highest mountain in the world (at 8,156 meters or 26,759 feet). This is not recreational skiing: it is serious and dangerous and more than a little crazy. A lot more. But we feel no shame in a bit of armchair adventuring. Stitzinger is no amateur. He’s skied down four 8,000 meter mountains (Gasherbrum II, Nanga Parbat, Broad Peak and K2) and parts of others. He’d hoped to climb Manaslu without porters or artificial oxygen and then make “the first consecutive ski descent of the mountain.” Instead, the team almost didn’t make it down at all. (You’re in trouble when you encounter “fog and lightning in the death zone.”) Again, crazy. And exciting.
Photo of Echo Mountain visitor via http://www.echomtnauction.com/#.
