If you love America, go skiing.
Remember after 9/11, when George Bush advised America to go shopping? For the good of the country and the economy. Because purchasing power is power, after all. And power should be exercised. Against the terorists. (Sidebar: You don’t need Don Draper to sell this message; most Americans accepted it intuitively. If your way of...
Olds and altitude sickness. And Viagra.
Ski season is here and with it the risk of altitude sickness. You know the drill: you start in Chicago (elevation 579 feet) or New York (which averages around 30 feet of elevation when it isn’t swamped by a hurricane). You fly a few hours west, rent a car, drive to Summit County and a...
The season’s first ski story
New Zealand’s Otago Daily Times just ran a story about an adaptive ski program for disabled skiers and snowboarders, which is a pleasing piece to read if you like the idea of disabled people enjoying all the good things in life, and if you’re looking ahead to winter and are happy to see a ski...
Summer’s here and the time is right for dreaming about skiing
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....
Saturday mash-up: May 26, 2012
Busted glasses, busted diets, lost manufacturing…no intention here to sound ominous. Sometimes the news just points you in a way and there’s no point in resisting it. But summer is here at last. Break out the white flannels. Soon. Just as soon as this small dark cloud passes over. They’re pretty light, those glasses, so...
Saturday mash-up: May 12, 2012
By separating these odd lots into discrete posts spread over several days, we might appear more professional. But alas, we are what we seem to be: The National Park Service is reminding folks that 33 national parks will offer premier seating for the solar eclipse on May 20, and six parks “are at the center...
Saturday mash-up: March 31, 2012
Whenever there’s a pile of items that accumulate over the week and we can’t get around to individual pieces on each one, we throw them into a bin like this, which we previously called a stew and then a hash. This time we’re call it a mash-up, which seems like another food metaphor but less...
Vargas of the trail map gets his due
We are occasionally confined to the great indoor wasteland of the desk, corner office, or garret. There we stare at a computer screen all day, with no opportunity to roam the precious spaces on earth. (Of course there is Google Earth, but the emptiness of that world wearies after a time. And, let’s face it,...
Vintage ski photos prompt nostalgia for a time we never knew
Some days skiing—especially resort skiing—seems to have no more connection to the raw mountain than a Carnival cruise ship has to the sea. If you snap into your bindings in hopes of engaging nature, you will be disappointed. The hills are mostly manicured and groomed, rendered comfortable and convenient and predictable. Most folks like...
Climate change is really starting to sting
Despite years of truly frightening predictions about the inevitability of climate change and its disastrous effects, the world seems to have lost traction on the issue . People are still writing stories, scientists are still debating models, activists are still acting. But previously concerned citizens now seem to be uttering a...
This week, media find old skiers fascinating
We have a new favorite line of the week, from a story in the Edmonton Journal on octogenarian skiers: during the photo shoot for the story, 87-year-old Hanna Andersen “thinks about doing a jump, something she hasn’t done since she was 85….”* Andersen is one of 20 over-80 skiers in Edmonton’s 400-member Rocky Mountain...
This is what ski videos used to look like
One nostalgic post (Runestone’s harkening back to his Jet Stix knock-offs) leads us to another. We came on this fascinating film that purports to show skiers in 1932 Poland’s Tatra Mountains (Geography lesson: The Tatra Mountains form a natural border between Slovakia and Poland, and are the highest mountain range in the Carpathian Mountains. Thanks,...
