Backyard backcountry

It’s been an excellent winter for out-the-backdoor nordic skiing. I've been kicking and gliding around the few hundred acres of woods that I call my backyard since before Thanksgiving, often solo at night with my headlamp. There's not a ton of vertical relief, but there’s one particular ridge with beautiful hardwoods and a perfect pitch that I’ve been waiting to ski until conditions were just right. Our 10-year-old son Daniel has joined me on some of my cross-country tours through the woods this winter, and with the lifts at Gore and Whiteface on windhold, Sunday was a perfect opportunity for a father-son backyard backcountry trek to earn some turns on the ridge.

Gore Mountain: 02/14/2015

Apparently the forecast for cold and wind later in the weekend kept people at home on Saturday, because the crowds you would expect on a holiday weekend never materialized. In a way that’s too bad, because Gore is in prime mid-winter condition. With temps in the low teens and little if any wind, it was a very comfortable day for skiing.

Lies

Gore Mountain: 02/07 & 02/08/2015

You gotta love it when meteorologists refer to our weather pattern as a "snow train." But that's exactly what it's been over the past 3 weeks or so: cold - snow - cold - snow - cold. With a weather pattern like that, you know the skiing's got to be good, and indeed it has been.

North Creek Ski Bowl

Telluride, CO: 01/29 - 01/31/2015

As much as I consider myself an East Coast skier to the core, there’s something about the snow, the terrain and the scenery out West that calls to me as a skier. In recent years I’ve enjoyed great skiing at Big Sky, Montana and Alta / Snowbird, Utah; this year I was lucky enough to be included in a trip to Telluride, Colorado.

See Forever

While I’ve done some skiing in Colorado in the past (A-Basin, Breckenridge, Vail, and a bunch of the 10th Mountain Division huts), I had never visited Telluride. Known for its spectacular setting in the San Juan mountains and its diverse collection of steeps, trees and bowls, Telluride is right up my alley.