Steamboat, CO: 02/19 - 02/23/2015

Although our 2 kids have been skiing almost since they could walk (they are 7 and 11 now), I’ve been waiting to do a family ski trip out west until they were both at an ability level that would allow them to fully enjoy the experience. This is the year, and we just returned from 5 days of skiing at Steamboat, CO. The trip couldn’t have worked out better.

Despite being cold and snowy here in the east, it's been something of a lean year out west. Steamboat has been having a better season than many western ski areas, but still the locals were all apologetic about the lack of snow when we arrived. I can’t tell you how many times we heard “you left all that snow to come ski here?”

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.