Year: 2016

Whenever you drive around ski country, no matter what the state, you can’t help but encounter a defunct ski area or two. This is no surprise. Since the 1980’s, roughly 33% of ski areas in the US have gone out of business, and few have any hope of ever coming […]

Companies in the ski industry that were founded by women are few and far between. Sure, there’s Title Nine and WinterWomen, retailers who specialize in women’s activewear and ski apparel. There’s Outdoor Divas, which sells both women’s ski apparel and women-specific ski gear. And there’s Coalition Snow, the only ski […]

Plan to be passing through Ishpeming, Michigan, soon? In case you didn’t know, that’s the location of the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. Yeah, I agree; the Upper Peninsula of Michigan seems an unlikely spot to me, too. You’d imagine the Hall of Fame would be someplace like Aspen or Vail. […]

Chances are you’ve heard of the Jackson Hole Air Force, a group of avid powder skiers formed in the early ’80’s famous for hard skiing, hard partying, and poaching gnarly out-of-bounds terrain. It was a group that Crystal Wright, two-time Freestyle world champion and Jackson native, had looked up to […]

How many times have you heard a glowing snow report, only to hustle over to the mountain and find yourself the victim of, well, some generous exaggeration? What? Ski areas lie? It’s not a shock to anyone that they want to put the best face on things so you’ll buy a lift ticket. […]

In a world where the ski industry is characterized by a bigger is better mentality, it’s nice to know that Mountain Rider’s Alliance is fighting the fight for the local ski hill. Mountain Rider’s Alliance is sort of the yin to Vail’s yang. Because instead of developing mega-resorts replete with condo […]