I’m a partisan of this little boutique mountain range in Northwest Wyoming called the Tetons. Sure, they’re pretty, and pretty photogenic, but as a skier I know them to be the home some of the best skiing in North America, and as I’ve recently argue, the key to great skiing is great snow, or at [...]
Skiing in the Tetons
Too Bad It Can’t Always be This Way
Interesting Snowfall Graph
Ok, maybe the good folks at Jackson Hole wouldn’t pass a graph making class, (how many bar graphs start below the zero bound?), but we’ll take good news in any form we can get it in a poor snow winter. Vive la Tetons!
In-Bounds Avalanches, Part 2
A couple of days ago I suggested that skiers venturing off trail to ski steeper powdery slopes within a resort’s normally avalanche controlled boundaries would be wise to wear avalanche transceivers and carry a shovel and a probe pole just as if they were heading into the backcountry. Here’s why…Three significant avalanches where triggered by [...]
Skiing Everywhere
Priming the Olympics Pump
While picking up milk at the grocery store today I checked out the magazine rack to see if I would be tempted buy the Olympics issues of any of the ski mags. I wasn’t very optimistic, but neither was I ready to see just one option: Ski magazine. It had a pretty pathetic dozen or [...]
Ski Racing Olympians
Thursday night it was standing room only at the Wort Hotel in Jackson when the Jackson Hole Historical Association hosted an evening with Pepi Stiegler and Tommy Moe reminiscing about their lives as skiers and Olympic champions. Both men succeeded in landing jobs in Jackson many years ago because they were Olympic champions, but neither [...]
Ski Patrollers: Underpaid, Unsung Heros
Please read Michael Pearlman’s excellent post Ski Patroller Death Highlights the Real Price of Powder Turns on New West about the ski patrollers we too often take granted. It is sad that it takes the loss of one of these very professional and dedicated people to remind us that they risk their lives so we [...]
Skiing in Luxo-land
The Ultimate Ski Lodge?
Thinking of staying at the ultimate luxury ski lodge? There’s a lot of competition, but The Hotel de Charme Les Airelles in Courcheval France is perhaps the ultimate in price anyway. Much Googling failed to turn up a bonafide room rate card, so perhaps this is a place where if you have to ask you [...]
Bad News for the Luxury Second Home Market
On Thursday Bloomberg (via Buisiness Week) reported homeowners with $1 million plus mortgages are defaulting at about double the rate of other U.S. homeowners. In September payments on about 12% of mortgages over $1 million were 90 dyas or more late.
Over the past year we’ve seen many luxury ski resort developments based on a real [...]
There Goes the Neighborhood?
The court battle for the ownership of the Yellowstone Club reached its denouement today and Sam Byrne and his Cross Harbor crew emerged as the victors according to New West’s report in the court’s decision. Like many skier observers, I’ve been watching this imbroglio with bemusement, not really caring much about who would be pronounced [...]
