COLORADO :: ASPEN & ASPEN HIGHLANDS

FORGET THE FURS AND THE FENDI. Beyond the bling, Aspen is still America’s quintessential ski village, a funky cosmos where World Cup steeps belong to the fearless.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Where else can you sit next to Kurt and Goldie while wolfing lunchtime bratwurst, then follow the sun around Bell Mountain’s bumps for the rest of the afternoon?
NUMBER-ONE RUN: The finest float in Colorado? Atop Aspen Highlands is the 40-degree, 1,500-vertical-foot Highland Bowl. After the hike up, and before the glorious, seemingly endless descent, rest your bones in the summit swing and feast on high-octane views of fourteeners Pyramid Peak and Maroon Bells.
HOT LODGE: Chichi yet cool, luxe yet Lab-friendly, the St. Regis Aspen features s’mores in its cozy apr猫s-ski lounge, beds for beloved canines, and a spanking-new 15,000-square-foot spa-complete with a little something called the Confluence, artificial hot springs where more than the waters mingle. (Doubles from $385; 888-454-9005, )
SOUL PATCH: Tucked in the trees on Aspen Mountain are shrines to Elvis, Jerry Garcia, Marilyn Monroe, and, of course, Liberace. But Walsh’s Run, one of the steepest drops on Ajax, is where you’ll find sacred ground: The Raoul Wille shrine, a tiny shack festooned with prayer flags and elk bones, honors a longtime local who died climbing in Nepal.

NEW MEXICO :: TAOS

Taos Ski Resort

A GROOVY CONVERGENCE of Native American culture, ski-hard style, and the freest of spirits, Taos is the black diamond in New Mexico’s high-desert crown, offering steep transcendence (and lots of green chile) in the wild, wild West.
WHY WE LOVE IT: 隆Viva variedad! Park your journeyman Subaru wagon or beat Jeep CJ right next to that limited-edition Mercedes with the Texas plates鈥攖hey’ll appreciate the contrast. Then look heavenward and feast your begoggled eyes on runs so close to vertical they’ll steal your heart (or sink it, if you’re toting a prohibited snowboard).
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Longhorn, a lengthy and snaky double black, shoots between palisades of tall pines, dropping 1,900 vertical feet to a catwalk that spits you out at the base. Masochists should save it for the end of the day, when the bumps are the size of small igloos.
HOT LODGE: In the heart of town is a grand adobe abode called the Fechin Inn, built beside Russian artist Nicolai Fechin’s former home, a 1927 structure listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The elegant, Jacuzzi-equipped 84-room hotel is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Adobe Bar, current home of wicked margaritas. (Doubles, $114-$208; 800-746-2761, )
SOUL PATCH: Dog-tired and depleted? Stop off at art-infested Taos Pizza Outback, where the cooks spin tasty sesame-sprinkled crusts, blank canvases just waiting for your own creative topping conglomerations.

WYOMING :: JACKSON HOLE

DUDE, IT’S LIKE MECCA. If you take sliding around on snow seriously, you’ll eventually make a pilgrimage to the Hole. Hardcore types rightfully revere the sick Wyoming vertical, heavy powder showers, and Euro-style open backcountry. Yep, this is the place . . . to pack a shovel, transceiver, probe, and change of underwear.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Rip, rip, rip all you want: The harder and stronger you ride, the more these Tetons throw at you. And once you think you’re the master, listen for the laughter coming from the lines that have yet to see a descent.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: You’ll find the finest fall-line skiing in the country here, so steel yourself for the best run of the bunch: The Hobacks is 3,000 vertical feet of crazy steeps. Enjoy.
HOT LODGE: When legendary ski mountaineer and cinematographer Rob DesLauriers got sick of living out of his van, he built the new Teton Mountain Lodge, a premium slopeside property with rustic Wyoming written all over it. Just don’t let the high-end accommodations and dining fool you; Rob’s still a ski bum at heart. (Doubles, $149-$329; 800-801-6615, )
SOUL PATCH: The Mangy Moose remains Jackson Hole’s must-hit saloon. The bleary-eyed crew from Teton Gravity Research, pros decked out in next year’s wares, and perma-tan instructors call this place home. But don’t fear the locals; just get what they’re having.

UTAH :: PARK CITY

LIKE ST. MORITZ WITH MORMONS, Park City is not only a vast powdery playground; it’s a true ski-in/ski-out town with big-city swank. After you’ve zonked your mortal coil dropping off cornices and carving down chutes, head to town and knock back an espresso: You have to be awake to enjoy the finer things.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Oh, the mountain comes off as harmless at first鈥攚hat with those rolling hills flush with cruisers鈥攂ut it drops the hammer a couple lifts in, making for delighted schussers, from expert on down. There’s terrain-park action, and the superior lift service (14 chairs, including four high-speed six-packs) can move more than 27,000 butts an hour.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Not for the timid or the kamikaze, O-zone drops 1,000 feet off the lip of Pinyon Ridge, down a 30- to 40-degree face, before delivering you into forgiving tree trails that lead to a high-speed six heading right back up.
HOT LODGE: Right on chic Main Street is the Treasure Mountain Inn, a locals-owned lodge with a great little caf茅. This eco-minded pad has a range of homey accommodations, from simple studios to decked-out apartments, as well as a Jacuzzi and heated pool beneath the stars. (Studios, $125-$300; 800-344-2460, )
SOUL PATCH: Once a wild silver town, Park City’s gone all civilized. The high-end gastronomic fusion served up at 350 Main will have you double-checking your coordinates鈥攁nd for boozophobic Utah, the cocktails are mighty sinful.

BRITISH COLUMBIA :: WHISTLER BLACKCOMB

DOUBLY HEINOUS STEEPS mean twice the fun at Whistler Blackcomb, home to the biggest vertical in North America and an astounding variety of snow conditions. Sister peaks, these British Columbia bad girls practically flaunt their grand vert, true glacier skiing, and leg-burner runs up to seven miles long.
WHY WE LOVE IT: By virtue of the vast and varied terrain (larger than Vail and Aspen combined), this resort has always drawn a cosmopolitan crowd. The number of rowdy young immigrants will surely redouble as opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics approaches. And the village is at only 2,140 feet, so sea-level folk can let loose without fearing hypoxia-empowered hangovers.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: These peaks have long been a favorite stop on the World Cup circuit, thanks in part to the exhilarating 1.5-mile highway known as the Dave Murray Downhill, which rolls off the south shoulder to Whistler’s base.
HOT LODGE: The Fairmont Chateau Whistler is a wonderland of sprawling penthouses and romantic turrets at the foot of Blackcomb Mountain. Luckily, there are more than two dozen bistros and nightclubs nearby to tempt you out of your mountain-view room on the stormier nights. (Doubles, $256-$446; 800-606-8244, )
SOUL PATCH: From the top of Horstman Glacier, traverse under the summit cliffs and cross the ridgeline via Spanky’s Ladder. This brings you to a trove of hidden chutes plunging through a cliff band down to Blackcomb Glacier.

CALIFORNIA :: MAMMOTH

THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA VIBE dominates Mammoth, reflecting surf culture at its most authentic. Witness the resort’s massive superpipe and meticulously sculpted terrain parks, home turf of snowboard phenoms like Tara Dakides, Shaun White, and Olympic silver medalist Danny Kass.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Rising high in the eastern Sierra, this hill is surrounded by the Ansel Adams and John Muir wilderness areas, and Yosemite’s just a few valleys north. The volcanic terrain, nice and steep everywhere you look, gets layers of prime frosting from Pacific storms that drop up to four feet of snow at a time. Otherwise, it’s clear blue skies.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: From the summit, drop off the back side and hike to fantastic Hemlock Bowl: Ski left and follow the signs (or locals), then enjoy Mammoth’s deepest shots. Afterwards, hop on Chair 14 and rest up for another hike. Repeat.
HOT LODGE: If cookie-cutter condos don’t do it for you, check out Mammoth Country Inn, a Bavarian-style bed-and-breakfast. The seven rooms feature bedding worthy of royalty, and two have Jacuzzis. Your hosts, the Weinerts, serve up home-style breakfasts, and it’s just a short scamper to the bus. (Doubles, $145-$185; 866-934-2710, )
SOUL PATCH: Geothermal springs with panoramic mountain vistas, anyone? South of town, just east of Highway 395, Hot Creek gloriously blends a f-f-freezing stream and feverish springs. (Stay out of the scalding stuff.) Sadly, panties are mandatory here. But you can drop your drawers at wilder hot spots like Hilltop and Crab Cooker.

COLORADO :: STEAMBOAT

SOMETIMES COLORADO’S I-70 is a bit, well, constipated, so head for secluded Steamboat, some two hours north. We’re talking relentless powder, some of the West’s best tree skiing, and a chill ambience鈥攐n the slopes and back at the lodge.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Located in the Park Range鈥攚here Pacific-born storms usually hit first in Colorado鈥擲teamboat soaks up heavy snow dumps that often skip peaks to the south and east. And many of the aspens are perfectly spaced, as if a gift from God. From the mountain, take a free shuttle the three miles to tiny, colorful Steamboat Springs, where you’ll find a surprising slew of kick-back bars and upscale eats.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Step into the Closet, a forested roller coaster spilling down the west side of Storm Peak, and shake off the dust. Just make sure you’ve got your turns dialed鈥攁nd wear a helmet.
HOT LODGE: Across from the gondola, the plush 327-room Steamboat Grand Resort Hotel serves up a deluxe spa, a fitness center with steam bath, an elegant steak-and-chop house, quiet rooms replete with hardwood furniture, and a cavernous stone lobby with, yep, a stream running through it. (Doubles from $159; 877-269-2628, )
SOUL PATCH: On the Grand’s spacious deck, which looks out on 8,239-foot Emerald Mountain, two truly giant Jacuzzis and a heated outdoor pool offer some of the most luxuriant apr猫s-ski lounging in the Rockies.

MONTANA :: BIG SKY

Big Sky Ski Resort

LONE MOUNTAIN ERUPTS from the Madison Range like an 11,194-foot catcher’s mitt, nabbing storms swollen with dry Rocky Mountain powder. The utter lack of lines just sweetens the pot. With almost twice as many acres as skiers, Big Sky virtually guarantees instant lift access all day long.
WHY WE LOVE IT: You can dress like a cowboy鈥攗nironically鈥攁nd then snorkel through the fresh, pausing to ogle the remote 10,000-foot summits of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness. Come night, it gets so dark you can see the band of the Milky Way splitting the sky.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Off Lone Mountain’s south face, roar almost 3,000 vertical feet down the ridiculously wide Liberty Bowl and through the Bavarian Forest, where you can bob and weave through spruce and fir.
HOT LODGE: Want quintessential Montana? Rent a log cabin with a hot tub on the deck: The Powder Ridge Cabins have woodstoves, vaulted ceilings, and a lift nearby. (Cabin with three doubles, $525-$772; 800-548-4486, )
SOUL PATCH: See what “big sky” really means: The tram up to the peak offers an eagle’s view of the resort’s most daring lines, plus thousands of square miles of wilderness. Watch a local work the Big Couloir鈥攁 50-by-1,500-foot lick of 48-degree terror鈥攁nd it won’t be just the views stealing your breath.

UTAH :: ALTA & SNOWBIRD

Snowbird Ski Resort

THESE PEAKS ARE THE ODD COUPLE of mountain resorts鈥攖hink hardcore Alta dudes and snazzy Snowbird debs鈥攂ut their souls are united by heavenly powder.
WHY WE LOVE IT: In a word, the white stuff. At Little Cottonwood Canyon, the light-and-dry goods are nonpareil. The evidence? When the Ringling Bros. circus sued Utah for using the slogan “The Greatest Snow on Earth,” the case went all the way to the Supreme Court鈥攁nd Utah won.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: A long, technical traverse perches you atop Alf’s High Rustler, a 40-degree, 2,000-foot pitch aimed straight at the Alta parking lot. Legend has it that veteran ski-school director Alf Engen once bombed the whole run, with nothing but nipple-deep powder to slow his mad descent.
HOT LODGE: Snowbird’s Iron Blosam threads the ski-lodge needle: It’s got all the perks of a high-end hotel鈥攖wo-story windows, private decks, full kitchens, and an outdoor hot tub-but it’s steeped in a laid-back atmosphere that reminds you of a family cabin in the mountains. (Doubles, $249-$539; 800-453-3000, )
SOUL PATCH: After Snowbird’s last tram heads down for the day, don’t be afraid to join the contingent of ski-crazy locals who gather at the top of Lone Pine for what is usually a low-key party, then take in the sublime view of the spectacular, canyon-framed sunset.

VERMONT :: STOWE

IT’S THE BARNS AND COVERED BRIDGES draped with snow that tip you off: You’re in classic Vermont. This historic resort hails from the hungry thirties, but you’ll be plenty satisfied. With just 4,000 or so permanent residents, Stowe’s got small-town soul galore, and the mountain tempts with wild, winding expert runs鈥攁nd a slew of less challenging ones.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Time has made Stowe a giant on the eastern ski scene, with the help of 4,393-foot Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak. You can’t beat it for nordic action: The Touring Center at Trapp Family Lodge (owned by a member of the singing von Trapp clan, of The Sound of Music fame) features excellent trails. And where would snowboarding be without a certain resident named Jake Burton?
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Test your mettle on the famous Front Four鈥擭ational, Lift Line, Starr, and Goat鈥攖he mountain’s snaking double-black centerpieces. Prepare to be humbled.
HOT LODGE: Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the sumptuously restored Green Mountain Inn pumps up the luxe with modern accoutrements like gas fireplaces, marble bathrooms, Jacuzzis, and a heated outdoor pool. Forget fatigue with a Swedish deep-tissue massage鈥攐r have hot cider and homemade cookies by the blazing fire. (Doubles from $125; 800-253-7302, )
SOUL PATCH: Get a little wacky with the locals during the Stowe Winter Carnival, in late January: Among other fun, there’s off-season volleyball, a snow-golf tournament (costume required, natch), and the chilly Wintermeister triathlon.

COLORADO :: VAIL & BEAVER CREEK

TALK ABOUT HIGH CONTRAST: These resorts may be virtually side by side, but they don’t see eye to eye. Vail is the gold standard for manicured pistes and big bowls, regularly making it one of the country’s most popular destinations, while Beaver Creek is more of a sedate escape with a profusion of secret stashes.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Via the combo of dry snow and friendly terrain, intermediates feel advanced鈥攁nd experts feel untouchable (if they didn’t already). Roughly half of the resorts’ vast terrain is taken up by the famous Back Bowls, at Vail, and Beaver Creek’s long, challenging Talons, many of which cut through the trees.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: On Vail’s Ledges, the steep bits run 300 feet, then level out and let you regain your wind, then drop another 300, and so on鈥攄escending for more than a mile, all the way home. At Beaver Creek, Harrier rolls off the west shoulder of Spruce Saddle, becoming a wide, hilly cruiseway perfectly pitched for GS turns.
HOT LODGE: The Austrian-style Hotel Gasthof Gramshammer has been au courant for 40 years. The 38 rooms are arrayed with knee-deep down comforters and traditional woodwork, game dishes are served up in the cozy Antlers dining room, and high indulgence awaits at the steam room, sauna, and two indoor hot tubs. (Doubles, $195-$245; 800-610-7374, )
SOUL PATCH: Don’t miss the Colorado Ski Museum: Dig the roots of modern snow sports and revisit such luminaries as World War II heroes/powder hounds the Tenth Mountain Division, among others.

CALIFORNIA & NEVADA :: HEAVENLY

CAN YOU SAY GIGANTIC? Good, because that’s what Heavenly is. Plus it can claim some of the most ravishing views of any American ski hill: It rests in the limbo between the supernatural blue of Lake Tahoe and the scorched Nevada desert far below.

WHY WE LOVE IT: Nobody skis off-piste on this mountain! A private wonderland awaits those who venture into the trees or take a little hike, but if you want to stay on track, you’ll find that the sheer immensity (almost 5,000 acres) spreads out the skiers nicely. Besides, the groomers are like boulevards鈥攁nd just as smooth鈥攕o you can really dig your turns here.

NUMBER-ONE RUN: The Milky Way Bowl, a ten-minute hike up the Skyline Trail, has a steady vertical drop and an utter dearth of other souls. Continue down the chutes of Mott Canyon and have a chuckle at the expense of all the schnooks who ever turned their noses up at this peak.

HOT LODGE: Heavenly’s speedy gondola is two minutes from Lake Tahoe’s Embassy Suites Hotel, very cushy digs with a dizzying nine-story atrium, glass roof, flourishing gardens, and 400 two-room suites. (Suites from $200; 877-497-8483, )

SOUL PATCH: The spectacle of Caesars Tahoe is Disneyland for the savvy gambler. A nonstop bacchanal revolves around slot machines, top-notch shows, and the ubiquitous gaming tables鈥攂ut without that Vegas overkill. When in Rome . . .

ALBERTA :: LAKE LOUISE

JAW-DROPPING vistas of Banff National Park greet the lucky folks up top of Canada’s biggest ski area, and world-class terrain awaits below.
WHY WE LOVE IT: This place splits styles: At the south side’s terrain park, huck junkies can air their grievances with gravity while fans of pure carving hit the quieter north face to ride the bowls.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Take the SUMMIT Platter up 8,765-foot Mount Whitehorn and cruise Brown Shirt, taking in views of the Bow Valley. Or head out from the Larch area, locate Lookout Chute, and disappear into the trees鈥攋ust make sure you reappear.
HOT LODGE: From the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, gaze out at the glacier-fed namesake lake. To fight off the Canadian chill, try steaming truffle fondue at the hotel’s Walliser Stube; wash that fungus down with some ice wine, made from grapes frozen on the vine. (Doubles, $344; 800-441-1414, www .fairmont.com/lakelouise)
SOUL PATCH: With faraway Victoria Glacier as backdrop, a spin on Lake Louise’s skating rink makes for high entertainment. During January’s ice-carving competition, you can see frozen stars like Winnie the Pooh, then toast marshmallows at the braziers nearby. (Appropriately enough, the silly old bear has been quoted as saying, “Fight fire with marshmallows.”)

COLORADO :: TELLURIDE

A TRUE COWBOY TOWN where down jackets thankfully outnumber mink stoles, Telluride still caters to the glamorous. Spot a hot starlet living it up in one of downtown’s ritzy establishments? Big whoop鈥攗nless she was thrashing her guide in the steep and deep earlier.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Due to its remote setting鈥攖here’s just one road leading into this southwestern Colorado box canyon-the mountain always gets far fewer folks than it’s designed to handle. So the queues are quick, the runs pretty much empty, and the midmountain bartenders not too busy. NUMBER ONE RUN: As you float, fly, or surf down the three ridgeline miles of See Forever, looking 100 or so miles west toward Utah’s La Sal Mountains, you are permitted, though not really encouraged, to holler corny lines from Titanic, like “I’m on top of the wooorld!”
HOT LODGE: Live it up at Wyndham Peaks Resort & Golden Door Spa: Think king-size beds, homemade cookies on your pillow (if you ask nicely), and the San Juan Mountains out your window. Head to the spa and baby your fried quads by soaking them in the 102-degree mineral pool鈥攑erfect prep for a 50-minute Skier Salvation massage. (Doubles from $229; 970-728-6800, )
SOUL PATCH: Melt into an overstuffed leather chair, order a horseradishy bloody mary, and toast tomorrow in Wyndham Peaks’ high-ceilinged great room. That’s good medicine.

MONTANA :: BIG MOUNTAIN

CRAVE A COCKTAIL of wide-open groomers, perfectly spaced trees, and backcountryesque meadows? Look no further than crowdless Big Mountain. And with lots of off-piste powder stashes just waiting, it’s no wonder so many of the snow junkies here sport free heels.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Monster storms transform the mountain’s evergreens into “snow ghosts,” and locals鈥攕uited up in polyester straight out of the Carter era鈥攍ove to rip through this hoary host. And it doesn’t hurt that the skyline’s fraught with the lofty peaks of the Canadian Rockies, Glacier National Park, and the Great Bear Wilderness.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: East of North Bowl, you’ll find hundreds of feet of superb vertical, starting with the Nose, then continuing down two shots known as Performance and the Chin. Don’t look for these last two on the map, though: After hogging all that fluffy stuff, you won’t want to tell anyone, either.
HOT LODGE: The ski-in/ski-out Kandahar lodge, right off the mountain, just screams Montana. Think wooden beams, a river-rock fireplace, and rustic rooms with lofts and a bunch of primo down sleeping gear. (Doubles, $109-$309; 800-862-6094, )
SOUL PATCH: When the lifts shut down, the planks and boards stack up outside the Bierstube, where you’ll find local folks swilling pints of Moose Drool beside Seattle techniks escaping the city for the weekend. Be sure to ask your barkeep for one of the ‘Stube’s mysterious souvenir rings鈥攊t’s a surprise鈥攖hen tip at least 20 percent. But you knew that.

CALIFORNIA :: ALPINE MEADOWS

ALL MOUNTAIN AND NO ATTITUDE, Northern California’s Alpine Meadows is designed to take maximum advantage of the spectacular terrain. Though it’s got that laid-back, down-to-earth vibe the West is known for, it’s certainly no bore; far from it. It simply lacks the attendant aggression of resorts with similarly radical steeps.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Chutes and rock bands line this High Sierra bowl, spilling out into gentle grades鈥攕o there’s something here for all skill levels. The hike-to skiing and open-boundary policy (not found at neighboring Squaw Valley) equal acres and acres of untouched snow, and the hill’s south side is enormous, wide-open, and drenched with sunshine in the morning.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Palisades, a classic double black diamond off the Alpine Bowl lift, looks skyscraper-steep once you’re staring down it, but fear not: Since it’s north-facing, the snow’s way silky.
HOT LODGE: From the lifts, it’s just a quick ten minutes to the unbeatable Resort at Squaw Creek, with its 403 fine rooms, four restaurants (ranging from diner fare to haute cuisine), outdoor swimming pool, Jacuzzis, and nearby recreation like dogsledding and sleigh rides. (Doubles, $229-$349; 800-403-4434, )
SOUL PATCH: The northern ridge, beyond Estelle Bowl, may take a quarter of an hour to hike and traverse to, but the sweet silence and enormous cedars you’ll find will make you forget the trip. As will the powder.

UTAH :: THE CANYONS

A DECADE BACK, the resort that would become the Canyons was a pretty shabby, and not too popular, locals hill. Now it’s the biggest, most unabashedly go-go resort in Utah-and, miraculously, it’s crowd-free.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Besides the sharp new base village, it’s got the real goods: Days after other Wasatch resorts are all skied out, you’ll still be finding powder stashes hidden among the鈥攃ount ’em鈥攅ight peaks.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Take the hike up Murdock Peak right off the Super Condor Express Lift, then choose from among seven tempting lines. You’re bound to find your favorite flavor: steep glade, wide-open bowl, or gnarly chute?
HOT LODGE: When NBC’s Katie Couric and Matt Lauer wanted posh digs for their two-week Olympics gig, they picked the deluxe Grand Summit Resort Hotel鈥攆or good reason. After a soak in your jetted tub, survey the scene at the heated outdoor pool below, and the rest of Summit County, from the bay windows flanking your fireplace. And, of course, there’s the supreme access: If the gondola were any closer, it would be inside. (Doubles, $279; 888-226-9667, )
SOUL PATCH: Take a snowcat-drawn sleigh to midmountain, cross-country or snowshoe it through the woods, and hit the resort’s secluded Viking Yurt for a delectable five-course Scandinavian feast. Go ahead and carbo-load鈥攁fterwards, the snowcat will drag you right back down to base.

OREGON :: MT. BACHELOR

THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE gave top skier Bill Healy, of the Army’s Tenth Mountain Division, permission to put three rope tows up the face of central Oregon’s Bachelor Butte way back in 1958. Since then, his dream come true, now known as Mt. Bachelor, has grown to 71 runs serviced by ten lifts. And for those seeking big air, there are three terrain parks.
WHY WE LOVE IT: With as much as 30 feet of snow piling up annually in the mountains of Deschutes National Forest, Mt. Bachelor is one of the Pacific Northwest’s treasures, and an agreement with the Forest Service has spurned commercial development, preserving its wild side.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Head for the Northwest Express chair and exit, if you dare, to Devil’s Backbone, a mettle-testing black diamond. Though steeper up top, it’s good and bumpy almost all the way down its nefarious spine.
HOT LODGE: The Inn of the Seventh Mountain, between Bend and Mt. Bachelor, is the place to sleep if you want first chair the next morning. The lodge-style decor鈥攚ooden beams, fireplaces, leather recliners鈥攋ust oozes cozy, and with the Cascades so close by, grand views are there for the feasting. (Doubles, $135-$195; 800-452-6810, )
SOUL PATCH: Hit the Lodge, in Bend, for pints of local 20″ Brown Ale and scrumptious buffalo burgers. Then make good and sure you patronize the McMenamins folks鈥擥od love ’em鈥攔enovators of, among others, the old St. Francis school in downtown Bend, home to a hotel with Turkish baths, a pub restaurant, and a throwback cinema.

IDAHO :: SUN VALLEY

HOLLYWOOD HOTTIES, Olympic skiers, and John Kerry may flock to sexy Sun Valley these days, but America’s first ski resort has been drawing us hoi polloi since ’36. Swaths of immaculate corduroy run for miles here, so pray your legs last. No sweat if they don’t: French chefs and other fanciness await below.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Fantastic snow- making gear, five-star base facilities, and runs so fast and long you can attempt to break the sound barrier鈥攁fter stuffing your face with beignets, of course.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Crank the bindings and launch down Warm Springs. After a continuous 3,100-foot vertical loss on a blue groomer, your quads will glow like an Apollo capsule on reentry.
HOT LODGE: Stay in Ketchum, Sun Valley’s neighbor and the epicenter of the apr猫s action. The Best Western Kentwood Lodge, situated right in the mix, has an airy stone-and-wood lobby, big rooms, a hot tub, and a pool. (Doubles, $159-$179; 800-805-1001, )
SOUL PATCH: Clomp into Apple’s Bar and Grill, at the base of Greyhawk, and mingle with folks who packed it in after logging 30,000 feet of vert鈥攂y lunchtime. Notice all the passes tacked to the wall? You could once trade yours for a pitcher of suds. Talk about priorities.

VERMONT :: KILLINGTON

KILLINGTON’S legendarily long season stretches from October through May (sometimes into June), and with seven mountains, the resort has more acreage than any place in the East. Lately, though, Killington’s known as the town that tried to secede鈥攆rom Vermont, not the Union鈥攁 tribute to residents’ fiery, tax-evading Yankee spirit.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Behold the Beast’s 200 runs鈥攊ncluding high-altitude bumps, endless cruisers, terrain parks, and a halfpipe鈥攚hich keep legions of devotees coming back thirsty.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: You don’t have to be an ace to experience the hair-raisingly steep moguls of Outer Limits, on Bear Mountain鈥攋ust grab a pint and watch the wipeouts from the deck of Bear Mountain Base Lodge.
HOT LODGE: Nab yourself some comfy slopeside digs: The Killington Grand Resort Hotel is well worth the substantial change you’ll drop. This 200-roomer offers studios and suites鈥攁ll with kitchens, many with fireplaces鈥攁nd the views from the outdoor Jacuzzis and pool are unbeatable. (Doubles from $150; 877-458-4637, )
SOUL PATCH: It may have turned 40 last year, but the Wobbly Barn still parties like a teenager. This steakhouse-cum-nightclub has a hoppin’ happy hour, live music, and a serious boogie jones.

MONTANA :: MOONLIGHT BASIN

Moonlight Basin Ski Resort

EVERY GOOD SKI AREA has a split personality鈥攑art nurturer, part dominatrix. But no resort behaves more like Jekyll and Hyde than Moonlight Basin, the one-year-old resort 45 miles south of Bozeman that shares a boundary with Big Sky. First it lulls you, then it tries to kill you.

The lull part: Moonlight is a real estate venture, and the kindly blue and black pistes that meander down the north face of 11,194-foot Lone Mountain are tailored to those looking for vacation homes. The new Lone Tree lift will fill out those offerings this winter, adding more than 500 acres of open glades and unintimidating expert runs.

Moonlight’s sadistic side? Just look up: The Headwaters is a forbidding wall striped with nine chutes pinched by bands of sharp shale and scree. Three Forks is the boast-in-the-bar run, a 1,200-foot plummet into Stillwater Bowl that nudges 50 degrees in spots. (Until a lift is built, reaching such lines requires a 25-to-45-minute hike.)

Moonlight Basin can’t yet keep you occupied for a week鈥攖he base area’s swanky lodge doesn’t even have a gear shop or ski school鈥攂ut it’s one more reason to book that trip to Big Sky.

IDAHO :: TAMARACK RESORT

THE VIEWS RECALL TAHOE. And the terrain? Call it Steamboat West. That’s the early line on Tamarack Resort, 90 miles north of Boise, which opens in December. The Tahoe analogy is plain from a 7,700-foot spot on West Mountain’s ridge: Far below, 22-mile-long Lake Cascade glistens in Long Valley. What’s more, the resort sits far enough west to rack up 300 annual inches of snow (100 more than Sun Valley), yet it’s east of Oregon’s high desert, ensuring that the bounty arrives talcum-dry.

Don’t expect Tamarack to max out your Pocket Rockets. The tree skiing in glades of aspen and subalpine fir, and the languorous blue runs that unspool down the mountain’s 2,800 vertical feet, summon Steamboat鈥攄iverting, if not exactly heart-stopping. Snowcat skiing will be offered this year on 500 acres to be made lift-accessible in the next few years. It’s all part of a $1.5 billion plan to make Tamarack a year-round resort with some 2,000 chalets, condos, and hotel rooms. (At press time, just 60 chalets and cottages were available.) For the best apr猫s-ski, head to the old logging town of McCall, 17 miles north.

:: SKI EMOTIONALLY NAKED!

STUCK IN INTERMEDIATEVILLE and dreaming of a transfer to the friendlier slopes of Advanced City? I sure was, so last winter I gambled on a four-day ski clinic in Utah’s Wasatch Range. I was up for anything that would get me closer to black-diamond bliss.

Ski to Live鈥攍aunched in 2003 by extreme queen Kristen Ulmer, at Alta and Snowbird resorts鈥攖akes a uniquely cerebral, holistic approach to improving performance on the slopes, promising nothing less than self-transformation via a cogent blend of hard carving, refreshing yoga, and an intriguing flavor of Zen known as Big Mind. No $200-an-hour therapist ever promised so much.

The 38-year-old Ulmer, veteran of countless ski flicks and former U.S. Freestyle Ski Team member, is a sensitive but sure coach, possessing an infectious buoyancy of spirit that makes every powder acolyte under her wing believe a camera’s rolling just for them over the next mogul. She says conventional instruction is too heavy on mechanics, virtually ignoring mental outlook: “Understanding yourself translates into your skiing in a big way. It’ll catapult you into a whole new level of learning.” So she does it her way. During my Ski to Live weekend, my 13 fellow pupils and I spent about as much time contemplating life in intensely reflective Big Mind sessions as we did tackling Snowbird runs like the steep straitjacket of Wilbere Bowl.

The first night, we shared our hopes (huck big air!) and fears (hairy chutes, sharks). Next morning, we fell into a pleasant rhythm: wake-up yoga; a fat breakfast; lots and lots of skiing in small groups with Ulmer or another instructor; evening sessions with Genpo Roshi, 60, who heads up Salt Lake City’s Kanzeon Zen Center and developed Big Mind; a to-die-for dinner; then profound slumber at the Lodge at Snowbird.

Under Ulmer’s tutelage, skiers and snowboarders employ mantras, which can improve focus, and learn to execute proper form, like correctly positioning shoulders through turns. (Chanting Charge! in one’s head at each turn actually does have a way of refining performance.) Throwing Roshi in the mix proves to be even more radical: He uses challenging discussions and role-playing exercises intended to help you harmoniously integrate the sometimes conflicting aspects of your personality, thus allowing you to dig out from the solipsistic center of your own little universe. It’s pretty cool.

But my defining moment came not when I face-planted right in front of the video camera (hello, embarrassing playback!) nor when I carved some relatively pretty turns in Mineral Basin; it came in a whiteout, during a three-below-zero cruise along the Cirque Traverse, at nearly 11,000 feet. Suddenly I felt fearless joy-not joyless fear-in anticipation of the double black on deck.

The post We Sing the Slopes Fantastic appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

ONE OF The nation’s tiniest national parks—a diminutive 35,500 acres, smaller than any Ted Turner ranch—Acadia National Park ranks second only to Cuyahoga Valley National Park for the dubious distinction of most tourists per square foot: 81.7 annually. However, adventure in Acadia isn’t an oxymoron. The park’s humpbacked Porcupine Islands are one of the most coveted paddling spots on the planet: Hop in your sea kayak and lose the crowds (most of them, at least).

Acadia at dawn

The Porcupines are a collection of four small islands in Frenchman Bay, off the larger Mount Desert Island, where much of Acadia proper is located. While Frenchman Bay can be calmer than the water in most bathtubs, there is lobster-boat traffic to contend with, and the weather here, even in summer, can change at the drop of a spray skirt. When it does, the winds pick up suddenly and the tides get muscular; there’s no choice but to find the quickest route possible back to port. These are reasons why a guide is a wise investment, especially for first-timers to Acadia. We threw in with David Legere, a gregarious and thickly accented Maine-iac who owns Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s. The outfit’s dock is right in downtown Bar Harbor, the little town on Mount Desert Island that is most convenient to the Porcupines.
You can easily see all four islands in one day. Burnt Porcupine and Bald Porcupine islands have the most dramatic features—steep ledges, pounding surf, bristling stands of thick spruce and fir. Getting to Burnt Porcupine, 1.25 miles offshore, involves an exposed open-water crossing with potential for extra-choppy seas and strong winds.
Acadia is silly with birds—273 species in all—and from the sound of it, most happily hang out on Long Porcupine. Look for peregrines, ospreys, blue herons, and guillemots. Sheep Porcupine Island hosts an active bald eagle nest—you may spot young eaglets poking out in early summer. In the water, keep an eye peeled for harbor seals and harbor porpoises.
No camping is allowed on the Porcupine Islands. So at day’s end, throw the boat on the car, drive 65 miles from Bar Harbor to the fishing town of Stonington, and hop the passenger ferry to Isle au Haut. We like the lean-tos at Duck Harbor Campground, just off the south ferry landing. This 4,000-acre island is the perfect spot to bring your own craft for a second day of low-key island exploration.
THE DETAILS
LODGING – Acadia National Park (207-288-3338, ) allows camping at Duck Harbor campground. The fee is $25 per campsite per night, and a permit is required; call the park or stop by park headquarters, three miles west of Bar Harbor.
OUTFITTER – Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s (207-288-0007) offers a two-and-a-half-hour paddle around Sheep Porcupine for $37 per person. Kids must be ten or older. Or David Legere will customize an Acadia sea tour for your family (price depends on number of hours).

Montana

Glacier National Park

I’d just finished breakfast and was checking out the gift shop at the West Glacier Restaurant (“Family Dining Since 1938”) when I bumped into my first bear bells. Were they kidding? There were handhelds (like sleigh bells) for sale, as well as walking sticks with tinkly bells. While bear bells might make charming souvenirs for some of Glacier National Park’s 1.8 million annual visitors—only a tiny percentage of whom come anywhere near actually bumping into a bear—I didn’t think I’d march my kids down the trail without at least stocking up on pepper spray.
The thing about Glacier is that although it may be bumper to bumper on the famed 52-mile Going-to-the-Sun Road, which spans the park between Lake McDonald and the town of St. Mary, step out of your car and there’s a serious wildernessful of adventures to be had. During a one-week visit last fall, I spent a few action-packed days in West Glacier, then drove across to the less-visited eastern side of the park before looping back on U.S. 2, along the southern boundary. I joined a family field seminar at the Glacier Institute and went mountain biking, rafting, fly-fishing, and horseback riding, but the most exciting thing, in the end, was plain old hiking.
Some 730 miles of maintained trails crisscross the park, all running through country that’s spine-tinglingly wild—just knowing that grizzlies are out there makes rounding each bend that much more interesting. It isn’t often you find yourself encouraging your kids to be noisier on the trail, but that’s what you need to do when you are, frankly, lower on the food chain and don’t want to surprise anyone outranking you.
We learned the ins and outs of hiking in Glacier from Bill Schustrom, a retired science teacher who’s worked in the park for 30 years and now gives campfire talks. During the summer months he plays the ukulele and sings songs like “Bats Eat Bugs, They Don’t Eat People.” The chorus, “Nothing in this park / Wants to eat you for a meal / Because if they do / They know how sick they’ll feel,” cracked us up and calmed our nerves. Another hit was communing with the park’s smaller denizens at the Glacier Institute, a nonprofit outdoor-education center that offers family field seminars. Our Teva-clad teacher, Chris Gibson, led us down to the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and set up an impromptu classroom before outlining the basics of aquatic insects. “Here’s how to tell the difference between insects on the river: A stone fly has two tails and armpit hair. Mayflies have three tails and a hairy butt,” he instructed, eliciting giggles from preteens and parents alike. Looking for bugs turned out to be better than it sounds—sort of like a treasure hunt. What you do is crouch along the edge of a stream and turn over stones, looking for anything interesting hanging on. Once you find a live specimen, you shake it into a bucket to examine later under a microscope—and recall that the park has incredible diversity, from tiny stream creatures to large mammals. Glacier is one of the few places in the world, we learned, where all native predators and virtually all their prey still survive in the wild.
Our Glacier game plan was to mix a steady diet of hikes (which my husband and I love) and other outdoor activities with some requisite drives (which are so spectacular that even the kids stayed awake). Thus the field seminar was followed by an afternoon rafting the Middle Fork of the Flathead, ideal for families because it’s mostly flat, with a handful of Class III rapids. Another day we rented mountain bikes and cruised the banks of the Middle Fork on deserted trails, then drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road in the sweetest of rides: one of the park’s fleet of restored 1936 “Jammer” buses (nicknamed, it’s said, for the sound of drivers jamming their gears up and down the highway) with the canvas top rolled back and wool blankets tucked under our chins. Another morning was spent horseback riding before heading up to the Many Glacier region in hopes of spotting a grizzly.
Sure enough, we came across hopeful visitors with spotting scopes trained on two tiny specks that were supposedly bears (they looked like rocks to me). We had given up the search and started back when one of our young companions shouted, “There’s a bear!” A hundred yards up the scree field to our left, we saw a hefty, cinnamon-haired griz. It stood sniffing the air for a moment, then lumbered into a patch of huckleberries.
We wondered aloud about the sixty-something couple we’d just watched hike up the same slope. “What’s he eating in those bushes?” someone joked, laughing nervously.
Now that we’d encountered this truly wild thing roaming the park, an awestruck hush settled over the group. I thought about the bear talk that Bill, our Jammer driver, had delivered.
“Do you know what to do if we spot a griz? Gather together in a tight circle, and make sure your driver is in the middle!” he’d quipped.
Call me chicken, but I’m with Bill.
THE DETAILS
GETTING THERE – To reach Glacier National Park (406-888-7800, ), fly into Kalispell’s Glacier Park International Airport or drive 25 miles from Whitefish, Montana.
LODGING – Glacier Raft Company Cabins (800-235-6781, ) is a half-mile from the park’s west entrance. One-bedroom cabins, with log beds, kitchens with Franklin stoves, and front porches, sleep four and cost $195 per night in peak season. Doubles at the historic Glacier Park Lodge (406-892-2525, ) start at $135 a night. Doubles at The Resort at Glacier’s new Great Bear Lodge (800-368-3689, ) are $170. Along the southern boundary, the Izaak Walton Inn (doubles from $108; 406-888-5700, ), built for railway workers in the 1930s, is a great find—kids will love sleeping in a retrofitted railcar.
OUTFITTERS – Daylong seminars with the Glacier Institute (406-755-1211, ) cost $30 for adults, $20 for kids. Glacier Raft Company (800-235-6781, ) runs half-day ($40 adult, $30 child) and full-day ($65 adult, $48 child) rafting expeditions on the Flathead. Rent mountain bikes from the Glacier Outdoor Center ($29 per day for adults and $15 per day for kids 12 and under; 800-235-6781). Glacier Wilderness Guides (800-521-7238, ) runs top-notch fly-fishing trips on the Middle and North forks of the Flathead (from $225 for two people). For horseback riding outside the park, try Montana Ranch 国产吃瓜黑料s—their motto is “Real Cowboys Don’t Ride Single File” (half-day rides, $65 per person; 888-338-3054, ).
FOOD – Don’t miss the Two Sisters caf茅 (406-732-5535) on U.S. 89, outside Glacier’s east entrance, where the ceiling is hung with Elvis memorabilia, and the comfort food (spicy chili, burgers, buttermilk chocolate cake) is surprisingly great.

Tennessee

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Smokies, true to their moniker

Tennessee’s Goshen Prong Trail is so blissfully quiet you can hear twigs snap under your hiking boots and a creek, Goshen Prong, tumbling nearby. The leaves of the old-growth deciduous trees rustle softly; not another trekker is in sight. Ah, solitude. It’s only after a smack of open palm to forehead that you remember that this is Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most heavily visited of our national parks.
Despite the Smokies’ bad rap (a daunting ten million visitors annually), most tourists are car-bound, leaving 512,000 acres of uncongested backcountry for hiking adventures. Vesna Plakanis, who owns the outfitter A Walk in the Woods with her husband, Erik, is a modern-day John Muir of the Smokies—smitten with the park and extremely knowledgeable about its ecology. Let her guide you on a hike; with a gifted naturalist on hand, the park’s astounding biodiversity (Great Smoky Mountains National Park is richer in flora and fauna than any other national park) springs to life.
Here’s an ideal two-and-a-half-day, 15-mile hike: Ditch the masses as they slog up the paved half-mile Clingmans Dome Trail, atop the park’s highest peak (6,643 feet). Instead, take the Clingmans Dome Bypass Trail. Few people use it, because it’s rocky, wet, and overgrown. Tread nimbly and enjoy the dearth of humanity and breathtaking views of North Carolina and Fontana Lake.
Watch for a rock outcropping where this path intersects the Appalachian Trail after a half-mile—look for raptors coasting overhead. While it may be tempting to turn off onto the AT and skip Clingmans Dome, now a third of a mile away, gird yourself for the mob in order to take in the sweeping multistate views.
Then double back to the AT and the ridge that is the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. You’ll see beech gaps, grassy balds, and some of the oldest trees east of the Mississippi River. You might also see some of the eccentrics who give the AT its personality. Vesna remembers one toting a large college flag on a mast and another packing his own Porta-Potti.
Go 2.5 miles along the AT and then peel off on the Goshen Prong Trail. A prong is a tributary, and this one is a delightful companion—an Appalachian stream with small cascades. Pitch your tent at backcountry campsite 23 and fall asleep to the sound of water. Next morning, continue northeast on the trail for 3.3 miles to the turnoff at Little River Trail. After about a mile of flat hiking in dense forest, grab the Husky Gap Trail and head north 2.1 miles to the Sugarland Mountain Trail. Campsite 21, ideal for night two, is less than a mile down Sugarland. Your reward: an awesome swimming hole, with a huge slanting rock that serves as a slide. Wake up for a low-key four-miler out on the overlook-rich Sugarland Mountain Trail.
THE DETAILS
LODGING – Great Smoky Mountains National Park (865-436-1200, ) requires free permits for its 114 backcountry camping sites. Reservations are required for campground 23 but not for campground 21. Call 865- 436-1231 to book.
OUTFITTER – A Walk in the Woods (865-436-8283) leads guided walks starting at $20 per adult and $16 for kids; a guided trip for a family of five runs $250 per night and includes meals and cooking gear.

Florida

Dry Tortugas National Park

Fort Jefferson

Any fool living in Maine would seize the opportunity to sail with his family in the Florida Keys in November. Any fool, even if his wife, Lisa, was seven months pregnant and had suffered a near-deadly case of bacterial meningitis a week earlier and had been told by her doctors that she absolutely could not leave the state. Even if this were his crew: Helen, age five, a hellcat whose greatest desire is to own a pig; Anabel and Eliza, six-year-old twin acrobats with no understanding of the word no. And even if he’d be guiding a 36-foot sybaritic catamaran 70 miles west of Key West with only a modicum of captaining experience so his family could fulfill his desire to visit Fort Jefferson, a 150-year-old red-brick monolith set on Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park that is known mainly for housing Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was serving a life term for helping John Wilkes Booth evade capture.
We’re talking the Dry Tortugas. Even its name sounds exotic. It’s been a national park for just ten years and is known mostly to sailors and a few tarpon-chasing sportfishermen. Located on a major migratory flyway, the Dry Tortugas are visited by about 300 species of birds in the fall and spring and shelter the only U.S. nesting ground for the magnificent frigate bird. Its angular, six-foot wingspan is easy for young birders to spot as it glides across this collection of seven islands, the least disturbed and southwesternmost outpost of the Florida Keys.
Vibrant, colorful reefs and wrecked ships lie a mere five feet beneath the surface, almost as if they’ve been placed there for little kids to see more fish than they ever imagined. Even the guy at the charter-boat place agreed: “There’s no finer place in Florida for snorkeling,” he bragged. “You’re gonna love it.”
Clearly, we had to visit Dry Tortugas National Park, and so we set out with an itinerary I’d worked on for weeks. We started by traveling to Key West, the closest bit of developed land to the park, to pick up our vacation vessel at Oceanside Marina. It was then, during a precharter talk with Robin Rule, a partner in Southernmost Sailing, that our voyage began to take an unexpected course. She used the p-word. Yachtsmen love to bandy that word about—it’s a verbal secret-society handshake and is the antithesis of my very being. But Robin used it, and that was that. “This time of year, with the sun setting so early, it’d be prudent to anchor by 4 p.m. And your plan to reach the Dry Tortugas? Not prudent. Five days isn’t enough time. You’re here to have fun, and if you bite off more than you can chew, it’s no fun.” Hmmm.
Five hours later, we were sailing downwind in a rolling sea as blue and blissful as my wife’s suddenly sparkling eyes. I’d set my sights on sailing to Boca Grande Key, about 18 miles out to sea, with a few small keys en route. From there it would be an easy two-day sail to Dry Tortugas. We were making seven knots and the skies were clear. Never mind the fact that one of the boat’s two 25-horsepower engines—used as backup if we couldn’t sail—had quit on us as we motored out of the marina. To hell with it! We were bound for the Dry Tortugas, where kids turned angelic and parents felt at peace. I just needed the right time to tell Lisa.
We reached Boca Grande an hour before sunset, near a curving white beach that disappeared into mangroves. Great white egrets and a Helen-size osprey watched us anchor. A gentle wind whirred in the rigging, and mullets leaped like shimmering Baryshnikovs above the Atlantic’s surface. We went ashore in the burnished glow of dusk on the edge of protected land—most of Boca Grande is a wildlife refuge. Stingrays stealthed into the sandy bottom, and the girls learned that sponges aren’t really fluorescent rectangles manufactured for washing dishes, but are actual living creatures. Dozens lay washed up on shore; Anabel kept one as a hat.
The next morning we sailed on to the Marquesas Keys, a ring of islands about eight miles west and the only atoll in the Atlantic. My plan was to spend the afternoon there, snorkeling above a shipwreck, and then head across to the Dry Tortugas once the kids were asleep at 9 p.m. We could sail 45 miles and be anchored beside Fort Jefferson by 4 a.m. I decided to let Lisa in on my thoughts while we negotiated our way into the Marquesas. “Are you crazy? What happened with being prudent?” she asked, uttering the p-word for the first time since we left Oceanside Marina. I interrupted her, yelling, “Coming about!” She jumped up, cranked in the starboard sheet, and—huffing like a mama bear—turned her full attention to me.
“Are you even thinking about the kids?”
“I can handle this boat, sweetie,” I answered, and then saw that something was amiss. The sails stalled, backed, and then headed us toward some rocks 100 yards away. “Let the sheet go! We didn’t make it.” We fell off the wind, sped up, came about, and failed to make it again. I cranked the remaining working engine, but it notched us up only a knot or so, no aid in getting us anywhere. We spent the next four hours trying to get a mile upwind. By this time, the girls were crying for a swim but wouldn’t go in unless I did. Lisa wasn’t really talking to me.
So I plunged into the five-foot-deep water, entering a forest of turtle grass. I repeated things like “have fun” to myself.
The girls jumped in. Lisa joined us, floating toward me.
“You know I love adventures. If it were just us—” she began.
“No, no. You’re right. The p-p-p-prudent thing to do would be to return to Key West.”
We didn’t make it to the fort—we didn’t even try. We did, however, do everything the girls wanted to do—swim, beachcomb, climb in the mangroves, and eat lots of crackers and goat cheese. We snorkeled in 40 feet of water that was visible to the bottom. And we made it back to Oceanside Marina. In other words, we were prudent and—to my surprise—we still had fun.
What did we miss? I don’t know this from experience, but they say Fort Jefferson remains a marvel, though its facade of 16 million bricks needs replacing, and that just a mile from Garden Key an outcropping of staghorn coral is flourishing—just waiting for some fool in a sailboat escaping the North.
THE DETAILS
GETTING THERE –There are several ways to reach Dry Tortugas National Park (305-242-7700, ) from Key West, including a charter catamaran, high-speed boat, and floatplane. Two companies offer round-trip boat service; both leave Key West at 8 a.m. every day and return at 5:30 p.m. Both cost about $100 and include breakfast, lunch, drinks, a tour of the fort, and snorkeling gear. For prices and reservations, contact Sunny Days Catamarans (800-236-7937, ) or Yankee Fleet (800-634-0939, ). Seaplanes of Key West (800-950-2359, ) makes the trip in less than an hour. Price is roughly $180 for a half-day trip, $300 for a full day, and includes drinks, a fort tour, and snorkeling gear.
LODGING – Seven islands, including Garden Key, make up the park. Some are day-use only or are closed to visitors because of nesting birds and the fragility of the land. The park’s 13-site campground on Garden Key, the only accommodation offered, costs $3 per site per night. It operates on a first-come, first-served basis, except for the group area, which has to be reserved. There are no boat moorings or slips for the public; overnight anchorage is limited to a designated area off Garden Key’s eastern shore.
OUTFITTERS – To charter a sailboat, you have to prove your seaworthiness with a bareboat-school certificate or by listing your captaining history and passing a sailing test. Monohulls cost around $1,200 for a week; catamarans, up to $2,800. Contact Southernmost Sailing (888-352-7245, ). We got a $200 refund on our charter because of the engine problems.
FOOD – There is no food service in the park, so stock up in Key West at Fausto’s Food Palace (305-296-5663, ), a Cuban market. You must bring everything you need, including water.

Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park

The magnificent elk, best seen during the September rutting season

High-altitude Rocky Mountain National Park, bursting with 74 peaks over 12,000 feet, serves as an adventure training ground for my family. Our ultimate ambition is to summit 14,255-foot Longs Peak—our team, including my 12-year-old daughter, Cleo, and her middle school pals Emma and Celeste, should be ready for this expedition in a summer or two. In preparation, we’re working our way steadily higher on the park’s 355-mile trail system.
We live in nearby Boulder, with plenty of good climbing and hiking a few blocks from home. The national park, with 266,240 acres of spectacular views and Lake Granby nearby, makes a favorite weekend destination. We start with the 4.7-mile hike through Glacier Gorge—perfect for kids because you can take it in easy stages and use Mills Lake, Jewel Lake, or Black Lake as your turnaround point, depending on the strength of your team. If they’re really in shape, you can push onward, up a mile of steep switchbacks, all the way to Green Lake, at 11,550 feet. That’s the next stage in our training course.
The first half-mile, from the 9,240-foot Glacier Gorge Junction trailhead to silvery Alberta Falls, is an easy 140-foot climb doable even by four-year-olds. Then the trail levels out to wind around Glacier Knobs, a pair of immense granite outcrops. It was here, during our most recent excursion, that the kids learned a lesson in noise control: They suppressed giggles so as not to frighten a chipmunk stealing a two-inch cube of Emmentaler cheese right off my lap. (But it’s a mistake to shush kids up on these trails—you don’t want to surprise a puma.)
As we continued hiking, the girls chattered back at colonies of pikas in the granite scree fields and conquered a gentle climb onto bedrock scoured by a glacier 10,000 years ago. We spotted plenty of birds—everything from mountain chickadees to golden eagles.
The first puddle is Mills Lake, where marmots gazed gravely back at us from rocks above. We skirted the rocky east shore, then climbed to marshy Jewel Lake. From there, the trail’s last mile is a switchback climb alongside Ribbon Falls to Black Lake, at 10,620 feet, where we nearly popped our necks staring at the overhanging rock walls. They form an immense amphitheater, with six peaks soaring over 13,000 feet. We ate lunch with our sweaty feet dangling in the cold lake, and watched for jumping fish.
When it comes to camping, the kids like the spartan Moraine Park or Glacier Basin campgrounds, because from there (a short drive from the Beaver Meadows entrance) it’s a quick walk to see elk gathered at dusk and dawn, especially during rutting season in early fall (that’s when traffic is light on the trails, too). Around the campfire, I get to be a backwoods gourmet; Meredith, Emma and Celeste’s mom, tells South African ghost stories from her childhood.
The day after our training hike we often drive over Trail Ridge Road to Lake Granby, in the Arapaho National Recreation Area, just past the park’s southwest boundary. There we rent a sloop and sail with the mountain wind, a unique experience for our landlocked, high-altitude kids. From the boat we can plan our assault on Longs Peak, visible as it towers into the clouds, 13 miles away.
THE DETAILS
GETTING THERE – Rocky Mountain National Park (970-586-1206, ) is reached by driving U.S. 36 northwest from Denver and Boulder.
LODGING – A tent site at Moraine Park or Glacier Basin, or any of the three other roadside campgrounds in the park, costs $18 a night. Call 800-365-2267 to make a reservation (recommended between Memorial Day and Labor Day). The park also offers 267 backcountry campsites; for full information on campsites, see . The romantic Stanley Hotel (800-976-1377, ) was built in 1909 by F. O. Stanley, inventor of the Stanley Steamer automobile, and was Stephen King’s inspiration for The Shining. The front rooms command a magnificent view of the peaks. Doubles start at $149 per night.
OUTFITTERS – Rent sailboats from Captain Spongefoot Sailing Company (970-887-1043) on Lake Granby, in the Arap-aho National Recreation Area. A 24-foot sloop costs $145 for four hours. For powerboat rental (about $150 per day), call Highland Marina on Lake Granby (970-887-3541).
FOOD – Kids like the burgers and sandwiches at Penelope’s World Famous Burgers in Estes Park (229 W. Elkhorn Ave., 970-586-2277) and the hearty chicken and deli specialties at Mountain Home Cafe, also in Estes Park (533 Big Thompson Ave., 970-586-6624).

California

Channel Islands National Park

Humpback whales breach the surface to feed

No way! muttered Chelsea as we paddled our sea kayak toward a 20-foot arch on Santa Cruz Island. With waves roiling through the rocky opening—at the base of a massive cliff called The Elephant on the island’s east coast—kayaking through the arch must have seemed challenging, if not downright impossible, to even the most daring ten-year-old.
Our paddle beneath The Elephant was part of a three-day weekend in Channel Islands National Park, off the Southern California coast 70 miles west of Los Angeles. The park’s five islands—Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, Santa Barbara, and Anacapa—are pockmarked by hundreds of arches and caverns, roughly two-thirds of them along shore. As we discovered, each of these wave-forged openings in the coastal cliffs presents a unique navigational challenge. Seal Cave, with its rocky beach, is a refuge for harbor seals. Shipwreck Cave preserves the rusty remnants of a barge. Painted Cave, at nearly a quarter-mile long, is one of the world’s largest sea caves.
Kayaking these marine caverns wasn’t possible when I was growing up in Southern California: Most of the Channel Islands were privately owned, used as sheep and cattle ranches or hunting preserves. In 1980, the islands collectively became a national park.
Although they have similar natural histories, the islands are distinct. Anacapa is tiny, a razor-thin wedge of vertical rock topped by a lighthouse. Santa Rosa is known for its hundreds of ancient Chumash Indian sites and the remains of pygmy mammoths that lived almost 13,000 years ago. More than 50,000 seals and other fin-footed mammals—one of the world’s greatest concentrations of pinnipeds—gather on San Miguel near Point Bennett. Isolated Santa Barbara Island, southeast of the main cluster, is for those who want to escape even the most minimal vestiges of civilization. And Santa Cruz, with its deeply indented topography, is ideal for cavers and paddlers.
The Channel Islands are called the American Gal谩pagos because of their variety and volume of wildlife. Humans, however, are more scarce. Although 30 million people dwell on the adjacent mainland, only about a quarter-million people make the trip out to the islands each year.
Chelsea and I have made the voyage several times. We’ve scrambled up grassy peaks and trekked richly wooded valleys in search of creatures, such as the island fox, found nowhere else on earth. We’ve snorkeled kelp beds to see garibaldi (the bright-orange state fish), cruised through pods of several hundred dolphins, and glimpsed three humpback whales. And we’ve camped along an isolated beach, the waves lulling us to sleep with notions that the entire California coast used to be this way: wild, remote, utterly unspoiled—and ripe for kayak adventures.
Despite her initial trepidation, my daughter maintained her cool as we slipped beneath The Elephant. She kept the jagged walls at bay with her paddle, and I carefully guided us through the swell. As we breached daylight again on the other side of the arch, she whirled around with a grin of triumph and an idea: “Let’s go again!”
THE DETAILS
GETTING THERE – Channel Islands National Park (805-658-5730, ) is accessible only by boat or private plane. Island Packers (805-642-1393, ) runs ferries from Ventura Harbor on the mainland, where the park’s visitor center is located, to all five islands. Round-trip fares range from $37 per adult and $20 per child for Anacapa to $62 per adult and $45 per child for Santa Rosa. Service to Santa Rosa and San Miguel runs May to November.
LODGING – Camping is the only overnight accommodation in the Channel Islands. Campers must obtain a permit ($10 per night; 800-365-2267, ). Each island has seven to 40 campsites; backcountry beach camping is allowed on Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz.
OUTFITTERS – Aquasports (800-773-2309, ) offers single- and multi-day sea-kayaking trips along the Santa Cruz coast that include sea-cave exploration and hiking. Trips leave from Ventura Harbor; fees range from $189 for a day trip to $359 for a three-day trip with overnights at Scorpion Ranch, a camping area on the east side of Santa Cruz Island. Horizons West 国产吃瓜黑料s (562-799-3880, ) offers fly-in camping on Santa Rosa Island. Three-day trips cost $485 per person, including airfare, meals, and tents.
FOOD – Christy’s Deli (1559 Spinnaker Drive in Ventura Harbor, 805-642-3116) prepares box meals for trips to the islands. Groceries are available at the adjacent Village Market (805-644-2970).

California

Yosemite National Park

El Capitan and the Merced River

With its 360-degree views of the Tuolumne backcountry, the 10,940-foot summit of Cathedral Peak is the best place to fully appreciate the majesty of Yosemite National Park. There’s the granite spire of Eichorn Pinnacle, sapphire-blue Cathedral Lake, and—way off in the distance—the unmistakable bald pate of 8,842-foot Half Dome. Of course, getting there involves rock climbing up at least 22 pitches.
Just because you don’t climb now doesn’t mean you can’t learn. “People are surprised by how quickly they progress in our classes,” says Doug Kerr, who has been with the Yosemite Mountaineering School for 20 years. Keep expectations reasonable—there’s no way you’ll be leading your kids up Yosemite routes after a week. But clawing up a face while safely tied into an experienced guide’s belay line? No problem. (Kids should be, at minimum, a mature ten years old.)
Schedule your Yosemite climbing adventure for July or August, when the Yosemite Mountaineering School expands its operation from the crowded Valley (the park gets 3.5 million visitors annually) to the alpine meadows of Tuolumne. If your only experience with rock is through the speakers of a stereo, begin with the intro class; plan on a six-hour day of climbing instruction. You’ll be scaling heights up to 60 feet by day’s end. Even more fun, you’ll experience the rush of rappelling down.
Subsequent classes teach increasingly sophisticated techniques such as crack climbing, multipitch climbing, and self-rescue. Reserve some of your vacation fund to hire a guide from the school after you graduate—it’s the most expedient way to see parts of Yosemite that most people only dream about.
Pitch your tent at Tuolumne Meadows Campground, convenient to both the school and some of the West Coast’s most memorable backcountry hiking. Get the ground perspective of Cathedral Peak, one of John Muir’s favorite mountains: Just 3.5 miles from the campground at the Cathedral Lake Trailhead, there is a simple seven-mile out-and-back hike to stunning views at Upper Cathedral Lake.
THE DETAILS
LODGING – Yosemite National Park (209-372-0200, ) maintains 304 campsites at Tuolumne Meadows, with flush toilets, drinking water, and a general store. Half the sites can be reserved in advance for $18 a night; call 800-436-7275.
OUTFITTER – Classes at Yosemite Mountaineering School (209-372-8344, ) average about $90 per person per day, including equipment (shoe rental is extra). Private guides start at $100 per person per six-hour session.

Maine

Acadia National Park

Acadia at dawn

ONE OF The nation’s tiniest national parks—a diminutive 35,500 acres, smaller than any Ted Turner ranch—Acadia National Park ranks second only to Cuyahoga Valley National Park for the dubious distinction of most tourists per square foot: 81.7 annually. However, adventure in Acadia isn’t an oxymoron. The park’s humpbacked Porcupine Islands are one of the most coveted paddling spots on the planet: Hop in your sea kayak and lose the crowds (most of them, at least).
The Porcupines are a collection of four small islands in Frenchman Bay, off the larger Mount Desert Island, where much of Acadia proper is located. While Frenchman Bay can be calmer than the water in most bathtubs, there is lobster-boat traffic to contend with, and the weather here, even in summer, can change at the drop of a spray skirt. When it does, the winds pick up suddenly and the tides get muscular; there’s no choice but to find the quickest route possible back to port. These are reasons why a guide is a wise investment, especially for first-timers to Acadia. We threw in with David Legere, a gregarious and thickly accented Maine-iac who owns Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s. The outfit’s dock is right in downtown Bar Harbor, the little town on Mount Desert Island that is most convenient to the Porcupines.
You can easily see all four islands in one day. Burnt Porcupine and Bald Porcupine islands have the most dramatic features—steep ledges, pounding surf, bristling stands of thick spruce and fir. Getting to Burnt Porcupine, 1.25 miles offshore, involves an exposed open-water crossing with potential for extra-choppy seas and strong winds.
Acadia is silly with birds—273 species in all—and from the sound of it, most happily hang out on Long Porcupine. Look for peregrines, ospreys, blue herons, and guillemots. Sheep Porcupine Island hosts an active bald eagle nest—you may spot young eaglets poking out in early summer. In the water, keep an eye peeled for harbor seals and harbor porpoises.
No camping is allowed on the Porcupine Islands. So at day’s end, throw the boat on the car, drive 65 miles from Bar Harbor to the fishing town of Stonington, and hop the passenger ferry to Isle au Haut. We like the lean-tos at Duck Harbor Campground, just off the south ferry landing. This 4,000-acre island is the perfect spot to bring your own craft for a second day of low-key island exploration.
THE DETAILS
LODGING – Acadia National Park (207-288-3338, ) allows camping at Duck Harbor campground. The fee is $25 per campsite per night, and a permit is required; call the park or stop by park headquarters, three miles west of Bar Harbor.
OUTFITTER – Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s (207-288-0007) offers a two-and-a-half-hour paddle around Sheep Porcupine for $37 per person. Kids must be ten or older. Or David Legere will customize an Acadia sea tour for your family (price depends on number of hours).

Cr猫me de la Canada

Northern Exposure

Acadia at dawn

ONE OF The nation’s tiniest national parks—a diminutive 35,500 acres, smaller than any Ted Turner ranch—Acadia National Park ranks second only to Cuyahoga Valley National Park for the dubious distinction of most tourists per square foot: 81.7 annually. However, adventure in Acadia isn’t an oxymoron. The park’s humpbacked Porcupine Islands are one of the most coveted paddling spots on the planet: Hop in your sea kayak and lose the crowds (most of them, at least).
The Porcupines are a collection of four small islands in Frenchman Bay, off the larger Mount Desert Island, where much of Acadia proper is located. While Frenchman Bay can be calmer than the water in most bathtubs, there is lobster-boat traffic to contend with, and the weather here, even in summer, can change at the drop of a spray skirt. When it does, the winds pick up suddenly and the tides get muscular; there’s no choice but to find the quickest route possible back to port. These are reasons why a guide is a wise investment, especially for first-timers to Acadia. We threw in with David Legere, a gregarious and thickly accented Maine-iac who owns Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s. The outfit’s dock is right in downtown Bar Harbor, the little town on Mount Desert Island that is most convenient to the Porcupines.
You can easily see all four islands in one day. Burnt Porcupine and Bald Porcupine islands have the most dramatic features—steep ledges, pounding surf, bristling stands of thick spruce and fir. Getting to Burnt Porcupine, 1.25 miles offshore, involves an exposed open-water crossing with potential for extra-choppy seas and strong winds.
Acadia is silly with birds—273 species in all—and from the sound of it, most happily hang out on Long Porcupine. Look for peregrines, ospreys, blue herons, and guillemots. Sheep Porcupine Island hosts an active bald eagle nest—you may spot young eaglets poking out in early summer. In the water, keep an eye peeled for harbor seals and harbor porpoises.
No camping is allowed on the Porcupine Islands. So at day’s end, throw the boat on the car, drive 65 miles from Bar Harbor to the fishing town of Stonington, and hop the passenger ferry to Isle au Haut. We like the lean-tos at Duck Harbor Campground, just off the south ferry landing. This 4,000-acre island is the perfect spot to bring your own craft for a second day of low-key island exploration.
THE DETAILS
LODGING – Acadia National Park (207-288-3338, ) allows camping at Duck Harbor campground. The fee is $25 per campsite per night, and a permit is required; call the park or stop by park headquarters, three miles west of Bar Harbor.
OUTFITTER – Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s (207-288-0007) offers a two-and-a-half-hour paddle around Sheep Porcupine for $37 per person. Kids must be ten or older. Or David Legere will customize an Acadia sea tour for your family (price depends on number of hours).

The Ultimate Classroom

Best Educational Parks

Acadia at dawn

ONE OF The nation’s tiniest national parks—a diminutive 35,500 acres, smaller than any Ted Turner ranch—Acadia National Park ranks second only to Cuyahoga Valley National Park for the dubious distinction of most tourists per square foot: 81.7 annually. However, adventure in Acadia isn’t an oxymoron. The park’s humpbacked Porcupine Islands are one of the most coveted paddling spots on the planet: Hop in your sea kayak and lose the crowds (most of them, at least).
The Porcupines are a collection of four small islands in Frenchman Bay, off the larger Mount Desert Island, where much of Acadia proper is located. While Frenchman Bay can be calmer than the water in most bathtubs, there is lobster-boat traffic to contend with, and the weather here, even in summer, can change at the drop of a spray skirt. When it does, the winds pick up suddenly and the tides get muscular; there’s no choice but to find the quickest route possible back to port. These are reasons why a guide is a wise investment, especially for first-timers to Acadia. We threw in with David Legere, a gregarious and thickly accented Maine-iac who owns Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s. The outfit’s dock is right in downtown Bar Harbor, the little town on Mount Desert Island that is most convenient to the Porcupines.
You can easily see all four islands in one day. Burnt Porcupine and Bald Porcupine islands have the most dramatic features—steep ledges, pounding surf, bristling stands of thick spruce and fir. Getting to Burnt Porcupine, 1.25 miles offshore, involves an exposed open-water crossing with potential for extra-choppy seas and strong winds.
Acadia is silly with birds—273 species in all—and from the sound of it, most happily hang out on Long Porcupine. Look for peregrines, ospreys, blue herons, and guillemots. Sheep Porcupine Island hosts an active bald eagle nest—you may spot young eaglets poking out in early summer. In the water, keep an eye peeled for harbor seals and harbor porpoises.
No camping is allowed on the Porcupine Islands. So at day’s end, throw the boat on the car, drive 65 miles from Bar Harbor to the fishing town of Stonington, and hop the passenger ferry to Isle au Haut. We like the lean-tos at Duck Harbor Campground, just off the south ferry landing. This 4,000-acre island is the perfect spot to bring your own craft for a second day of low-key island exploration.
THE DETAILS
LODGING – Acadia National Park (207-288-3338, ) allows camping at Duck Harbor campground. The fee is $25 per campsite per night, and a permit is required; call the park or stop by park headquarters, three miles west of Bar Harbor.
OUTFITTER – Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s (207-288-0007) offers a two-and-a-half-hour paddle around Sheep Porcupine for $37 per person. Kids must be ten or older. Or David Legere will customize an Acadia sea tour for your family (price depends on number of hours).

The post Off the Beaten Park appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

BEFORE THERE WERE MEGARESORTS, there were passionate ski pioneers erecting rope tows and gondolas on untamed mountains from Maine to California. Love ’em or hate ’em (or both at once), these eight once-and-future piste-makers forever left their mark on North American skiing.

Clockwise from bottom left: Hugh Smyth, Al Raine, Pete Seibert, Preston Leete Smith, Alex Cushing, Mike Shirley, Aaron Brill, and Dave McCoy.

Alex Cushing, 88, came to skiing as a Wall Street lawyer with a pile of money behind him. In 1948, he partnered with frustrated Squaw Valley developer Wayne Poulson and, with $400,000, built at a furious rate. His two-fisted approach resulted in a world-famous resort that attracted the 1960 Winter Olympics.


Now 87, Dave McCoy has been skiing since high school. In 1941 he set up a portable rope tow—a Model A Ford and a couple hundred feet of line, which he sold his Harley to pay for—on central California’s Mammoth Mountain, which officially opened in 1953.


A visionary 25-year-old who raised $85,000 to open Vermont’s Killington in 1958, Preston Leete Smith, now 72, was one of the first Eastern managers to see the crowd-pleasing value of snowmaking in an area that could suffer seasonlong droughts.


Before 10th Mountain Division veteran Pete Seibert, 77, opened Vail in 1962, most ski areas sprung up around existing towns. But Seibert knew that quality skiing—like gold—would attract a village. By the seventies, Vail was Ski Town U.S.A.
Al Raine, 60, spearheaded British Columbia’s ski movement in the seventies. A major player in the development of Sun Peaks and other resorts, he’s now drafting a controversial plan for a resort on Cayoosh Mountain, a pristine summit with thousands of acres of ski terrain—and mountain-goat, grizzly, and wolverine populations.


Skiing went corporate in the eighties, and Intrawest is the sport’s Microsoft. The current VP is Hugh Smythe, 54, an ex-patroller who rescued Alberta’s Fortress Mountain from bankruptcy in 1975. The company is known for reinventing struggling resorts; among its holdings are Whistler Blackcomb, Stratton, and Copper Mountain.


The father of the cheap season pass, Mike Shirley, 60, is a finance guy who was hired as the general manager at Idaho’s Bogus Basin in 1991. Slashing prices from $550 to $199, he boosted pass sales from 2,900 to 25,000 in one year and doubled revenues. More than 70 resorts have since followed suit.


Aaron Brill, the 30-year-old founder of Silverton Mountain—a one-lift ski area in Silverton, Colorado—is a throwback to the early days. His dream? Lift-served backcountry skiing based on the La Grave, France, model—no cut trails or infrastructure that isn’t dedicated to pure pow.

The post Thanks for the Lift appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

AN UNPRECEDENTED 3.5 billion people are expected to tune in February 8 and watch the opening ceremonies of the XIX Olympic Winter Games, including, quite possibly, you. But try for a moment to look beyond the events, the athletes who compete in them, and those silly Lycra spiderman suits that U.S. Ski Team members have been forced to wear for almost a decade. Fast-forward to day 17 of the Salt Lake City Games and imagine the collective sigh of relief as the Olympic flame is doused, the razor wire is rolled up, the F-16s have departed, and the M-16s have been stacked and stored. Consider how these Games will be remembered.

Austria’s Franz Planegger races in skeleton, a daring sport returning to the Games after a 54-year hiatus.

With luck, the carryover will be fervor, not fear. Well in advance of winter, this year’s international sports pageant seemed destined to go down in Olympic annals as the Comeback Games—for those athletes who’ve overcome grueling personal battles just to show up; for the host city itself, which has grappled with a doozy of a sports-bribery scandal; and for the host nation as a whole, which has had a rough five months.
Few doubt that what is intended as a global celebration will be a rallying point for a country in serious need of a good time on its home turf—a fact that has not escaped NBC, which holds exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the Games. While David Neal, the network’s head of production for the Olympics, insisted in an interview last fall that “jingoism is not in our vocabulary,” he also allows that the televised Games, which run through February 24, will “take on an enhanced American flavor.” Translation: NBC will paint its on-screen graphics with stars and stripes, and roving cameras will, says Neal, “document whatever spontaneous displays of patriotism there may be.”


And don’t expect any shyness on the flag-waving front. In November, the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee began draping downtown office towers with 141-by-97-foot banners depicting sports like skiing and skating—the largest Olympic pennants ever—but these were dwarfed by the football-field-size Old Glory that had decorated the group’s own building two months before.


If the Games do play out as a comeback party, then Picabo Street makes a fitting homecoming queen. Salt Lake City represents the second against-the-odds return for the 30-year-old Street, who rebounded from a blown ACL to wear silver in Lillehammer, and then ripped the same knee again but rebounded to win gold at Nagano—only to tear, fracture, and shred her knees and legs in a crash in Switzerland one month later. She will compete this month with enough pins and plates in her lower extremities to set off every metal detector in Utah.


For other athletes, the Games will offer a chance to heal wounds of the self-inflicted variety. Coach Peter Foley promises that the U.S. women’s snowboarding team is primed for victory, and that, unlike in Nagano, where nearly every member of the team crashed, they won’t be spending the day before competition sightseeing and playing video games.


But it remains to be seen how much the flag-waving will really matter when it comes to the hard facts of gold, silver, and bronze. Though the U.S. ski team is strong this time around, America is not traditionally a Winter-Games powerhouse, and the competition—including Austrian downhiller Michaela Dorfmeister and Norwegian slalom champ Kjetil Andre Aamodt—won’t easily be cowed. David Wallechinsky, author of The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics, puts his money on Yankee victory in short-track speed skating, women’s bobsled, and two-man luge. He’s also predicting a nail-biter match between the U.S. and Canadian women’s hockey teams. As for men’s hockey, things can only get better: At Nagano, after losing to the Czech Republic, America’s puck men went on a M枚tley Cr眉e-style hotel-room rampage, breaking chairs, emptying fire extinguishers, and chucking the resulting debris off a fifth-floor balcony.


A successful Games will also offer redemption for the good people of Salt Lake City, determined as they are to move beyond a scandalous Olympic bid tainted by more than $1 million in alleged bribes. Back in July 2000, a federal grand jury indicted former Salt Lake City Organizing Committee bid chief Tom Welch and deputy Dave Johnson for plying International Olympic Committee members with Super Bowl tickets and other gifts. Having dismissed four of the charges last July on the grounds that they amounted to a misapplication of the law, a federal judge threw out the remaining 11 counts in November. An appeal could still keep the case rolling through 2002, but for now at least, the affair is off the table. Which is just fine with the locals, who all along insisted that their town had won its Olympics based solely on its outstanding snow and hospitality.


If preparation counts for anything, Salt Lake City will get high marks. Anxious to avoid the logistical disaster that was Atlanta (those Games flunked out on security, transportation, and technology), Utah organizers constructed $322 million worth of cutting-edge facilities such as the splashy Utah Olympic Oval, where even the Zamboni is environmentally correct (it runs on natural gas). Meanwhile, the state invested $1.5 billion to revamp local highways and $431 million to build an urban rapid-transit system. Olympic maestros are crossing their fingers and hoping for no traffic snarls, no computer glitches, and no Tom Clancy terrorism nightmares. Pointing to a $300-million-plus security budget, three times what was spent to batten down Atlanta, International Olympic Committee member Gerhard Heiberg promised reporters last fall that Salt Lake City will be “the safest city in America” during the Games. More than 7,000 soldiers, federal agents, and police officers will be there to make the point clear.


In the end, organizers hope the 2002 Winter Games will be remembered as a rallying point for national and international resolve in the face of terrorism and war. Like most athletes, Picabo Street understands that there’s more riding on her Všlkls than a medal. She hopes her Olympic runs will “give America something to smile about,” she says, “because it’s been a little bleak.” And while some foreign athletes—French slalom champ Pierrick Bourgeat, to name one—have suggested Salt Lake City might as well paint a bull’s-eye on itself, most athletes feel sure that going ahead with the competition only makes sense.


“That’s one way that we can show that we’re not afraid,” says Emily Cook, 23, an aerials specialist on the U.S. Ski Team. She should know; she lost a cousin at the World Trade Center—an attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

The Ones to Wasatch

Schlopy > World Cup Giant Slalom, January 2001

Picabo Street may be the poster girl for Yankee pluck, but she’s not the whole story. U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team honchos are talking about scooping up as many as ten medals in Salt Lake City, including possible golds in downhill and Super G. The boast isn’t merely a PR stunt; 78 Americans will compete at five venues in the Wasatch Mountains around Park City and Ogden, in the disciplines of alpine skiing, nordic skiing, and snowboarding. The team’s final selection occurred after this issue went to press, but it’s clear from a look at top contenders that this year’s Team USA should improve on the dismal performance at Nagano. —Eric Hagerman



/ Slalom / Giant Slalom /
Erik Schlopy

Some athletes crank the tunes. Others snarl at their competitors. Buffalo, New York, native Erik Schlopy lines his helmet with flash cards that read, “Drive hips at apex of turn while maintaining snow contact.” Hey, whatever works. Indeed, Schlopy’s ruthlessly analytical character may be just the thing to get the job done in a discipline that’s all about technical precision. The 29-year-old finished last season ranked third in giant slalom, after taking second in two World Cup races. The breakthrough sets him up perfectly for a top-three finish in Salt Lake. “It’s never been a question of talent with Erik,” says Dave Striegel, a sports psychologist who’s worked with Schlopy for three years now. “It was just a matter of time. He has gotten really good at being comfortable skiing at the edge of his potential, that fine line between being too aggressive and too conservative.”
/ Half-Pipe Snowboarding /
Danny Kass

If Danny Kass could be anything when he grows up, it would probably be a punk-rock front man. But for now, the 19-year-old snowboarder would settle for Olympic medalist, so long as he can listen to the Misfits through his headphones while he competes (he can, and will). Kass, who hails from Mammoth, California, cropped up at the top of the national standings last year thanks to a fluid style developed after 12 years on a skateboard. That and his “lofty amplitude” (read: big air) went over well with judges, who might be tiring of the trend toward herky-jerky technical accuracy that has come with the transformation of snowboarding from lifestyle to sport. Kass’s agent Bob Klein, who has worked with such notorious figures as Shaun Palmer, sums it up this way: “Putting a routine together like a figure skater is what he’s not doing.” Kass will have to worry about a handful of Scandinavians, but then, don’t they listen to Abba?


/ Parallel Snowboarding /
Rosey Fletcher

It’s impossible to talk about Fletcher’s odds without bringing up the ignominious bonk of her entire team at Nagano, where the Americans hoped to own the podium. “All the girls sucked there,” snorts coach Peter Foley. “They all crashed. It was horrible.” Plenty has changed since then, not the least of which is the format itself. Instead of zipping through a line of gates one at a time, the fastest 16 racers now blaze along on side-by-side courses. New, too, is Fletcher’s maturity at the ripe age of 26. “We went into Nagano so naive. We were saying, 脭We’re going to kick butt!’ and it came back to haunt us,” says Fletcher, who placed second to Switzerland’s Ursula Bruhin at the World Championships last season. “I feel like I’m a completely different person now. I have my energy going in one direction instead of every which way.” With any luck, this Alaska native should be able to give her coach something nice to say come race day.


/ Freestyle Aerials /
Eric Bergoust

“Head and shoulders, Eric is above everybody else in the world,” says U.S. freestyle-skiing coach Jeff Wintersteen, and not just because that’s the sort of thing he gets paid to say. Bergoust has won 12 World Cup events, posted the three highest aerials scores ever, and invented the “double-in takeoff” technique that most of his competitors now use to launch themselves into their acrobatic routines. He is unquestionably the Zen master of executing three flips with four twists on a pair of skis, the trick it’ll take to win in the Wasatch and the same one he used to take gold at Nagano. But don’t expect a slam-dunk medal this month—Wintersteen charges that the judges may not have adequate experience to recognize how much more advanced his twist is. If the score givers don’t get it, or if our favorite so much as twitches midtwirl, you might instead be hearing about American Joe Pack, a crowd (and judge) pleaser who will be particularly dangerous given that he went to high school in Park City. “What we do is kind of a show, and I’m one of those guys who likes to hear some noise,” says the 23-year-old Pack, ranked second in the World Cup last season. “I’m antsy, man.”


/ Combined Sownhill / Slalom /
Caroline Lalive

At Nagano, where an 18-year-old Lalive finished seventh in the combined—an event whose score is determined by adding a racer’s times in one downhill run and two slalom runs—she viewed her feat as a delightful surprise. “But now if I got seventh,” she says, “I’d be pissed.” And rightly so. Lalive won the Junior World Championships in 1999 and has since been adjusting to the grind of the World Cup circuit. The task is especially difficult because she spreads herself so thin, competing in all four disciplines of alpine skiing. Her challenge at the Snowbasin Resort, where the downhill events will be held, is not physical (she can set an edge just as well as Croatian phenom Janica Kosteli”c or anyone on the powerful Austrian team) but psychological: She admits to a touch of performance anxiety. “One of my teammates had this dream that she showed up to the start and was just wearing her underwear and boot liners,” Lalive says. “I definitely have some of that.” Assuming Lalive can keep her pants on, there’s an excellent chance she’ll be standing on the podium.


/ Downhill / Super G /
Daron Rahlves

The Salt Lake Olympics couldn’t be a better match for Daron Rahlves, the first American man to win the World Championships in the Super G. First, the course at Snowbasin Resort is steep and technical, ideally suited to a racer of his smallish stature. (At five-foot-nine and 175 pounds, he can’t glide over flat stretches as fast as, say, an Austrian bricklayer.) Second, the 28-year-old Truckee, California, resident isn’t exactly insecure: “I know I have what it takes,” he says, narrowly averting arrogance. “I don’t have to do anything special.” Third, as he proved last season at a World Championships event at St. Anton, Austria, he thrives under pressure. “I remember being at the top and just laughing with my coach, looking at how many fans there were—it was, like, 60,000 people.” (At Park City, there will be a mere 22,000 on hand.) Rahlves responded by beating Austrians Hermann Maier and Stephan Eberharter on their own turf. Now, he expects to repeat those wins at home.


/ Nordic Combined /
Todd Lodwick

For those in need of a refresher course, nordic combined goes like this: Whoever jumps the farthest from a 90-meter ramp leads off in a 15-kilometer cross-country ski race, with the pack staggered in intervals behind. The format agrees with Todd Lodwick, 25, who is perhaps the fastest skier in his sport. Throw in his fondness for high altitude (he hails from 6,695-foot Steamboat Springs, Colorado), and Lodwick’s chances start to look pretty good for the Olympic course, which sits at 5,478 feet. His takeoff can be spotty, but he tweaked his technique several years ago, and late last season seemed to be finding his groove; in January 2001, before a hometown crowd in Steamboat, he won a World Cup event. “In simple terms,” says Tom Steitz, team program director for U.S. Nordic Combined, “if he gets his jumping down, he will be one badass mother.”

Pack Animal

Apolo Ohno blazes through one of the flashiest events on ice: short-track racing, wherein five guys on razory blades take off in a clump—and only one leaves it behind

Ohno > Olympic 1,500-meter qualifier, October 2001

UPDATE: Charges that Ohno conspired to fix race at U.S. trials dropped.


WITH A NAME LIKE a Marvel Comics hero, Apolo Ohno arrives this month in Utah poised to become a star on ice. After dominating last year’s World Cup short-track speed-skating season—Ohno swept the overall championship and the individual 500-meter, 1,000-meter, 1,500-meter, and 3,000-meter titles—the 19-year-old Seattle native could well end up as the first American man in the sport’s history to wear Olympic gold. “When he’s on his game,” says Susan Ellis, his coach, “he has been unstoppable.”
And what a game it is. Short trackers are cunning pack racers, their contest a Roller Derby without elbows. They zip around a rink in a five-man knot, cutting ice at 30 miles an hour on 17-inch blades that could flense a whale. Fallen long-track skaters suffer only embarrassment; downed short-trackers hit the boards like cannonballs.


“Long-track seemed kind of boring to me,” says Ohno, who switched from in-line skates to blades at age 12, after catching a broadcast of the short-track finals in Lillehammer. “I need the intensity of the pack.” Two years later, Ohno beat four-time Olympian Andy Gabel to take the U.S. title. But when the Nagano Olympic trials rolled around in 1998, Ohno found himself fed up with the rigorous demands of training, and didn’t even make the team. “My attitude towards skating,” he later said, “was crap.” Soon after, realizing he’d blown it, Ohno retooled everything: Diet, training regimen, skating style, and, most of all, his head. “At the world-class level, everyone comes with the same strength and speed,” he says. “The difference between first place and fifth is all in strategy and mental edge.”


He’ll have the timing and drafting down, but to lead the way at the Salt Lake Ice Center, Ohno will have to play a little catch-up. The September 11 attacks canceled the American team’s participation in this year’s opening World Cup events in China and Japan, so Ohno will compete with only a half-season under his belt. Still, according to the now-retired Gabel, his momentum makes him a favorite for gold. “When the other guys expect you to win, you’ve already almost got ’em beat,” he says. “That’s what’s happening with Apolo now.”


The “other guys”—contenders like South Korea’s Kim Dong-Sung, Canada’s Mark Gagnon, and China’s Li JiaJun, all from countries that traditionally dominate the sport—will try to get inside the American’s skull and throw a split second of doubt into his race. If his inner game holds, though, he’ll hobgoblin their minds instead. They’ll toe the line, glance at his cherry-red helmet, and think: Oh, no.

Powder Tools

Behind every modern Olympian there are geeks—titanium-smelting gear wizards whose ideas can mean the difference between gold and goat. Straight from the secret labs, here are four of the hottest innovations for the Salt Lake City Games.

[ Ice Hockey ]
Bauer Tri-Flex Full Composite Stick
How it works: The company molded both the shaft and the blade using carbon and fiberglass, and then fused the two pieces together into a single unit. On the Tri-Flex, the typically solid shaft is hollow—stiff in the middle, whippy at the end. Weighing only a pound, the finished product is 30 percent lighter than a wood stick and 7 percent lighter than a two-piece composite stick with a replaceable blade.
Why it matters: A light swing weight spells faster blade speed for more power in shooting and passing. It’s the same theory behind hollow aluminum baseball bats, where improved head acceleration translates into more ball speed.
Who’ll have it: “Anyone who wants it,” says Bauer product manager Troy Mohns. Including you, if you have a spare $180 come April.


[ Half-pipe Snowboard ]
Burton Dragon
How it works: While the laminated wood-and-composite strips inside most snowboard cores are sandwiched together in a fore-and-aft alignment, this one’s laid out in three zones. Underfoot, the strips run edge-to-edge to maximize grip. At tip and tail, they run in the traditional direction, out toward the ends. The resulting board is stiff laterally (for better edge hold) and soft-flexing at the tip and tail for a forgiving feel in the pipe.
Why it matters: Better edge grip means athletes will have a solid platform from which to launch judge-pleasing rotation tricks like the 540-fakey.
Who’ll have it: Olympic hopeful Kier Dillon, a 25-year-old veteran who first made his mark at the Gravity Games and X-Games, and who last January placed first at Austria’s European Open Halfpipe.


[ Alpine Skiing ]
Deep-Sidecut Slalom Skis
How it works: Rule changes last spring permitted women to use slightly shorter skis—150 centimeters, as opposed to the 155-cm planks that men are still stuck with. Since manufacturers had to come up with new factory molds, they opted to tweak the overall shape of the skis. To maximize the amount of edge gripping the snow, most companies adopted wider tips and tails. The V枚lkl P50 Slalom Carver shown above measures 110 millimeters across the tip, 97 across the tail, and just 64 underfoot.
Why it matters: The new deeper sidecut—the hourglass-shaped side profile of the ski—will allow racers to muscle sharper, more powerful turns.
Who’ll have it: U.S. slalom champ Kristina Koznick began training on the new Všlkl last summer, and loves it.


[ Cross-Country Skiing ]
Salomon Carbon Pro boot
How it works: When American sprinter Maurice Greene won the 100-meter gold in Sydney, his spikes contained a stiff, light sheet of carbon fiber designed to return some of the energy lost each time he flexed his foot. Banking on the theory that the material will return power just as well on the snow, Salomon is giving aspiring Winter Olympians its Carbon Pro—the first cross-country boot to use a carbon-fiber sole.
Why it matters: If a stiffer sole can influence the outcome of a 100-meter dash, the theory goes, then all that extra power flowing back into the ski will translate to Utah gold.
Who’ll have it: A limited pre-Olympic production run will put the Carbon Pro on the top 30 Salomon-sponsored men and women on the World Cup circuit in both skate and classic nordic events, including Sweden’s Per Elofsson, the sport’s top dog.

Let the Women Drive

Bobsledding goes coed this year, with the U.S. paced by two legstrong gals who may do something completely different: win

The Bobsled Girls > Bobsled World Cup, February 2001

UPDATE: The Bobsled Girls have split up!


“WE’VE BOTH developed nice plump rear ends—we call them our power packs,” says Jen Davidson, who at five-foot-eleven is the taller half of the American team favored to ride the chute February 19 at Park City in the Olympic debut of women’s bobsled. The label is fitting—ever since the earliest Norwegian bob racers zoomed down icy roads in the 1880s, powerful glutes and quads have been essential for muscling the sport’s massive sleds down the start ramp and then, once driver and brakeman have leaped aboard, as ballast for their near-90-mph plunge.
“Every pound we put on our body gives us an advantage,” adds Jean Racine, 24, a ten-year veteran of competitive bobsledding and luge who will pilot the 374-pound fiberglass-and-steel sled while Davidson, a former track star from Layton, Utah, rides the brake. Every pound, that is, until the scale reads 770, the limit set by the sport’s governing F茅d茅ration Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing for the combined weight of riders plus sled. “The key is to have the lightest sled with the fastest, strongest athletes,” explains Bob Cuneo, who designs the rigs for the U.S. Bobsled Federation.


After spending the past eight months packing on muscle via endless weight training and Mega Whey protein shakes, the self-described “Bobsled Girls” are poised to wear this nation’s first Olympic bobsled medals in 46 years. Their odds are good: Though the Swiss and Germans have dominated men’s bob for most of this century, Americans have done well on the women’s side of the sport—a staple of the World Cup circuit since 1995. In the four years they’ve competed together, Davidson and Racine have medaled 20 times.


Whatever the outcome in Park City, these two clearly know how to sell themselves. In addition to TV-commercial deals struck with Visa and NBC, they scored the ultimate athletic coup in December by gracing the fronts of three cereal boxes (Crispix, plus two kinds of Mini-Wheats). Yet Davidson, 29, does admit that her marketable bobsled physique has one drawback: With glutes and quads that can squat 300 pounds, she can no longer buy pants without a drawstring waist.

In Your Face

THIS MONTH, when an obscure event involving a sled with no brakes and no steering returns to the Olympics after a 54-year hiatus, skeleton racing will feel less like a sport steeped in history and more like a crossover from the X-Games. “It looks extreme,” says Park City’s Lincoln DeWitt, 34, a candidate for a medal. “It definitely has that Mountain Dew image.”


Skeleton involves even scarier body dynamics than the Olympics’ other open-sled race, the luge. In both events, competitors shoot themselves down an icy track atop a steel serving tray equipped with razor-sharp runners—but skeleton racers lead with their face, not their feet. Sliding at 80 mph, with a mere two inches of clearance between chin and ice, athletes are all too aware that a mistake can make them look like something Popeye punched out. “When we hit the wall,” says 31-year-old racer Tricia Stumpf, also of Park City, “we’re covered in bruises.”
Though there are no clear front-runners in skeleton, the U.S. stands a pretty good chance. Last season a trio of Americans—DeWitt, Stumpf, and Jim Shea Jr., a native of Lake Placid, New York—captured top-three World Cup or World Championship finishes.


Whoever wins, skeleton is sure to appeal to adrenaline junkies. Though U.S. coach Ryan Davenport insists it’s “far safer than luge or bobsled,” it’s still potentially deadly. Competitors were reminded of that last October, when 33-year-old Girts Ostenieks, a Latvian slider, smashed into a runaway bobsled in Sigulda, Latvia. He died instantly.

This Must Be the Place

Bound for Utah? Beyond the Olympic venues, here’s what to do—indoors and out—in one of the nation’s greatest backcountry playgrounds.

Best Guide Utah Underground: Guide to Real Fun, the new book that proves the state does have a nightlife

SLC l to do:

Skin up Grizzly Gulch near Alta, or anywhere in Big Cottonwood Canyon with a deep accumulation of snow. Build a ski jump. Try your first front and back flips into the powder.

Sleigh ride to 8,000 feet at The Canyons, a few miles north of Park City off Utah 224, and then cross-country ski or snowshoe for 20 minutes. Finish with a gourmet supper at The Viking Dinner Yurt (435-615-9878; ). Propose marriage over banana-bourbon bread pudding.

Rent a mountain bike from Highlander Bike (801-487-3508) and take it out to Antelope Island, a state park just north of Salt Lake in Davis County (from I-15 take exit 335 and head west). There it’ll be just you, 40 miles of trail, and a herd of 550 bison.

Rockreaction, Salt Lake City’s indoor climbing gym, offers routes all the way up to 5.13. The Black Diamond Equipment factory and store is right next door. (2074 East 3900 South, 801-278-7473). Pick through the racks for deals on fleece at the only Patagonia Outlet within 300 miles. (3267 South Highland Drive, 801-466-2226).

Paragliding in winter? You bet. A good wind is almost always blowing at The Point of the Mountain, a hillside just south of Salt Lake City in Draper. Call Steve Mayer at The Cloud 9 Soaring Center (801-576-6460; ).

Go heli-skiing with Wasatch Powderbird Guides (800-974-4354). If the conditions are right, you might talk them into taking you to Provo North—a heart-pounding, 50-degree, 3,300-vertical-foot powder chute.

For an American twist on the Scandinavian tradition of camping alongside nordic-skiing courses, pitch a tent at Jordanelle State Park, 45 minutes south of SLC, and practice your Norwegian and Danish with the visiting fans. Bring herring.

Go ice fishing one hour southeast of Salt Lake City at Deer Creek State Park or one hour east at Rockport State Park (for permits call Wildlife Resources at 801-538-4700). Visualize perch and wear thick skivvies.

Attempt The Great White Icicle in Little Cottonwood Canyon: 650 vertical feet, rated WI3.

Take your altimeter watch and sticks to The Canyons and lap all day on the Ninety Nine 90 chair. With 1,500 feet of vertical for every six-minute ride, you could conceivably log 54,000 feet of of trees, moguls, and steeps in one day.

Bag five of the country’s top ski resorts—Park City, Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, and Solitude—in one day on a lift-served, interconnected tour of the Wasatch Mountains. (801-534-1907).

SLC l eats:

[Chic] Metropolitan, 173 West Broadway, 801-364-3472
[Italian] Lugano, 3364 South 2300 East, 801-412-9994
[Sunday Breakfast] Ruth’s Diner, 2100 East Emigration Canyon, 801-582-5807
[Comfort Food] The Blue Plate Diner, 2041 South 2100 East, 801-463-1151
[Greasy Spoon] The Cotton Bottom, 2820 East 6200 South, 801-273-9830
[Thai] Bangkok Thai, 1400 South Foothill, 801-582-8424
[Winter Picnic Fixings] Liberty Heights Fresh, 1242 South 1100 East, 801-583-7374

SLC l drinks:

[Pub] Wasatch Brew Pub, 250 Main Street, 435-649-0900
[JumboTron] The Fiddler’s Elbow, 2100 South 1063 East, 801-463-9393
[Meat Market] Port O’Call, 400 South 78 West, 801-521-0589
[Internet Hub] Orbit Caf茅, 540 West 200 South, 801-322-3808
[Olympian-Spotting] Harry O’s, 427 Main Street, Park City, 435-647-9494

Local Lingo
[ A Glossary of UTAH SLANG ]

“Oh my heck!” Expression of either delight or disgust, as in “Oh my heck, I spilled chowder all over my ski chaps.”

“Wanna sponsor me?” What you must call out to the patron sitting closest to the door at a Salt Lake City “social club” (that is, a bar serving hard alcohol) in order to obtain the legally necessary referral that gets you in. Sponsorship also involves a $5 to $12 “membership fee.”

“Heavy beer” Full-strength suds, available only at government-run retail stores or social clubs. Beer with 3.2 percent alcohol is widely available in grocery stores, restaurants, and brewpubs.

GO WHERE THE PROS GO Three Favorite Backcountry Playgrounds From Those Who Know

Andrew McLean, ski guru and author of the backcountry-skiing guide The Chuting Gallery
Take a day trip into the Wasatch Mountains for some of the best backcountry skiing in the world. “The south face of Mount Superior has it all,”he says. “It starts at 11,200 feet, and you can ski right from the summit.”

Peter Metcalf, president of Salt Lake City-based Black Diamond Equipment
Head to Park City’s White Pine XC Area for nordic track skiing and “a great aerobic pump with grace and speed that’s perfect if you only have an hour or so.”

Conrad Anker, climber
The Utah climate is typically dry and mild, so if the sun’s out, Anker—a former Salt Lake City resident, at left—recommends “the south-facing rocks of Little Cottonwood Canyon,”anywhere from the base of the canyon to Lisa Falls, 2.8 miles up the gorge.

Olympic Almanac

The Official Flabbergasting Trivia^TM of the 2002 Winter Games

Volume, in gallons, of Olympian urine that the University of California, Los Angeles, will test for illegal performance-enhancing substances:
20




Estimated number of potential Olympic visitors who will stay home because of terrorism fears, according to Thayne Robson, researcher with the University of Utah’s business school:
300,000




Original retail price for the Green Gelatin Lapel Pin, a souvenir badge depicting a bowl of green Jell-O that honors Utah’s status as the nation’s leader in the dessert’s consumption:
$7




Market value of the pin among collectors:
$150




Number of Utah public-school students who will be excused from classes during Olympic events because of security and safety concerns:
14,996




Number of free hamburgers expected to be consumed by athletes at the Olympic Village McDonald’s outlet:
135,000




Pounds of kimchi imported by the Olympic Village kitchen for Korean athletes:
1,500




Total events in the “Donut Olympics” to be held February 8 to 24 at Salt Lake City’s Tommie’s Donuts:
5




Glazed donuts consumed in a two-minute period by the current “donut luge” champion:
9




Distance, in miles, from which a set of 160-foot-diameter Olympic rings—illuminated and mounted 6,000 feet high in Salt Lake City’s Twin Peaks—will be visible each night of the Games:
10




Gallons of 2002 Unofficial Amber Ale expected to flow from the taps of Salt Lake City’s Wasatch Brewing Company during the Games:
19,000




Minimum bid required by eBay seller for 18 nights’ exclusive use of a 6,000-square-foot historic downtown mansion with four floors plus round-the-clock concierge service and a 2,200-square-foot entertaining area “ideal for hosting large groups of 60 or 70 people”:
$65,000




Damage deposit required:
$20,000




Speed, in feet per second, that a bullet travels when fired by a Fortner .22 biathlon rifle:
1,100




Speed, in feet per second, that a bullet travels when fired by a National Guard regulation M-16 semiautomatic rifle:
3,300

The post Let the Games Begin appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.