Ski Magazine

fear factor

Last March I skied Kicking Horse, B.C., for the first time. I had heard about the resort’s legendary in-bounds hike-to terrain, the high-reward high-consequence lines off Terminator 1 peak and the strenuous climbs to the top of Terminator 2. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how much of the hike-to terrain I’d ski. I was there to assist with the filming of our AIM AdventureU Mastering Steeps course, and figured I’d be spending a lot of time standing around between takes. Yet on Day 2 of our nearly week-long visit, I lucked into a mountain tour with a former local who knew the resort intimately. Riding up the base-to-summit Golden Eagle Express gondola gives one a bird’s-eye view of some of the resort’s most technical hike-to terrain flowing down off…

focus

COLOR BLIND Late season in British Columbia’s Coast Range can be unpredictable—you never know what type of conditions you might encounter on any given day. So when pro skier Dave Treadway and photographer Reuben Krabbe headed into the backcountry around Pemberton, they kept their expectations in check. Toward the end of the outing, Treadway spotted some slightly wind-buffed snow sporting its telltale wavy pattern and knew the turns would be just right. Krabbe set up the shot and Treadway skied the line just as the sun was lowering in the late-afternoon sky, making this artful image look deceivingly like a black-and-white shot. HOME SWEET HOME Sometimes the best surprises are found right in your own backyard. Photographer Lee Cohen lives in Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon and calls the slopes of Alta and Snowbird…

generation ‘shred’

On March 2, toddlers will descend on the bunny slopes of Buck Hill in Burnsville, Minn. to test their two-wheeling abilities—on snow. The 2019 Strider Snow Cup, hosted by the leading developer of kids’ balance bikes credited with revolutionizing how kids learn to ride (Goodbye, training wheels!), is an opportunity for tots to take their Strider 12 bikes, outfitted with the brand’s snow ski accessory, to the snow and race against others their age in a specially prepared “downhill” course. Strider hosts numerous races throughout the year and around the globe for tykes eager to test their balance and speed, and the Snow Cup is a great (and extremely cute) way to introduce the little ones to snow sports and foster a love for sliding around on snow. After all, it…

going rogue

Last February, Chet Homer, the owner of Maine’s Shawnee Peak ski area, saw an ad posted on Craigslist advertising affordable ski lessons at his resort. The person was offering private instruction for a fraction of the price that Shawnee Peak charges at their ski school. The ski area is on private property and what the seller was doing was illegal. So Homer did what anyone would do in his situation: He set up a sting operation. His son emailed the instructor online, hired him for a lesson, and arranged to meet on a Saturday morning. Just after the instructor showed up, Homer gave him a stern talking to and had the local police issue him a warning. “We had no desire to be nice. We wanted to catch this guy, get…

gold medal brews

This season, you can get beer with a little extra gold at ski areas in the North Lake Tahoe area, thanks to Truckee’s FiftyFifty Brewing, which won Brewery Group of the Year at the 2018 Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colo. “Our hope was to come home with a medal,” says Alicia Barr, FiftyFifty’s co-founder and Chief Experience Officer. “The Brewery Group of the Year is based on a point total of how many medals you win that year. We came home with three medals, which blew our minds.” Those medals included a gold in the German Style Wheat category for their brew “Bananenhängematte,” bronze in the Specialty Beer category for “I Did It for the Cookie,” and bronze for the brewery’s iconic Barrel-Aged Strong Stout entry, “Eclipse.” “We’ve been brewing…

it’s all about symmetry

Because skiing is the greatest sport there ever was, we don’t want you to miss a single day this season due to injury. So here’s a quick public service announcement: Your biggest risk of injury on the hill is linked to your overall fitness. Injuries tend to happen when we’re tired and our muscles are fatigued. When our quads are burning, we start skiing in the back seat, putting us at risk of one of the most common ski injuries: torn knee ligaments (like ACLs and MCLs). The solution? Get in the gym and work those quads so they won’t get tired, right? Absolutely, but don’t forget about your glutes and hamstrings, which help balance the stress put on the quads. Developing muscle symmetry is key to preventing injuries. When we…