Quit Your Day Job: These 5 Gigs Will Pay You to Live the Ski Bum Dream Most people work full-time during the week and hit the slopes on the weekends or on weeknights. They might ski two times a week at most, but, according to statistics from the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA), most do not go more than 20 to 30 times a season. The combination of balancing life, work, and leisure activities gets too […] Industry News Gregg Frantz | April 11, 2025 0 Comments
5 Multi-Resort Passes That Offer Access to Ride the Southern Hemisphere [UPDATED: 4/10/25 at 9:00 a.m. PST] As the winter ski season winds down in North America, many people will turn to more seasonal activities like biking, hiking, golf, or spending time at the lake. It makes sense as the weather turns warmer and ski resorts close. It can be a sad time of year for many as most ski resorts […] Brains Brent Thomas | April 10, 2025 0 Comments
9 Best Ski Resorts in North America for Both Skiing and Mountain Biking You don’t have to choose between ski season and bike season—not if you’re in the right place. Across North America, a handful of mountain towns have mastered the art of year-round adrenaline. Powder in the winter, hero dirt in the summer, and the infrastructure to back it all up. These aren’t just ski resorts with a few bike trails tacked […] Biking Martin Kuprianowicz | April 9, 2025 0 Comments
North America’s 11 Most Influential Ski Resorts That Have Shaped the Industry Today Although North America was not the birthplace of skiing, many of its resorts have had significant influence on the sport. From the rugged peaks of the Rockies to the powder-filled bowls of British Columbia and the icy slopes of the East Coast, North America’s ski resorts have done far more than offer a place to carve turns—they’ve helped shape the entire […] Brains Brent Thomas | April 9, 2025 0 Comments
La Sapinière: Convalescing in Style at the Chamonix Chalet Hotel with the Best View of Mont Blanc in Town An image of a beautiful young blonde woman with big breasts wearing nothing but bright-red ski boots and clinging to the side of a snowy cliffside flashed across the projector screen in the panoramic breakfast hall of the La Sapinière Hotel, just up the grassy hill from downtown Chamonix. “There’s nothing wrong with this!” Gary Bigham blurted to the audience […] Featured Article Martin Kuprianowicz | April 7, 2025 0 Comments
5 Places Where You Can Ski and Golf in the Same Day Spring is a magical sporting season. It’s the crossroads of winter sports and summer sports. It’s almost time to switch out your skis for your clubs, but the snow gods were kind this year. The shredding continues. Related: The Best 5 Places to Ski and Surf in the Same Day An article by the New York Times, using Sotheby’s International […] Industry News Quintin Mills | April 7, 2025 0 Comments
The 9 Ski Areas With the Most Lifts in North America When evaluating a ski area, it’s important to factor in the number of lifts that the resort has because that number influences the time that you will spend in line, the terrain that you can shred, and the number of other skiers that you will encounter on the mountain. Here is a list of the nine ski areas in North […] Brains Liam Abbott | April 3, 2025 1 Comment
Why the ‘ONE Wasatch’ Concept of Interconnected Resorts in Utah Hasn’t Come to Fruition For years, the concept of ‘ONE Wasatch’ has fascinated skiers and snowboarders who dream of an interconnected ski experience in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. The proposal aims to link six major ski resorts—Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, Solitude, Park City Mountain, and Deer Valley—via a series of lifts and runs, creating one of the largest ski networks in North America. It would include […] Industry News Brent Thomas | April 3, 2025 1 Comment
Why Do Ski Resorts Close When Their Snowpack Is Still So Deep? At the beginning of the ski season, it is a race to see which resort will open first. Pent-up demand from not skiing during the summer and fall drives skiers to clamor for their first tracks of the season. Sometimes this is only on one lift and a measly 12-inch base, most of which might be man-made snow. Then, at […] Brains Brent Thomas | April 3, 2025 11 Comments
Almost A Century of Fun: A Brief History of Pond Skimming For many years, spring skiing has brought forth sunshine and smiles, bikinis and bathing suits, and most famously, the pond skim. People have been using skis or variations of skis dating thousands of years back for transportation, hunting, and recreation. The concept of water skiing and skimboarding came to fruition in the early 1920s. So when did these all get […] Brains John Cunningham | April 1, 2025 0 Comments
Remembering the 1982 Alpine Meadows, CA, Avalanche That Killed Seven, Over 40 Years Later 43 years ago, on March 31, 1982, a deadly avalanche ripped through Alpine Meadows Ski Area in California. The catastrophic slide was unlike any the area had seen. It buried dozens, taking seven lives and causing millions of dollars worth of damages to the resort. March 27, 1982, the storm rolled in. Snow dumped for days as patrollers fought to […] Avalanche Aunika Skogen | March 31, 2025 2 Comments
7 Abandoned Ski Areas That We Wish Would Come Back Ski areas were popping up everywhere in the 1970s and 80s as the popularity of skiing boomed, but just as quickly as they were being built, those same ski areas started to vanish. Some were eventually forgotten while others continue to plague the dreams of those who once skied the mountain or always wanted to. The readers of SnowBrains have […] Luke Guilford | March 31, 2025 0 Comments
The 5 Best Terrain Parks in California This past spring, I set myself a goal: learn to ski park. My journey started learning to slide rails in the Gold Coast Park at Palisades Tahoe, California. In the summer months, I continued to learn by skiing Forest Trail and Main Park at Mammoth Mountain, California. Finally, this past month, I enjoyed skiing at an awesome early-season park at […] Jeremy Thom | March 29, 2025 0 Comments
The Scariest and Most Frustrating Things About Skiing Skiing is a fun and exhilarating sport that millions participate in each year. There is nothing like the feeling of skiing down a mountain with perfect snow conditions on a Blue Bird Day. Even though most people love to ski, they still have apprehensions about some things. Concerns exist about the rising cost of lift tickets, overcrowded slopes, long lift […] Industry News Gregg Frantz | March 26, 2025 0 Comments
From Silver Boom to Powder Legend: The Alta Ski Area Story High in Little Cottonwood Canyon, dawn breaks with the echoing boom of avalanche cannons across serrated peaks–a morning ritual at Alta Ski Area that hints at its rich and restless history. Few ski resorts can claim a genesis as dramatic as Alta’s: a silver mining boomtown turned ghost town, resurrected in 1938 as a skier’s paradise atop Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. […] Clay Malott | March 26, 2025 0 Comments
Mt Baldy: A Timeless Ski Escape in Southern California Bumping up and down in the backseat of Dad’s green convertible Jaguar, the potholes of Mt Baldy’s parking lot bring excitement for a day of skiing ahead. That backseat was once a battleground for “shotgun” against my brother. A battle I often won. The upgrade to the passenger seat led to today. More than 15 years later, I had to […] Miles Berman | March 26, 2025 0 Comments
What Would be the Best Superpowers for Skiers and Snowboarders to Have? These are our Top 7 Picks We’ve all thought about it. The idea that if we just had a superpower, how much our lives could be enhanced. As skiers and snowboarders, harnessing a superpower could make an immense difference in doing something we already love. Imagine carving down a mountain with superhuman precision, effortlessly floating over powder, or never feeling the burn in your legs no […] Brains Brent Thomas | March 25, 2025 1 Comment
Mountain Mayhem: The Rise of Gaper Day in North American Ski Culture With April 1 approaching, skiers and snowboarders worldwide are preparing for the biggest day of the year—Gaper Day. What is Gaper Day? “Gaper” alludes to the gap between your helmet’s bottom and the goggle’s top. The bigger the gap, the bigger “Gaper” you are. Sometimes, Gapers are also referred to as Jerries or someone who is acting like a big […] SnowBrains | March 24, 2025 2 Comments
Should You Tip Your Ski Instructor? If So, How Much? In the United States, it’s become arduous to decipher when, where, who, and how much you should tip. I always think of the opening scene from Reservoir Dogs, where Mr. Pink refuses to tip the waitress “because society says I have to.” However, life isn’t a Quentin Tarantino film, and tipping isn’t just for servers anymore. With inflation and unlivable […] Industry News Quintin Mills | March 23, 2025 0 Comments
The Start of Modern Skiing? A Look At 7 of the World’s Oldest Ski Resorts Where is the Birthplace of Modern Skiing? According to the International Skiing History Association, the art of skiing dates back some 3,000 years when archaeological evidence across the Eurasian arctic region shows evidence of primitive skis. But surely that doesn’t reflect today’s modern skiing with perfectly groomed slopes and high-speed lifts. So where do you go to find the birthplace […] Industry News Ryan Kime | March 23, 2025 3 Comments
Industry News
Brains
Biking
Featured Article
Avalanche
