Trip Report
Most skiers spend a lifetime skiing while collecting mountains — Evie Ho decided to do it in a single season. Freshly retired from a 40-year nursing career in 2024, the Boston-based skier took stock of a surprising realization: despite clicking into skis at age two and logging more than six decades on snow, she had only sampled a handful of resorts. For most, that would be a shrug-and-move-on moment. For Evie, it became a mission. Her answer? A self-designed ski safari spanning 58 resorts in a single season. The number was a nod to her birth year, 1958.
Growing up outside Syracuse, New York, Evie’s ski world revolved around family trips to Stowe, Vermont — a pilgrimage that routinely passed within striking distance of icons like Gore Mountain, Hunter Mountain, and Mount Snow. Yet, like many skiers of that era, she stayed loyal to a few familiar hills, only branching out to local Syracuse mountains on school or church trips.
Fast forward to today, and inspiration struck in a thoroughly modern way: social media. After following a friend’s multi-resort Western tour, Evie began sketching out her own East Coast odyssey — only bigger, bolder, and more personal.
Living just outside of Boston, she realized she was perfectly positioned to access dozens of New England ski areas within a few hours’ drive. Her strategy was simple but effective: ski midweek, avoid the crowds, and cluster resorts geographically into 4–6 mountain blocks she could tackle over consecutive days, and have some multi-resort days. It’s the kind of approach that turns retirement into a secret weapon: empty lift lines, fresh corduroy, none of the weekend chaos, and bagging 58 resorts.
To refine her ambitious plan, Evie leaned on modern tools, using AI to sort resorts by size and terrain, favoring larger mountains while still weaving in meaningful stops. Calendar constraints, holiday crowds, and one symbolic finish line all factored into the equation. Once the puzzle pieces fell into place, she mapped each cluster to a specific week — hitting the road Monday, returning home by weekend, and repeating the rhythm all winter long.
And the timing? Nearly perfect. The East delivered a classic season, with consistent snow and minimal travel disruptions. Evie made the most of it, spending roughly 70% of her time carving blue cruisers, with the remainder split between greens and groomed black diamonds—an ideal mix for a lifelong skier who knows exactly what she loves.
There were standout moments, of course. A bluebird day ripping endless groomers at Bretton Woods. The satisfying variety of Sugarloaf, where steeps up high give way to flowing lower-mountain cruisers. Nostalgia hit hard near Syracuse at Song Mountain, evoking high school memories—studying chemistry reaction pathways with a friend on the dark, slow chairlift ride up.
Not every goal checked off cleanly. One small but meaningful miss: East Hill, the tiny rope-tow hill where so many of her classmates first learned to ski. With just 200 vertical feet, it was never part of her own story because of her advanced skiing ability—she hoped to finally experience it on this trip. Unfortunately, timing didn’t cooperate; it was only spinning the rope tow on weekends, when she was already heading back to Boston.
Still, Evie saved one of the most personal moments for last. She chose Pico Mountain as her 58th and final stop, aligning it with the last day of the Michelob ULTRA Ski Bum Race series, where a high school friend, Chris Slasde, was competing. The finale for the race and Evie’s 58 resorts delivered a shared celebration: Chris took the win in his division in the race series, and Evie clicked out of her skis, having completed a 58-resort season few could even imagine.
And she’s not done; Evie is padding the totals with bonus days at favorite hills, eyeing 65+ days on snow across New England and New York. True to a tradition she’s kept since 1982, she’ll close out the season on May 1 at Killington.
Evie Ho didn’t just ski more resorts — she rediscovered the joy of exploration, one midweek turn at a time. In an era of bucket-list overload, her story reminds us: sometimes the greatest adventures start right in your backyard. As for next winter? If this season proved anything, it’s that Evie Ho doesn’t think small.
Evie’s Weekly 58 Resorts Groupings (a masterclass in efficient Eastern ski resort safari):
- Sugarbush, Killington, Okemo Mountain, Stratton, Mount Snow
- Cannon Mountain, Bretton Woods, Waterville Valley, Loon Mountain
- Black Mountain, Cranmore Mountain, Wildcat Mountain, Attitash Mountain, Pleasant Mountain, King Pine
- Gunstock Mountain, Mount Sunapee, Ragged Mountain, Tenney Mountain, Crotched Mountain, Ski Bradford
- Mount Southington, Mohawk Mountain, Ski Sundown, Otis Ridge, Ski Butternut, Catamount Mountain, Jiminy Peak, Bousquet Mountain, Berkshire East Mountain, Wachusett Mountain, Ski Ward, Nashoba Valley
- Yawgoo Valley, Blue Hills
- Greek Peak, Labrador Mountain, Song Mountain, Belleayre Mountain, Hunter Mountain, Bromley Mountain, Magic Mountain
- Gore Mountain, Whiteface Mountain, Mad River Glen, Middlebury Snowbowl, Saskadena Six, Dartmouth Skiway
- Stowe Mountain, Smugglers Notch, Jay Peak, Burke Mountain, Pats Peak, Bolton Valley
- Sugarloaf Mountain, Saddleback, Sunday River Resort, Pico Mountain
