Each year as we dig out of winter and prepare for spring, we summon our photo-snapping readers to participate in TQ’s Best of Tahoe Photo Contest. In the seventh year of the contest, we asked for photos in seven categories: Landscape, Wildlife, Pets, Black & White,...
At nearly the cruising altitude of a transcontinental jetliner, Jim Morrison clicked into his skis and peered down a sheer panel of Himalayan snow. One of the world’s most coveted ski lines lay below him—a precipitous couloir that split the face of Lhotse, the fourth...
Eighteen years ago, the biggest name in ski films traveled to a rural fishing town in southeast Alaska to visit Points North Heli-Adventures, the outsized corporate moniker for what was then just a 30-year-old ex-hockey pro living out his heli-skiing fantasy in the heart of...
Colossal terrain parks were once all the rage at Tahoe ski resorts. Lined with towering jumps that grew larger by the year, they provided training grounds for rising pros and social hubs for throngs of daring young snowboarders and freeskiers launching, sliding, mingling and feeding...
An hour’s drive north of Truckee and a 6-mile detour off Highway 89, Johnsville, California, is a place you’d never pass through unless you were intentional about it. The old mining town, population 21, is now part of a state park. There are second homes...
Beginning in 1995, Shane McConkey ruled as king of the skiing world for the better part of the next decade and a half, while also serving as its jester. One of the greatest skiers of all time, not to mention one of the best Tahoe athletes...
Here in Tahoe, we are located in a slice of California that’s somewhat removed from the rest of the state. It’s a point of pride to explain to outsiders that, yes, it does snow in California, and the skiing is just as great as the...
Watch an up-and-coming Tahoe teenager ski moguls today and you can see the past and present of bump skiing inextricably linked. The courage and skill required to smash down the steep fall line of a mogul course can be traced back to the early hotdoggers who...
It’s late June in Chamonix, France.The first golden rays of sunshine are coloring the verdant lower shelf of the Aiguilles Rouges. On the other side of the valley, glaciers flowing from the ice-encrusted summit of 15,780-foot Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Western Europe, remain...
In the lifecycle of a sport, snowboarding has hit its version of the midlife crisis years. The youthful exuberance and wild experimentation of the 1980s and ’90s is gone. The punk rock– and heavy metal–scored shred flicks sit like dusty, yellowed photo albums. It’s hard...