“You are high, dude. That’s the dumbest thing you could buy in this whole store.” Those were the words of Steve Woerz—aka “Steezy Steve”—spoken to his good friend Ben Paciotti in a Washington surf shop around 2011. The “thing” was a powsurfer, essentially a wide, binding-less...
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...
Ron Cohen takes the reins of the world-class resort after a polarizing eight-year stretch Like a skier picking a line through treacherous terrain, Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows must navigate through a ski industry undergoing rapid and transformational change. The iconic resorts, which combined hold some...
I sometimes envision the highways and off-beaten paths that crisscross Nevada’s vast landscape as contrails intersecting in the sky. They are expansive, multi-dimensional, and lead to endless and sometimes unchartered corners of a map. Many of these roads were built with dreams of finding silver or...
With the sun’s slow slide toward the horizon each winter, Tahoe transforms. The beaches are quietly abandoned. The boats hauled into storage. And then fat flakes of pure white fall from the sky, leaving one of nature’s wonders cloaked in a blanket of brilliant snow....
Skiing is in Patricia Northrop’s blood. Rather, it’s part of her DNA. “My parents would put me out the back door and say, ‘Go play on these things,’” says Northrop, who first clicked into skis at age 3. “Skiing is such a wonderful feeling, and...
Skiers and riders spend fall and early winter praying for powder. But across the Tahoe Basin, ski resorts are taking weather into their own hands, installing a new crop of snowmaking machines to assure a deep, season-long snowpack. Snowmaking is just one of the many...