"As we wrap up the season, I want to thank our loyal guests who showed up smiling day in and day out to support their local hill. I also want to thank our dedicated staff whose immense efforts and pride in their work kept Eldora running all season long. We hope everyone comes to celebrate the season with us this weekend." - Andrew Gast, Eldora's president and general manager.
Owl's Head has officially joined the Indy Pass, a fantastic news for Townships locals and travelers alike. It remains fiercely independent since Fred Korman opened it in 1965 with just three lifts.
Inspired by Courchevel's glamorous heyday in the 1960s, when the jet set swarmed the ski resort's sun-drenched slopes, interior designer Tristan Auer (behind some of France's most revered revamps, like Hôtel de Crillon, a Rosewood Hotel) wanted the property to feel more like an intimate chalet than a traditional hotel. "We have reimagined the Alpine estate to create a dynamic and unexpected hub of conviviality,"
In November 2024, travel booking website Omio shared its findings after researching and ranking more than 6,000 ski resorts around the globe. It ranked these resorts based on 11 factors, including the cost of an adult, youth, and child ticket, customer ratings, whether there was access to a ski school, the distance of each trail, and the number of events at the resort during the season.
On the approach to Arosa in the Graubunden Alps, the road is lined with mountain chapels, their stark spires soaring heavenwards; a portent, perhaps, of the ominous route ahead. The sheer-sided valley is skirted with rugged farmhouses and the road twists, over ravines and round hairpin curves, to a holiday destination that feels like a well-kept secret. On the village's frozen lake, young families ice skate, hand in hand.
Standing among the Alps, it's easy to believe that they will last forever. They seem too big to fail, too old to change. This illusion of permanence has long entranced travelers who have visited to experience the intoxicating feeling of being daunted and dwarfed by a landscape's authority. But even mountains move: This past May an avalanche of ice and rock tore through the Lötschental Valley, erasing the village of Blatten in less than a minute.
The sport originated thousands of years ago in Europe by necessity when hunters used long skis to travel and explore over mountain passes, placing animal skins on the bottoms of their skis for traction when climbing. Military units used similar gear to patrol the Alps in the late 1800s, sometimes engaging in speed competitions, which were likely the prototypes for the format of the Olympic skimo debut this February.
"At the top of that lift, I met my travel companion ( Travel + Leisure's own Nina Ruggiero), where we dined at Schafalm, a ski hut so charming, you'd think it was a movie set thanks to its crackling fireplace in the center, cedar walls, and lederhosen-wearing staff. "Are you guys going to the concert tonight?" three more strangers-turned-friends asked as BSB blared over the speakers, sitting down to join us for our cocoa break."
Mt. Baker is the PNW's snow vacuum. It's close enough to the Pacific to get storm after storm, and the North Cascades do what they do best: force moist air straight up, wring it out, and bury everything in sight. Maritime storms roll in wet and heavy, then pile up fast when they hit terrain.
From Sunday afternoon through early Tuesday, guidance converges on timing but diverges on intensity, so confidence is highest in a light event rather than a strong storm. Snow should be most persistent Sunday evening into Monday night, then taper Tuesday morning. The conservative near-term expectation is light accumulation for many resorts, with localized higher-terrain totals near 7 cm in the western and southern Alps.
BackcountryFor most skiers, "all-inclusive" means a lift ticket and a buffet. Forrest Schmidt means something very different: a hot titanium stove in a tipi, filet mignon next to a steaming hot spring, and ancient araucaria trees holding cold smoke over a perfectly set skintrack. Schmidt, a 44-year-old "East Coast kid" from rural New York, runs APEX Andes (Andes Puro Exploraciones) out of Malalcahuello in Chile's Araucanía region. His guide service is small by design with