Vermont Skiing Notes

Things are better at Vermont ski areas

Snow arrives in Vermont

An Article about Development

The Single Chair at Mad River Glen (picture to left)

More trails opening at Okemo

Looks like most of the mountain is open, and another half foot or so snow fell.

A Flickr picture of Gstaad

Someone posted this picture on Flickr a few days ago from their visit to Gstaad. Looks suspiciously snowy. Here's A puff piece on Gstaad from a newspaper in Massachusetts, which must have been a travel agent perk or something. And here's a local paper's take on the conditions from last week, in English which has the feel of being written by an ex patriate Anglo or American. Also here's a cool interactive map with on hill cameras, click through to the flash player to see what the various regions around Gstaad are up to. I wish there was more snow there, but its beyond our control.

An interesting article on Aspen

The NYT just had an interesting article about regular life in Aspen, which felt like a great place to live. Even though real estate, and life in general, there is very expensive it looks like people get value out of it -- much like how people value the core Manhattan life experience despite the high cost and small living spaces. One thing the tight market has created is this problem, which is analagous to what happens in rent controlled NYC apartments.

Our Aspen pictures are still on Yahoo, and you can still order a picture book of them from the menu. It's pricey ($69 or so) but I got one anyways.

Added bonus - two other bloggers recently talking about Okemo . And a teenager on a traditional club bus trip to Okemo. It's actually kind of insightful into todays youth. I wonder if alpine race camp is like this.

Finally, lots of snow in Vermont

We just got back from Vermont, which was blessed with plenty of snow. We got at least 4" on Friday night (I was lucky to get up the road to the cabin) and another couple inches on Saturday night. Although this picture was not taken by us, this is what the village looked like.

On Saturday we went to Ludlow's Okemo mountain and Jenn skiied around the base area, while I read Harold Harb's book on Ski Flexing and Fitness. It was pretty good; I remember when I ordered this that it had been on back order for quite some time which was annoying. Amazon's value proposition drops when one has to wait for weeks or months to get something. It seemed to me that the mountain wasn't that crowded, at least from the parking lot and base area, but the others said there were some lines at the Northstar lift. Conditions were probably the best they have been all year -- fresh snow, clear skies, and although cold, not viciously so.