It has been a very long long time since I was tracking in powder so deep I couldn't see my knees. It probably wasn't in New England, but yesterday I had that amazing pleasure on Sugarloaf, and the minute I hit the send key, I'm going back up for more.

Read the rest of 'Blizzard - Yeeha!'...

The trend on the slopes these many years has been the unchecked growth of snowboarding, which provided a fresh young, laid back and comfortable alternative to skiing.

But if you saw the Aspen X-games a week ago and watched the twin-tippers in the superpipe, it becomes clearer with every leap and series of tricks, that skiers launching off the wall simply can do more tricks and get more air.

Read the rest of 'Of Twin Tips and Snowsled through the Ice'...

For starters, the Rocky Mountain areas west of Boulder really didn't get much of those much televised storms. But the west is still terrific skiing, epscially Aspen where the X-games are scheduled to open next week.

Sooo, if you were thinking an Aspen ski trip, avoid like plague, or you'll be relegated to the slopes of Buttermilk and miss some of the best terrain.

But the real news around here is winter has finally dropped in, at least for the forseeable future.

Read the rest of 'Finally White Gold in NE'...

I don't know about you skiers, but I'm packing my bags. As you've been reading Colorado has had the lion's share of winter so far this ski season.

Read the rest of 'Heading West'...

Having just made THE New England loop of ski areas, I wracked my brain on the way down I-93 to remember a winter just like this one. It isn't just the lack or snow, or the periodic warm-ups. The whole package has been a disaster.

Back in the winter of 1979 and 80, and I believe the following year, the snow drought was pretty severe. In those winters there was no moisture, and deep-freeze temperatures. That was also in an era that, though there was some snowmaking, there was nothing like the arsenal of market-share warriers up in them thar hills these days.

But this year, we have plenty of atmospheric moisture, but temperatures so high that even that stunning snowmaking technology is pretty well stymied. With a 30 degree night, an area just can't make the snow it can on a 15 degree night. And - don't look now - but we're headed for another warmup.

There is skiing and riding. Don't get the idea that the hills of Vermont are as brown as the farm fields of Connecticut. But for ski areas, back yard syndrome is simply too great a force to get much traction against, and I know my backyard, 30 miles from downtown Boston, is both green and soft as May.

Read the rest of 'the winter that isn't'...

While New England struggles to get a start to the season, the Rockies are just rocking this fall. In some cases, there's been too much snow, as there nearly was for last week's World Cup ski events.

Read the rest of 'Skiing the West'...

In the last few weeks, northern gales have washed the summer wetness from the air, and the woods are suddenly a dark monochrome of light and dark browns.

Here in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom where we are tracking two deer near the base of Jay Peak, the ground underfoot crunches with frost. This will melt as the morning comes up, but now we are in a true forshadowing of winter before it drops hard in this country.

Read the rest of 'NORTH WOODS'...

October is a bittersweet month in New England - shimmeringly beautiful and yet taking us away from one more summer, now passed. It is the last stand for our wonderful gamefish - striped bass and bluefish - which are now rounding up for the lock trek south.

Early in the week, before this northeast wind kicked up, we had our shot with stripers off the backside of Nantucket. The morning was slow with a warmth that reminded us of summer, and though we expected the wind to rise later, it never did. Shortly after noon, we were trolling the backside with tube and worm rigs, and stopped at the curl of water near the Old Man Shoal.

With the sun backlighting the water, we witnessed one of those exciting sights in this sport - stripers in the 30-40-inch range rising and falling like torpedoes in the rip. It was time to get out some plugs and cast.

Read the rest of 'LAST ROUNDUP'...

World-rounding sailor, and record setter, Dodge Morgan one said of boat disasters, "Almost every one of them comes down to human error."

At first this seemed a facile remark, but to explain himself, Morgan said that whether it be planning, weather anticipation, equipment maintenance and inspection, of simple perational blunders such as overpowering a boat with too much sail, almost all goes back to the sailor.

Read the rest of 'It'll Never Happen Here'...

The photo here is of a trimaran, a form of multihull sailboat that represents the very fastest/cheapest form of water transportation there is.

This was taken at last weekend's Buzzards Bay Regatta, sailed out of Marion Mass. on the underarm side of Cape Cod. The wind was blowing about 8-knots and this guy was sailing at 15 - almost twice the speed of the wind.

The point is that while a monohull boat drags a lot of uderbody thropugh the water, including a lead keel for stability, the multihull actually skims across the surface of the water like an ice boat, with little drag or friction.

Read the rest of 'Speed on the water'...