She stalked mountaineers at the arrival gates of Kathmandu’s tiny airport, paid guesthouse receptionists for tips on the climbers’ whereabouts, and pestered guide companies to divulge schedules.

Since 1960, Elizabeth Hawley—a tenacious, exacting Kathmandu-based journalist—interviewed virtually every high-altitude climber to pass through the city, sussing out whether their claims were true and using her notes to create the sport’s most thorough record, called the Himalayan Database.Ìę

She passed away Thursday afternoon at the age of 94. Climbers, colleagues, and friends around the world mourn her loss and remember  her fondly.Ìę

“At age 91, she was still getting into her baby blue VW bug and going to hotels and grilling climbers,” Mount Everest blogger Alan Arnette told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. “She kept a lot of people honest.”

Kunda Dixit, now the editor of the Nepali Times, filled in for Hawley as a stringer in the 1980s. “Liz didn’t suffer fools, she wanted everyone to meet her exacting standards,” he says. “As a rookie journalist, I couldn’t have wished for a more effective mentor.”

Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, recalled how Hawley was more than a tough reporter. She once helped his team save a climber trapped on Mount Everest. “In the middle of the night, she was in touch with us, providing valuable suggestions on how we could rescue him,” says Ang Tshering.Ìę

Journalist Billi Bierling, Hawley’s assistant, originally intended to work for Hawley for a year. Instead she stayed for 14. “I’m gutted,” she said from the Dubai airport, en route to Kathmandu.

It’s hard to imagine what Hawley would think of all this. Those who knew her remember a woman not given to sentimentality. She was born in New York City in 1923. After she received her master's from the University of Michigan, Hawley became a researcher at Fortune magazine, but couldn’t imagine a future there. In 1957, she quit to travel the world—visiting places like Algeria, India, Hong Kong, and, of course, Nepal. Upon returning to New York, she had an epiphany. Kathmandu wasn’t just more “real.” It was also more comfortable, pleasant, and fun. She returned to the city with assignments from Time magazine and Reuters, and promptly established herself as a correspondent.

Even though she lived at the base of the biggest mountains on the planet, she didn’t desire to test her human-endurance limits. She rarely, if ever, trekked. She was too busy working.

A story of hers about the death of Nepal’s prime minister made the front page of The New York Times.ÌęBig, newsworthy expeditions started arriving in the 1960s. Thirty years later, the number of climbers had skyrocketed. She occasionally found herself in the middle of controversies, such as the 1996 disaster chronicled by Jon Krakauer in his best-selling book Into Thin Air.Ìę(“Jon Krakauer, he was very kind, very patient, spent a long time with me,” she once said.) A small group of assistants and supporters joined her in Kathmandu, including Richard Salisbury, a retired climber and computer whiz from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who digitized and catalogued Hawley’s room full of files.Ìę

She spent much of her time in the city reporting, using up significant chunks of her not-large income to do so. Her beloved VW Beetle became a fixture in the city. As I noted in my 2011 profile of Hawley for this magazine, her information came to be relied upon by newswires, scholars, the Nepal Mountaineering Association, the American Alpine Journal, European climbing publications, and the world’s best mountaineers. “If I need information about climbing 8,000-meter peaks, I go to her,” Italian climbing legend Reinhold Messner told me.

One day, when she was in her 70s, she realized she was struggling to gauge distances, so she handed over her license, quit her favorite pastime, and hired a driver. Her career as a chronicler ended just as decisively. In the middle of an interview a year and a half ago, her mind went blank, Hawley’s assistant Bierling said, something that had never happened before. Hawley quit conducting interviews shortly thereafter.Ìę

She held others to high standards, and she wasn’t going to lower them for herself. Nor would she indulge in nostalgia. Bierling recalled asking her what it felt like to give up working on the Himalayan Database, something she was clearly so passionate about.

“Passionate? I’m not passionate about anything, certainly not a database,” said Hawley.

So why then did she carry on for so long?  

“I started something,” she said. “And whenever I start something, I finish it.”

The post Legendary Himalayan Journalist Elizabeth Hawley Dies appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Not long ago, I found myself at a tony golf club, about an hour south of Boston, seeking a firsthand feel for a rather anachronistic new product.Ìę

Since 2014, 52-year-old surfing legend Laird Hamilton has been marketing and selling, with business partners, what they tout as pretty much the biggest innovation in golf since the pimple-faced caddy. Called the , it is a four-wheeled, battery-powered wooden deck with a tall handle that allows a player to “surf the earth,” as promotional materials describe, by swooping up fairways between shots. Since winning Best New Product at the PGA Merchandising Show its debut year, some 160 courses have bought an average of ten boards, at $6,500 a pop.Ìę

Plans are in place to expand sales to Europe and the Caribbean, and to introduce an on-road or on-bike-path model, with baskets for groceries and nylon windbreakers and such. “It’s been riding a wave of popularity,” president Jeff Dowell told me, unnecessarily.

At Black Rock Country Club on a sunny September day, I chatted a bit with the owner, George McGoldrick, an enthusiastic fan of Hamilton’s creation, and zipped off to pretend to play a couple holes without disrupting those who had actual tee times. We mimed chips and sliced drives and, on the Golfboard, glided beside water hazards, mowed through the ruff, and skirted sand traps. After getting the hang of the throttle, a little thumb switch on the handlebar, I confidently cruised along at jogging pace. Thanks to the Golfboard’s light weight, I was able to coast right up to the greens without leaving tire tacks in the lawn.Ìę

Riding the undulating fairways wasn’t quite like hanging ten in Waikiki, but it did keep me kind of warm, or at least alert, between fake shots. And while I missed the shade of a golf cart’s awning, not to mention the cooler full of beer, I came to appreciate that if I was a portly old one-percenter, the Golfboard would be “a hoot,” as one such player told me.  

But as I headed back home that day, I couldn’t help feeling a bit suspicious.

Let me say outright that this is not because I don’t admire Hamilton. In fact, I have to agree with the editors of this magazine, who once confessed to a “man-crush.” 

In the early 1990s, for example, most people assumed that a 30-foot wave was the tallest any surfer would ever ride, since it was impossible, not to mention terrifying to attempt, to paddle fast enough to catch anything bigger. But soon after Hamilton and two buddies started messing around with an inflatable Zodiac and a tow-rope, they were flinging each other onto some of the most massive waves on the planet. The man invented big-wave surfing.

And in the 1990s and early 2000s, nothing in the surf world was cooler. Sure, some abhorred the proverbial oil in the water. “Every average Joe who can stand up on a board can get towed into a really big wave,” pro Sunny Garcia once groused. But in 2000, Hamilton towed in to a tsunami-like slab of water in Tahiti, rode it like a pony, and those people mostly shut up. “I think it’s the single heaviest thing I’ve ever seen in surfing,” Matt Warshaw, author of , says in the 2004 documentary Riding Giants.Ìę

Then, for good measure, Hamilton basically invented stand-up paddleboarding. In 2001, he asked some local buddies and surfboard shapers to make him a more seaworthy version of a tandem surfboard, grabbed a paddle, and lo, a new sport was born. Now more than 1 million people go SUPping in a typical year. Granted, many of them are pawing at the water in suburban drainages or stealing actual surfers’ waves. But Hamilton, he’s a badass.

The Golfboard? That might be another story. For starters, it doesn’t strike me as something sprung fresh out of hotshot design-consultancy IDEO. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to a $6,500 electric skateboard, the likes of which a Shenzen factory owner could duplicate faster than you can say “patent infringement.” 

Then there’s Hamilton’s track record. It’s easy to forget that while he has certainly earned a buck—enough to split his family’s time between Malibu and Hawaii—he has also occasionally indulged his rather peripatetic side. In 2002, the year after creating SUP, for example, he didn’t corner the market with his own line, he was still fiddling with another contraption he’d invented, which was essentially a wakeboard with a hydrofoil on the bottom and ski boots mounted to the top. Once a kite or jet ski got the rider up to speed, he would rise a couple feet out of the water and hover above unbreaking waves. But as a commercial product, it failed to take off, as Dowell might say, perhaps because no one wanted to wear ski boots in the ocean.

At other times in the last decade, Hamilton has given the impression that he’s shooting into the air, hoping for a golden goose to fall out of the sky. He has given speeches to banker types; designed an apparel line, watched it fold, then launched a new collection; published a fitness book; announced the creation of an obstacle race that, two years later, has yet to materialize; has created a “superfood” coffee creamer for jocks and the biohacking subset of Silicon Valley; and has started a fitness camp for those who can afford a private pool, a personal sauna, and an ice bath. He has also dabbled in a bit of modeling, or what may now be called brand-building. In a Davidoff eau de toilette print ad, he runs out of shallow water, with a surfboard under an arm, as if invading the beach at Normandy. Tagline: “The Power of Cool.” In an American Express TV commercial, he says, “My visions are endless.” Indeed.

I emailed Hamilton. Turns out, he eschews email and was busy preparing for the winter big-wave season in Hawaii, but his wife, model and former beach volleyball pro Gabrielle Reece, generously replied.

Hamilton had never been a passionate golfer, she said. But a few years ago, his friend Don Wildman, the rich octogenarian founder of Bally’s Total Fitness (now L.A. Fitness), started asking him to play along. Hamilton agreed—on the condition that he could ride an electric skateboard between holes. “After a while, he and Mr. Wildman realized this would be an incredible way to get around on the course,” Reece said. They got in touch with an inventor and businessman Dowell, and the rest mostly fell in to place.Ìę

As far as corporate creation stories goes, it’s about as compelling as any these days. Which is to say, it ably distracts from the marketers, who were surely chanting, “Laird surfs the earth!” and the eggheads, who were no doubt thrilling at the golf world’s terrific ROIs on key DMAs. But it also does seem, well, authentically Hamilton. He was kind of bored and, with a boy-ish enthusiasm, dreamt up a kooky, novel thing. I won’t be asking to invest, but heck, I wish him all the best.

And I’m glad to know that a failure certainly won’t bankrupt him.

The post Introducing the GolfBoard: The Electric Skate Deck of the Well Heeled appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

As a lover of the outdoors, I know firsthand how tough it can be to live in a city. Soon after I moved from Boulder, Colorado, to New York City in 2007, a neighbor suggested that “we should lunch,” as if eating sandwiches together was linguistically and spiritually akin to riding singletrack. Others in Manhattan expressed surprise that people actually lived in Boulder, which they thought of, when they thought of it at all, as summer camp for adults.

I should’ve known better. I’ve lived in mountain towns like Boulder long enough to count the needles on a pine tree, but over the last two decades, I’ve also found myself living in bustling metropli, everywhere from Seattle to New York to Reykjavik to Boston.Ìę

Each move followed the same pattern: I rented an apartment, bought a pass for the bus or subway, and then set out to “get a feel for my new city,” which entailed drinking and eating to excess. Out of habit, I also sampled whatever adventures are close at hand.Ìę

Unfortunately, this meant mustering enthusiasm for boardwalk rollerblading and “bakery bike rides,” for short indoor climbing walls and a particularly impoverished variation of birding known as “mothing,” in which flashlight-toting Manhattan retirees would gather at midnight to spot the brown flying bugs in Central Park's Shakespeare Garden. In each instance, I was weirdly reminded of my first visit to Nepal, when the peaks I’d seen in so many photos proved to be way more impressive in person. City life has just the opposite effect—it often delivers exactly the let down you expected.Ìę

But before long, I’d start getting fat. So I’d double down on my search for real physical activity. In Boston, this meant finding the Community Boating Center, a nonprofit devoted to the most humanitarian of goals: “removing the barriers to sailing.” The upshot: for less than $300 a year, I could sail anything from a dinghy to a 23-footer, with unlimited guest privileges. (Apparently the price includes smashing a boat into the shore of the Charles River, too, because I haven’t been charged for that yet.)

While living in New York, I tried (and failed) to get into indoor climbing and boxing, but I did surf great, empty waves that broke just blocks from a subway stop in Queens, and I pedaled my road bike and singlespeed 29er with a passion. This sounds boring, I know—a poor man’s attempt at infusing my city life with a sense of adventure. But it wasn’t. I remember my first weekend spin up Fifth Avenue, with a buddy who encouraged us to leave at dawn so the roads would be empty. Birds took flight from the buildings as we sped by. The rising sun streamed down the cross streets. The green tuft of Central Park shimmered in the distance. Nevermind the thrill of riding the wrong way up a potholed four-lane arterial, it was the scenery that astounded. We had Retail Canyon, part of the Midtown Range, all to ourselves.Ìę

Once a city loses a bit of its lustre, you finally start to see it for what it is—a landscape in its own right. Or as șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű contributor Chris Solomon , “Can it be only happy coincidence that mountain climbers and architects share the same language to describe the objects of their passion, that both talk of slope and cornice, spur and buttress, fluting, pitch, spire?” I don’t think so. And this opens up all sorts of possibilities, even if you’re not into urban exploration or parkour or buildering. You can kayak canals, cross-country ski walking paths, or leap stairs on a trials bike.

Is this adding up to anything? Here’s what I mean: If our love of the outdoors is partly an eagerness to be humbled by forces larger than ourselves, to feel free to err and tough out the consequences, to exhaust our bodies and minds so we can see where our limits lie, to connect with a humming, primeval something, then only those without a bit of pluck and verve would let some concrete stand in their way.

The rest of us, we will explore and improvise and rage, rage against the mothing.Ìę

The post The șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűr’s Ode to the City appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

As of Wednesday, pilots of hobbyist drones like the DJI Phantom will no longer be allowed to fly their gadgets in any national park.

The temporary ban, issued in June by Director of the United States National Park Service Jonathan Jarvis, covers all 401 units of the national park system, including national recreation areas and national historic monuments. August 20 is the deadline for all superintendents to comply with the policy.

Previous regulations had mostly banned drone flights in some parks. But the new rule leaves no loopholes.ÌęIt prohibits the “launching, landing, or operating” of a “device intended to be used for flight in the air without the possibility for direct human intervention from within or on the device,” including but not limited to “model airplanes, quadcopters, drones” used for “recreation or commerce.”

We never expected this back in March, when we published a feature raising concerns about hobbyists flying drones in the wilderness. But over the spring and summer, drones became “” in Yosemite, according to the Associated Press, and a UAV  from a herd of bighorn sheep in Zion National Park. Visitors to Yellowstone watched one plonk into the rainbow-colored waters of the Grand Prismatic Spring, while those at a viewpoint on the south rim of the Grand Canyon rolled their eyes at a drone buzzing the horizon at sunset—before it fell out of the sky. Elsewhere, at least a few angry folks, like , attacked drone fliers.

This bad behavior spurred the park service into action. Citing the “dramatic growth” in the number of hobbyist drone flights in the United States and “a number of questions by park managers regarding concerns about their compatibility with the National Park Service mission,” Jarvis issued the order, in the form of a 13-page policy memorandum, on June 20, with the implementation deadline of August 20.

The ban is only temporary, designed to buy the Park Service time while it “considers how to address this new use on a longterm basis.” Read: gathers public feedback and takes maybe 18 months to write a drone-specific rule into the Federal Code of Regulations. And there are exceptions. Folks can still fly at places like the RC Field in Floyd Bennet National Recreation Area, New York. But all in all, it is a thorough legal smackdown, and it feels like the beginning of the end for drones in the wild.

An interdisciplinary group of Forest Service employees is also working on recommendations for senior leadership to use in future drone-specific policies. Currently, federal regulations prohibit taking off or landing within any of the 36 million acres of designated wilderness, but allow flights in the roughly 150 million other acres of the national forest system, including roadless areas. But new policies could come into effect as soon as 2015. “They’re getting close, but it’s probably not going to happen this year,” says Mike Ferris, public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service.

State Parks are also taking note. According to Matt Rumbaugh, director of professional development at the National Recreation and Park Association, the NRPA is inviting drone flyers and consultants to run “educational sessions” on drones, a “cutting-edge park issue,” at its annual meeting in October.

Not surprisingly, drone enthusiasts are already complaining about how the park service ban impinges on their freedoms. “I think it’s really really asinine,” says Dale Slear, a drone filmer and founder of .Ìę

If the videos that most of them shot were even half as beautiful as the parks themselves, then we might agree. As is, we couldn’t be happier about this decision to slow down and think—and any other policy that allows the chance to create sensible, longterm rules.

The post Drones Grounded appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

What do you get when a company known for its luxury airplane seats teams up with a well-known bike builder from Seattle?

Answer: the ultimate utility bike. And we’re excited about it for a few reasons.

The Denny Bike—created by and custom —won the contest earlier this month. The project tasked five teams from five bike-loving cities to build their vision of the utility bike of the future. Read: one that commuters will actually want to ride.

The bike, which will go on sale next spring, features running lights and turn signals that adjust to the ambient light, a handlebar that doubles as a U-lock, an electric-assist front hub, and wheel brushes instead of fenders. The has already been viewed more than a million times, in countries as far away as Rwanda.

We caught up with Roger Jackson, creative director of TEAGUE, to find out how it all came together.

OUTSIDE: People have been trying to build a better bike almost as long as people have been trying to build a better mousetrap. What made you think you were smarter than the good folks at Trek?

JACKSON: Historically, bikes have been thought of as an alternative activity to promote a healthy lifestyle. We thought, “If we’re trying to get people out of their cars, we can’t just tell them that this will promote a healthy lifestyle. Riding the bike has to be as easy as driving a car.”

So we took all those things that make a car successful—automatic shifting, daytime running lights, etc.—and looked at putting them on a bike. That was the key. There are a ton of great bikes. We wanted to create an alternative mode of transport.

How is designing a utility bike different from designing a typical TEAGUE product, such as an airplane seat?
Obviously there are different ergonomic factors, but the inherent approach is similar. As designers, we want to make great products that solve problems for people.

How did you design Denny?
The first couple weeks, we talked a lot with Taylor and put together our team. It was very diverse, with people from Holland, France, Germany, Korea, America—each with very unique perspectives on cycling.

Then for two weeks we let everyone design what they thought was their perfect bike. Then we put those aside, started fresh, and discussed. We said, “You went for a small wheel, why’s that? And what’s the perception of a small wheel?”

Taylor taught us everything we needed to know about bikes, about traditional manufacturing processes, but also how the design of the frame can influence the quality of the ride. We went to Goodwill, bought a $25 frame, bought cheap wheels, attached different storage systems—thinking through making.

We had a number of 3-D printers in the office working on various iterations of the handlebar-locking mechanism. Once we started getting into final design, different team members could celebrate their strengths. John Mabry was leading all the tech components—the lights, the autosensing and all that. Clement Gallois, who has that French flair, focused on the frame design. Mike Charles looked at battery life. Oliver Mueller was project manager and designed the storage system. Kay Kim looked at the stand and identity. It was a very collaborative process.

Be honest: Do those “fenders” really work?
With the trials we’ve done internally with the prototypes, we’ve had some pretty good success.

What’s your favorite feature of the bike?
It’s subtle and discreet how the tech is integrated. We put in a microcomputer and coded it from scratch. Like the Shimano Alfine 11-speed rear hub. That comes with a gear switcher, but we chopped that of and programmed it so it reacts to not only the speed of the bike—when you slow down, the gears change; when you speed up, the gears change—but also based on the effort put through the crank. It took a lot of tweaking to get it working how you want, so you don’t ever have to ask if you’re in the right gear.

Tell me about a design idea that might’ve gotten you fired.
Nothing specific. We debated a modular storage system before settling on a fixed storage system. We don’t want people to ride past the farmers market and not buy apples because they don’t know where to put ‘em.

What did Taylor bring to the project?
We had the opportunity to work with another bike maker, but what we really liked about Taylor was his openness, his willingness to think differently. He was eager to stretch himself, to get out of his comfort zone. That was exciting.

It sounds like you’re not resting on your laurels. In late August, you’re competing in a soapbox derby. Early rumors said the car would be designed to look like a bunny slipper. Can you tell us more at this time?
Pink fur is definitely part of the design. Retractable bunny ears are still up for debate.

The post The Ultimate Urban Utility Bike appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

If you live outside the Midwest, should you care about so-called “gravel-grinder” bikes? Put another way: Is a bike that’s purpose-built for those who like to ride on unimproved roads through hog and farm country pelted by horizontal rain a good bike for sane people, too? I spent a month on a  to find out.

The Raleigh Tamland 1

The $1,600 price tag was the first thing I noticed. About a year ago, I ended up talking with five friendly bike thieves—four crackheads and one professional with an angle grinder—and they all said that $1,000 dollars was the cutoff. The druggies claimed to rob only bikes that cost less, because that risks a mere misdemeanor in most states. The pro said he’d risk a felony rap only for bikes that cost thousands of dollars. So the Tamland would appeal to neither, and I could probably leave it locked up outside for a couple hours without it getting stolen. It could be a commuter.

Riding ten miles to a coffeeshop supported the idea. The heavy wheels spun up to speed slowly, but once moving, they rolled as easily as those skinny tires on a friend’s crotch rocket. Even better, the disc brakes had no problem slowing me down in the wet, and the 40mm-wide tires really gripped the road. Years earlier, riding a skinny-tire bike on the same water-glazed stretch of highway, I’d stomped on the pedals, felt the rear wheel slip, and highsided into the ditch. I tried the same on the Tamland and it just galloped forward.

But what about epic rides? A buddy and I ditched out on a big organized ride to ski powder, so I can’t say how fast the 25-pound Tamland is in comparison to a 20-pound Roubaix, but I certainly enjoyed it on a couple multi-hour spins. Descending a steep hill, my eyes watered before I could feel a quiver or twitch. On the flats, the 1060mm-long wheelbase made it track so straight that I could pump the pedals without holding onto the handlebars and with my eyes closed. And the tall head tube meant that I could gain speed by grabbing the drop bars, but when I rested my hands on the top of the bars, my weak old back was at a comfortable 45 degrees. The longer I rode the Tamland, the better it felt.

On one of my last outings, I lowered the tire pressure to 60 psi and tried to break the thing, hammering through a network of trails that I’d recently crawled up and bombed down on a fancy full-suspension rig. No surprise: a $4,500 mountain bike the Tamland was not. Its front wheel, at the end of a rigid slack fork, slipped out on a wet root, sending me tumbling, and the chainring dulled its teeth on a woop-de-do. But nothing broke! The steal frame and low tire pressure mellowed the gravel double track and absorbed the hits they couldn’t mellow. I got deeper into the woods than ever before. Swooping down an unfamiliar stretch of smooth dirt singletrack was a giddy experience. And I was just as pleased to be spat out on an unrecognized country road, which offered a hypnotic cool-down spin home.Ìę

Bike geeks will surely parse the details of the Tamland 1 soon enough. I suspect it’ll prove a heck of a deal, besting the handful of direct competitors, such as the or the . Meanwhile, call it a gravel grinder if you want—I’m going with quarter horse. The Tamland is probably the most versatile, well-behaved, and eager bike I’ve ridden.

$1,600,

The post Raleigh Tamland 1 appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Leaf peepers. European tourists. Motorheads from a ­nearby car show. On a Friday in September, maybe 100 visitors milled around Clingmans Dome, a popular lookout atop a high ridge in Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Some made the push to the ovoid, Jetsons-esque observation deck. The rest, exhausted by the half-mile approach from the parking lot, wiped their brows while standing on the flagstone patio below.

“Think it's OK if I fly this thing?” I asked a woman sitting nearby.

“This thing” was my drone. The size of a shoebox, with four outstretched arms and an HD video camera on its belly, the device is part of a new wave of even-dummies-can-fly-'em aerial robots, for sale to anyone with a couple hundred bucks in their pocket.

I wasn't sure what to make of it, honestly,  but that wasn't the point. I was doing my first flight in front of other people, and the point was to see what they thought.

“You're not gonna fly it around for hours, are you?” the woman replied. I assured her that the flight would be short, 15 minutes tops. She seemed cool with that. Two park rangers, enthusiastic young guys in khaki shirts, had already told me to “Go for it!” while a third, an older woman in pressed green slacks, said, “You didn't hear that from me.”

That was all the encouragement I needed. I fired up the drone, which made an eager digital chirp, then four propellers the size of dinner knives spun to life and it obediently lifted off, climbing some 75 feet overhead. In the wispy fog blowing hard over the dome's 6,643-foot summit, the drone lurched forward and backward and side to side with all the predictability of a drunk. People on the ground stared. The folks in the lookout didn't even notice.

So I brought my drone closer in—right behind the young families, old men, couples, and kids in strollers gazing at the mountains in the other direct-ion. Finally, when they heard what sounded like a hive of angry bees, their heads swiveled.

No one appeared startled. No one cheered or threw rocks. Instead, they turned their bodies—away from Dolly Parton's homeland, away from the view that one woman later told me proved the existence of God—and, almost in unison, like primitives offering their humble devices to the higher technological power made plain before them, they raised their cameras, tablets, and phones. Once they finished photographing the drone, which was photographing them, they clapped.

Why, I can't say. The drone hadn't flown any loop-the-loops or thrown off glitter dust. But one thing was certain: these people were not afraid of a little old helicopter thingy.

No doubt about it, 2013 will go down as the year of the drone—the nonmilitary, for-sale-online, consumer drone. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg discussed them during his weekly radio-show appearance. Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and cofounder of drone maker 3D Robotics, wrote multiple stories with titles like “How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom.” New York University hosted its first drone conference. A computer-science undergrad in California launched a crowdfunding campaign, hoping to raise $10,000 to develop consumer drone kits that could be produced using 3-D printers; backers pledged $563,721.

In the outdoor world, camera-equipped flying robots were used to monitor the flow of sea ice in the Arctic, map an archaeological site in Peru, and chart forest fires in France and reefs in Samoa. A drone kept tabs on Kenya's endangered white rhino populations. Another mapped the Matter-horn down to 20-centimeter resolution. A pair of Louisiana hunters dubbed their drone the “dehogaflier” and used it to track wild pigs. A drone company helped map damage after last fall's floods in Colorado. Burning Man published a set of drone guidelines. (No buzzing the Great Circle until after the burn.) And hundreds of videos, distinguished by tags like FPV (first-person view), UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), and quad-copter (four-rotor helicopter), were uploaded to You-Tube, with drone-enabled footage from Grand Canyon, Glacier, and many other U.S. national parks.

By last December, when 60 Minutes aired a piece about Amazon's plan to use drones for deliveries someday, a Domino's Pizza in London had already served up two large pies via drone, a bakery in Shanghai had couriered cakes using them, and Hobby King, a large online seller of all things remote controlled (RC), had kicked off its second annual competition to see who could lift the most beer into the air with a drone.

In the space of roughly three years, consumer drones have also become ubiquitous in photo and movie shoots. Virtually every state is home to at least one drone film company, including Idaho's RC Aerial Cam (customers: Discovery Channel, Red Bull, Salomon) and Tennessee's Snaproll, which flies drones of all shapes and sizes for clients ranging from General Electric to Taylor Swift. Photographer Corey Rich has used drones on some 30 adventure shoots. In a recent film for gear manufacturer Mammut, he deployed one to follow climbers David Lama and Peter Ortner to the 20,508-foot summit of Pakistan's Trango Tower. “They are game-changing devices,” Rich says. “They get our cameras in wild, unexpected positions, positions that are otherwise totally unachievable.”

Despite all this, drones remain a relatively uncommon sight at trailheads and atop mountains. But that could change fast. DJI, the maker of my drone and a leader in the afford-able, ready-to-fly market, rolled out the $500 Phantom in January 2013. The Chinese company declined to share numbers, but a dealer estimates that DJI will sell 100,000 drones this year. Parrot, a company that sells drones in Apple stores, has delivered more than half a million units since 2010. These figures are on top of the DIY kits and ready-to-fly drones sold by the thousands at online stores like Aerial Technology International, Quadrocopter, and Intelligent UAS.

The thought of all these little buggers flying around our favorite outdoor places is perturbing, as is the potential for harassment—of both humans and wildlife—and privacy violations. (Imagine how you'd feel if a drone whizzed by your head as you savored a successful climb of Mount Rainier.) But their appeal is just as apparent. When I first saw a popular YouTube video of surfing footage shot via drone at Santa Cruz's Steamer Lane, I swooned. It was so cool to have no idea where the camera would go next—right beside a rock with sea lions one moment, high above crashing waves the next.

The ability to capture cinematic footage is just part of the allure. A company called Hubsan makes a $200 palm-size drone that streams live footage to a screen on the controller—allowing, say, a backcountry skier to safely inspect a cornice before dropping in. 3D Robotics and others integrate an auto-tracking “follow me” function into their drones, enabling skiers and bikers, for example, to take the ultimate selfie.

The Federal Aviation Administration is struggling to keep up with these innovations. Last December, after Congress asked the agency to devise a plan for the “safe integration” of drones into national airspace, the FAA finally designated six sites for testing civilian versions of military drones. In the meantime, the only regulations that apply to recreational drone users are the ones that were implemented in 1981 for model airplanes, which forbid three major things: flying in crowded areas, flying above 400 feet, and flying near airports. As for wilder areas, the Forest Service and National Park Service neither encourage nor prohibit the launch of any object, though technically pilots are required to ask for permission before sending anything into the sky. “The business of unmanned aerial vehicles is real new to us,” says Jeffrey Olsen, a Park Service spokesman.

In other words, it's pretty much a drone free-for-all in America's wildlands. Or, as a TV producer who recently used an infrared-camera-equipped drone to look for Bigfoot told me: “It's about to get really freaky. There are already cameras everywhere. And now you've got these drones. People are gonna get pissed off. Others are gonna say, 'Screw you, I want to fly.'”

My newfound interest in consumer drones happened to coincide with a long-planned cross-country road trip. So I ordered a Phantom and charted a route that would let me fly it in beautiful wilderness areas between New York City, my home, and Seattle, where I was going to meet up with my family.

I figured it would be fun to capture footage of my trip, see how people react to some good-natured flybys, and explore whether a laissez-faire attitude about drones in the outdoors is the best approach. So, during the first week of September, I placed my new toy in the trunk of a rental car and set off.

I sped south for hours, skipping the barrier islands of Maryland to camp in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore of the Outer Banks—long, skinny sandbars in North Carolina that bracket the Eastern Seaboard.

Any fears I had about the skills required to fly a drone were quickly dispelled. While camped at Oregon Inlet, near the top of the cape, I learned by watching a couple of three-minute tutorials on my tablet. The next day, 45 miles south at Frisco Woods campground, I walked to an open area behind the dunes where local park rangers had cheerfully suggested I conduct my inaugural flight.

Some consumer drones fly autonomously, following tracks that you draw and create in an app; the Phantom is operated using a traditional radio controller. After installing the drone's battery, I completed the prelaunch dance of the controller sticks—left, right, apart, together—and the propellers began spinning. I nudged the left stick up and the drone ascended. I pressed the right stick to the right and it glided right. Then I thrust the left stick up and it rocketed into the clouds. Anytime I let go of the controls, the drone hovered in place. Amazing!

I made graceful arcs over sea oats, slalomed through oaks, and raced low, at about 25 miles per hour, along the yellow center stripe of a nearby tarmac, with the Top Gun soundtrack blasting in my head. It was a glorious 12 minutes. Then the battery ran low, and the drone dutifully landed itself back where it took off. Feeling the unique bond of man and tool, boy and spaceship, I immediately got on the phone and ordered more accessories.

A few days, two states, and a half-dozen flights later, I mustered the courage to fly my drone in public at Clingmans Dome. But it wasn't until later that night, when I stopped for pizza in the tourist trap of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, that I began to understand why some of the Clingmans visitors may have been less than stunned by my drone.

[quote]I made graceful arcs over sea oats, slalomed through oaks, and raced low, at about 25 miles per hour, along the yellow center stripe of a nearby tarmac, with the 'Top Gun' soundtrack blasting in my head. It was a glorious 12 minutes.[/quote]

While walking down one of Gatlinburg's main streets, I saw a storefront showcasing drones and RC helicopters—sandwiched between a fudge shop and Magnet-O-World. Astonished to find such techy toys amid the tourist stuff, and in need of some specialty batteries for my drone, I decided to pop in.

The store's proprietor, Kevin Lin, was a friendly guy in his thirties, with spiky hair and a pink polo shirt. He told me he moved to Gatlinburg from his hometown of Shanghai three years ago because he liked the weather. He noticed the rising popularity of RC devices and consumer drones, and he had friends back in China who worked in a factory that made them.

His little shop, King Hobby (not to be confused with Hobby King), now sells 65 models of RC helicopters and a handful of drones, and it has spawned no fewer than four competitors in town. “All the gun shops started carrying helicopters and drones, so now I have to carry guns,” he said with a smile.

I wasn't expecting this. There are almost
50 drone hobbyist groups in the U.S., but they tend to be concentrated in cities. I hadn't imagined that drones had made their way into the boiled-peanuts belt. But here they were. On Clingmans, I could've been a local.

The next day, I traversed the grand shelf of land that stretches from Knoxville to Nashville, Tennessee, descended to the Mississippi River, and pushed west to the Ozark–St. Francis National Forest in northern Arkansas, where I hoped to get some footage to wow my family and friends with.

I filmed hiking trails and creeks and honey-hole lakes drenched in warm, humid air, but my most Planet Earth–worthy shots came at Buffalo National River, where I glided the Phantom along the smooth surface of the impossibly clear water and swooped up the face of a granite cliff at a gorgeous oxbow bend. The video, downloaded to my laptop, shows pebbles whisking across the screen, then a flat-gray wall, then—in a hallelujah moment—a wide-open, spinning vista of untouched oak forest.

I kept trying to get a rise out of people, but during two days in Arkansas, no one was intrigued or bothered by my flights. Granted, there were few around to care. The only other people I met in the backcountry, a couple with three young children, said nothing about my droning. The father wore an Army T-shirt, carried one of the children in a camouflage backpack, and had a bowie knife hanging from his belt and another strapped to his calf. The mother looked at me with apparent boredom. The other two children, maybe four and six years old, were too young for drone fascination. When I forced myself into their space to show them the Phantom, Mom changed the subject to a more relevant topic.

“There's a rattlesnake up there,” she said, pointing at the trail.

Not everyone is so blasé about the prospect of drones whirring around them. One vocal doubter is Phil Steel, a welding inspector in Deer Trail, Colorado, a decrepit ranching town 60 miles east of Denver, which I reached after a long, ponderous drive through the gridlands of Missouri and Kansas.

Deer Trail is normally a quiet place, but it became the center of a media circus last summer when Steel drafted a town-council initiative that proposed paying $100 to anyone who could produce the complete wreckage of a drone shot out of the sky. Never mind that gunning down private property is illegal. The drone ordinance will be voted on later this year, but it has already garnered all sorts of attention. Russian newspapers picked up the story. The Colbert Report mocked the idea. When I was in town, a crew from Univision, the Spanish-language cable network, was there, too, filming a segment.

As best I could gather during a one-day visit, residents remain split over the initiative.

The only person I talked to who clearly favored picking off drones was a lanky cook at a local diner. At breakfast I told the waitress about my drone, and she yelled back to the kitchen, “Hey! He's got a drone in his trunk!” The cook replied, “I don't wanna see it! He shouldn't be flying that around here!”

Invited out to elaborate, he said quietly, “I'd shoot it right outta the sky. I got guns.”

Residents opposed to the initiative aren't so much against shooting drones, I learned, as they are against almost anything Steel does. “He's just crazy,” said the owner of a gas station in town before telling me about the 22-foot lookout tower Steel built in his backyard.

When I finally met Steel at a fast-food restaurant, his greased-flat hair and monotone voice didn't do much to inspire confidence. Nor did his drone philosophy, which somehow sounded TED-like in a bad way. “Drones are where cyberspace meets real space and time,” he said.

But Steel could also be sincere, thoughtful, and funny. He planned to capitalize on his minor celebrity by launching a line of drone-hunter merchandise—clothing, ball caps, a cookbook. His proposed ordinance was mostly a stunt, but his worries about the future pervasiveness of domestic drones seemed legitimate enough.

“If a pedophile was using a drone to take pictures of kids today, someone would see it and it could be stopped,” he said. “But when they're ubiquitous, how do you tell a good drone from a bad drone?”

Later, I had a phone conversation about drone pitfalls with Woodrow Hartzog, a privacy lawyer and affiliate scholar at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. The time to ask questions about drones and privacy, he said, is now.

“Once a technology is adopted by the masses, it becomes much harder to regulate,” Hartzog explained. As an example, he cited online tracking software like site cookies, which remains largely ungoverned. By the time groups that wanted a sharper definition of privacy got organized, the technology had already spawned thriving industries with powerful corporate support.

I got the sense that, despite the hoopla, even the anti-droners in little Deer Trail hadn't really begun to organize. But it was time to find out. At 1 P.M., on the street just behind the town hall, I sent my awesome and vexing little drone into the sky. From 150 feet up, I peered into backyards, surveyed double-wide trailers, and filmed an auto repairman's car-strewn property, which locals call the Asshole's Garage.

Nobody shot my drone out of the sky. A white-haired couple in an Oldsmobile drove underneath it unaware, as did a farmer on a tractor. Steel, I knew, was off inspecting pipelines in another town. And I got the feeling that anyone else who might have taken aim was also out trying to earn a living.

I crossed the Continental Divide and headed into the smooth orange landscape of southeastern Utah, arriving in Canyonlands National Park 20 minutes before sunset.

The recent delivery of additional batteries and propellers had created a technological jumble in my car. Along with all the computer screens and mobile devices, I now had more stuff that needed charging, that bounced around in cup holders and hid in the bottom of bags and cases.

I desperately wanted to launch my drone off the 6,259-foot-tall mesa that overlooks the Needles District before dark, but it took me several minutes to find the damn screws to attach my GoPro camera. And in the prelaunch frenzy, I didn't pause to create the usual flight plan or scope out a landing area. Instead, while a lone German stared peacefully at the western set piece, I made a hasty launch. Then: streaks of light, frantic motion, a high-frequency buzzing. With the battery nearly empty, I tried to steer my craft for an emergency landing in a gully, but I failed. The drone banged into a rock and hopped around in the dirt until its propellers, scuffed but not broken, whacked themselves into exhaustion.

I'd known this day was coming. A plethora of news stories and YouTube videos featuring the word “crash” had hinted at it all along.

Over the course of my trip, a drone crashed in a crowded street in Spain. Three days later, in Germany, a drone nose-dived at the feet of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Two weeks after that, in Manhattan, an idiotic New Yorker in ripped jeans launched a Phantom from the balcony of a midtown apartment building. Soon it pinged into the side of a skyscraper. The drone miraculously righted itself, but the pilot sent it beelining into another building. And another. Eventually, the thing tumbled some 30 stories, smashing on the sidewalk near Grand Central at the start of rush hour, steps away from a startled businessman.

The FAA is working to prevent such crashes, of course. Meanwhile, individual states are largely responsible for trying to figure out how to weigh a person's right to privacy against a person's right to use drones and cameras in public places. As the handful of states with drone-specific regulations have discovered, this is not an easy balance to achieve.

Take Texas. In September 2013, state legislators outlawed drone photography of a private entity without consent. Some celebrated the law, which prohibits, for example, private detectives from using drones to snoop around bedroom windows. But others decried the way it handcuffs people seeking to do good for the public, like the hobbyist drone pilot from Dallas who captured footage of a meatpacking plant that had been dumping untreated waste into a nearby river. If the law had been in place when he'd photographed the fouled waterway in January 2012, he wouldn't have been able to use the images to help indict the plant owners on pollution charges.

Questions about drones in federal wilderness are even more complicated. Not only are there safety, privacy, and First Amendment concerns, but there are questions about how drones jibe with the authorized use of these lands, which includes preserving solitude for visitors and protecting wildlife from unnecessary harassment.

Unfortunately, none of the federal agencies appear poised to answer these questions. “Once any kind of vehicle takes off from a national park and goes into the air, that's national airspace,” says Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olsen. Adds spokesman Lawrence Chambers, “The FAA has regulatory authority over all airspace. The Forest Service doesn't have any additional regulations regarding where they can or can't be flown.”

FAA spokesperson Alison Duquette acknowledges the administration's's responsibility for drone safety but says that other concerns—such as calls for drone-free tent sites—fall outside the FAA's purview. “Hobbyists have to stick to the hobbyist rules, like staying under 400 feet,” she says. “I don't know if the Department of the Interior has any special regulations about parks.”

This is troubling. If the history of wildland airspace is any indication, drones in growing numbers will continue to invade wilderness areas while federal agencies are busy passing the regulatory buck.

That's largely what happened with passenger flights over national parks. The number of noisy scenic helicopter tours, Air Force training flights, and private-craft flyovers grew rapidly during the seventies and eighties, with the Park Service eventually concluding that overflights led to unacceptable noise-pollution levels in a quarter of the parks. Visitors complained. Arizona congressman John McCain was astounded to see a plane flying below him, thousands of feet under the rim of the Grand Canyon, while hiking in the early eighties. Then two sightseeing aircraft
collided over the Grand Canyon in 1986.

In 1987, McCain introduced and Congress passed the National Park Overflights Act, which mandated that the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Park Service, collaborate with the FAA to produce “the substantial restoration of natural quiet” inside parks. The act ordered the two agencies to produce new regulations within a year, but the first ones didn't start arriving until 2002. As a frustrated McCain, by then a senator, said in a committee hearing that year, “In 1987, I never believed 15 years later we would be sitting here still without this issue having been resolved.”

Whether regulating drones requires an act of Congress is uncertain. A special addition to park bylaws, like the ban on Segways that some parks decreed in the mid-2000s, could be allowed on a case-by-case basis. Meanwhile, environmental groups aren't pushing to find out. The strongest stance I could find came from the Wilderness Society, and it's pretty weak. Said the organization's Jeremy Garncarz: “We know this may be something we have to address in the near future.”

On a Tuesday in late September, I skittered into Portland, Oregon, just in time for a dinner meet-up of two dozen consumer-drone enthusiasts at the hip Ace Hotel. The crowd included members of a drone consultancy, the founders of a booming drone retailer, an angel investor, and the president of a drone trade association.

Before I could stab a fork into my mushroom farfalle, attendees were overwhelming me with all the now familiar ways that drones are doing work that is “dull, dirty, or dangerous.” They were an impressive, well-
intentioned lot. Heck, one guy was headed to Greenland the following day, where he would use drones to count the dwindling polar bear population. But they were squarely focused on the amazing things they could do with drones, not on what drones might do to us—which had increasingly become my concern.

During my three-week road trip, the price of a Phantom dropped $200 and DJI debuted a new model that's able to fly twice as long. Just eight months after the Phantom's release, a fellow camper on North Carolina's Outer Banks told me he saw one flying over his tent, and the German at the Canyonlands overlook saw a Phantom flying around Delicate Arch the morning before I met him. It doesn't take much of an imaginative leap to picture a drone bouncing off the arch, or a handful of drones swarming climbers on Yosemite's El Capitan or dive-bombing a herd of bison in Yellowstone.

The following day, I escaped to peaceful Camp Westwind, a 529-acre conservation area and wilderness-education center on the Oregon coast. I'd arranged to meet Jonathan Evans, the bright and friendly founder of Portland-based drone-consultancy and software-development outfit RTI, who was there to pitch Matt Taylor, the camp's executive director, on how drones could help him monitor the spread of invasive plants.

The three of us canoed across the bird-flocked estuary of the Salmon River and ascended a forest path to the main lodge, where we met two pilots hired by RTI. Down at the shoreline, they launched a drone with a secondary camera that beamed an eye-in-the-sky view back to a pair of goggles worn by one of the pilots. The pilots took pains to avoid buzzing the grade-school campers learning about trees and instead focused on the border between beach and forest, where a nonnative shrub had been spreading.

Taylor was skeptical but curious. Then he donned the goggles, which allowed him to see what the drone was seeing. “Whoa!” he said. “This could be an amazing tool.”

RTI's plant survey is just a demonstration. In addition to its other restrictions, the FAA forbids companies like RTI from collecting money for commercial drone services. That will change sometime later this year, when the FAA says that it will begin allowing pilots of consumer drones (whom the administration refers to as “hobbyists”) to set up shop.

It could change even sooner. Following a $30 million investment in Chris Anderson's 3D Robotics last December, members of DIY Drones, an online community Anderson started, circulated a White House petition to allow consumer operators to immediately use their drones for profit. It didn't get the signatures, but setbacks like that don't deter guys like RTI's Evans. “We're putting together a business plan and making connections for when the regulations open up,” he told me.

A few days later, I returned the rental car in Seattle, hugged my family, and continued to fly my drone, teaching my father how to move it low and fast while my mother stood by saying that it's “creepy.” Soon after, I called Taylor, who had become even more excited about the prospect of drones at Camp Westwind.

“If the drone were equipped with monitors that helped us tease out signatures for different species, and it was affordable enough that we could do monthly or quarterly flyovers,” he said, “then we might be able to do some really smart prioritizing about eliminating invasives.”

That said, the future troubles him. “When you go to Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley, like I did back in '92, and a hummingbird flies up into your face, two inches away, and you can feel the beats of its wings—that's cool!” he said. “I don't want a drone to do that.”

Indeed. The thought of more drones, controlled by guys like me at precious places like that, is distressing. It will sound radical, but this is what I've come to believe: We should ban the use of drones in all federal wilderness areas immediately.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű contributing editor wrote about Japan's Niseko Ski Resort in January

The post A Boy and His Drone appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

This is a great time to buy a travel camera. Since 2012, several innovative contenders have come on the scene—ones that will likely see only incremental improvements over the next few years. In other words, anyone shopping now can pick up a terrific, future-proof model, maybe even at a deep discount.

Do you need one? Travel cameras are relatively inexpensive, so you don’t have to worry about theft. They’re lots of fun too, so you’ll want to use yours everywhere life takes you. Most important, they’re capable of producing sharp, poster-size prints—and your smartphone camera isn’t.

Below are my picks for the best cameras to bring in tow.

Panasonic Lumix GH3 (~$1,000) 

Best for the Passionate Traveler

This is a  and cinema-quality video. The bonus? It only weighs about a pound, much less than what a DSLR like the Canon 5D would weigh. On a recent road trip, I found myself filming videos simply because they’re so sharp, and at the U.S. Open tennis competition last summer, I saw two professional news crews using these cameras to gather broadcast footage.

Drawback: A lens, which usually costs about $300, is not included in the $1,000 pricetag.

The Future: The GH4—announced in early February, to be released this year—offers upgrades aimed at the pros, such as the ability to shoot 4K video. It will likely cost between $1,300 and $1,600.Ìę

Canon PowerShot SX50 HS (~$360) 

Best for the Casual Traveler

The reason łÙłó±đÌę? About the size of a can of beans, its image-stabilized 50-times zoom lens allows you to photograph everyone seated at your dinner table, and then sneak a headshot of the bride across the room. Snobs usually need cases of equipment to get similar images.Ìę

Drawback: Some photos will appear grainy when printed poster size.

The Future: Many brands have announced competitors, some of which might be available as soon as March. They have slightly longer zooms (60x) and might offer better image quality. The prices will be $100 to $200 higher.Ìę

Sony RX100 (~$500) 

Best for the Urban Traveler

While I haven’t used łÙłó±đÌę, I have heard almost unanimous praise from other reviewers. It’s a point-and-shoot the size of two decks of cards that takes gallery-quality pictures—of dimy lit frescos, sunrises, motorscooters zipping past—and then slips into your shirt pocket.

Drawback: The 3.6x zoom limits your ability to capture objects, such as wildlife, in the distance.

The Future: The $600-successor released last summer, łÙłó±đÌęRX100 II, offers a tilting screen and WiFi connection.

Nikon F4 (~$200) 

Best for the Rugged Traveler 

Ready for this throwback? The professional’s film camera from the late 1980s remains łÙłó±đÌęcamera for tossing in a backpack. Weighing 2.5 pounds, it’s built of unbreakable metal, runs for a month on four AA batteries, and suggests accurate exposures for virtually any situation with virtually any lens, including inexpensive old manual lenses that can transform backgrounds into beautiful washes of color.

Drawback: Film must be delivered or mailed off for processing, scanning, and printing.

The Future: Nikon's latest professional camera—the digital Nikon D4s, announced in January and avaliable mid-March—shoots video and sharper images faster, but will cost $6,500.Ìę

The post The Best Travel Cameras appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Sure, skiing's expensive. But at some places, it's really expensive. Still, for a life-list indulgence, you can't go wrong at one of these deluxe destinations. More than just winter hideaways for the 1 percent, these are the places where the rest of us can lap up some serious 4-star pampering. Yes you may need to save for years, or cash in your kids' college education, but, hey, YOLO, right? Go ahead, treat yourself. You earned it.

Yellowstone Club, Montana.

Courchevel, France.

Aspen, Colorado.

Deer Valley, Utah.

St. Moritz resort in the Swiss Alps.

Courchevel, France

Reputation: the world's most expensive ski town

Nice touches: 7 restaurants—in a town with just 2,000 year-round residents—have 11 Michelin stars between them, which is the most stars per capita of any town or city

Typical celebrity skier: any Russian billionaire

Favorite off-slope activity: buying the girlfriend a little something at the Dior or Fendi or HermÚs or Chanel or Louis Vuitton stores

Where to stay: , starting at $2,040/night, for a 600-square-foot suite (set breakfast, $48, and parking, $41 per day, not included)

Nearest airstrip for private jets: the terrifyingly short and steep , 2 miles away

Wheathertoski.com historic snowpack analysis: “snow cover and quality are pretty good”

St. Mortiz, Switzerland

Reputation: the original ski resort

Nice touches: A handful of helicopter companies will shuttle clients to the tops of resorts so they can sleep in a little bit longer

Typical celebrity skier: Lakshmi-Mittal, the second richest man in India

Favorite off-slope activity: Training for the annual Polo World Cup on Snow

Stay at: , starting at $540/night, for a 160-square-foot standard single room (including complimentary breakfast and transfers to locations around town in a Rolls Royce Phantom)

Nearest airstrip for private jets: Samedan airport, 4 miles away

Wheathertoski.com historic snowpack analysis: “the area as a whole is pretty snow-sure”

Deer Valley, Utah

Reputation: the place where concierges hand you tissues in the lift line

Nice touches: skiers can FedEx their skis straight to the resort, hosts help unload cars, guides offer free tours of the mountain

Typical celebrity skier: Steve Mahre

Favorite off-slope activity: reading

Stay at: , starting at $775/night, for a 375-square-foot Deluxe Room (ham and egg breakfast sandwich costs $20; no rollaways are allowed in rooms)

Nearest airstrip for private jets: Heber airport, 15 miles away

Wheathertoski.com historic snowpack analysis: “overall snow reliability is excellent”

Aspen, Colorado

Reputation: a downhome refuge for the rich and famous

Nice touches: the silver-service meals at łÙłó±đÌę, a summit-top lodge with a $125,000 membership fee

Typical celebrity skier: Goldie Hawn

Favorite off-slope activity: exercising

Stay at: , starting at $1,020/night, for a 600-square-foot Town View Room (eggs benedict costs $18; complimentary snacks and non-alcoholic drinks from the mini bar)

Nearest airstrip for private jets: Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, 3 miles away (but the jet parking lot is often full during holidays)

Wheathertoski.com historic snowpack analysis: “overall snow reliability is excellent”

Yellowstone Club, Montana

Reputation: private powder

Nice touches: rarely do even 100  or their guests ski the 22 square miles of terrain at one time; a $100-million main lodge that used to feature a caviar bar

Typical celebrity skier: Barry Sternlicht, CEO of a private equity fund

Favorite off-slope activity: chuckling about how bad things looked when your net worth halved and the Club declared bankruptcy in 2008
before the stock market returned your riches and a private equity firm with close ties to a Club member bought it in 2009

Stay at: the mansion you built after paying the Club's $250,000 membership fee and proving that you had at least an additional $3 million in liquid assets (breakfast is on you, or is a complimentary Danish and coffee at the former caviar bar)

Nearest airstrip for private jets: , 60 miles away

Wheathertoski.com historic snowpack analysis: N/A

The post The Five Most Lavish Winter Resorts appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Northstar, California

A family of beginner or intermediate skiers might consider vacationing at Silver Star, British Columbia, Steamboat, Colorado, or Schweitzer, Idaho, but it can’t do better than Northstar, located an hour from Reno. The terrain is just as inviting, but the slopeside Village nails the details. It offers complimentary Radio Flyer-style wagons to help parents transport kids and mountains of gear over the snow. All on-mountain restaurants offer healthy meals clocking in at 500 calories or less. After skiing, you can roast S’mores over a fire in the center of the village, ice skate, or toss the kids on the trampoline. And it’s impossible to get lost in, or intimidated by, the 3,000 acres of mostly gentle groomers and glades.

The Canyons, Utah

Each of the eight resorts within an hour of Salt Lake City offers wonderfully light snow and sunny skies, but the massive Canyons, three miles outside Park City, is the best for most families. Stay at the slopeside Grand Summit Hotel, for example, and you’re just a few dozen feet from the overnight ski check, the swimming pool, and Canyon’s Kids, where junior can spend his savings in a ski store that caters just to him. Walk out the back door, ride the only heated-seat chairlift in North America, and you’re soon exploring the largest resort in Utah, with 4,000 acres of ridges and valleys. Because kids still have energy left over after a day of skiing, the resort hosts snow graffiti sessions, tug-of-war competitions, and demonstrations with hawks and other birds of prey.

Sundance, Utah

Robert Redford’s “resort” in secluded Provo Canyon, an hour southeast of Salt Lake City, is intimate, rustically styled, and family-friendly, especially if the “kids” in the family are old enough to be parents themselves. Four lifts offer just 450 acres of skiing, but the steep shots off the scenic summit appease any Downhill Racers, and liftlines are rare. At the base, wood cabins with open fire places nestle in the forest. A spa offers a classic array of massages and body treatments. Two restaurants serve some of the best food in Utah, from homemade sausage pizza to an elk loin with a huckleberry soubise. And an Art Shack offers daily classes in pottery, water color painting, photography, and more. Sundance feels like your family’s own luxurious ski hill.

Snowmass, Colorado

Jackson Hole might be more challenging and Whistler might be bigger, but everything at Snowmass, located just 20 minutes from the Aspen airport, is set up for the go-getter family. The Treehouse Kids’ șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Center, a 24,000-square-foot building at the base of the mountain, acts as mission control. Infants and toddlers can be left at the daycare facility with themed playrooms (fox den, miner’s cabin, etc.), while young skiers or boarders can rent equipment, check into classes, or head for the superpipe and three parks, which are arguably the best in America. While half the resort is intermediate, parents who rip can head for the undersung chutes at the Cirque, a steep ridgeline near the summit. And if that isn’t enough, there’s of course Aspen and Aspen Highlands just up the valley.

Smuggler’s Notch, Vermont

Smuggs, as its known, is the family resort in the East because the resort treats kids like kings. Located 45 minutes from the Burlington airport, a large slopeside childcare center caters to infants and toddlers, with heated floors and age-specific playrooms. Kids as young as three learn to snowboard in a terrain park with mini half pipes and jumps designed in conjunction with experts from Burton Snowboards. Two teen centers—one for ages 13 to 15, the other for ages 16 and older—offer Xbox and Wii, ping pong and pool, WiFi and stereos. The seven lifts on three adjacent mountains won’t cause your heart to stop. Indeed, the “triple-black diamond” groomers might barely qualify as single-black diamonds in the West. But then Smuggs isn’t about just you.

The post The 5 Best Ski Resorts for Families appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.