Heroes of the Tour de France have a few things in common. Most are white men, and they tend to hail from European nations with strong cycling cultures and robust infrastructure for developing professional racers. Over the event’s 121-year history, riders from France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy have dominated.

Perhaps that’s why fans of the sport were so enthralled by one rider at the 2024 Tour: Biniam Girmay. The 24-year-old comes from Eritrea, a mountainous country on Africa’s Red Sea coast and one of the poorest nations in the world.

At this year’s race, Girmay won three stages and claimed the green jersey, awarded to the best sprinter. These accomplishments etched Girmay into the Tour’s history books. He became the first Black cyclist to win a stage and to claim one of the event’s four jerseys.

Girmay told şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř that he wants his victories to lead more Black racers to the Tour. “I hope more professional teams will give opportunities to African riders,” he said. “The talent is there, but more investment needs to be done.”

Girmay’s accolades were oft repeated during the Tour’s broadcast, highlighting pro cycling’s notorious lack of diversity. Other Black cyclists have competed in the race, but their contributions were always in supporting roles. In 2015 another Eritrean rider, Daniel Teklehaimanot, wore the polka dot jersey—given to the top climber—for several stages before relinquishing the lead in that competition. Colombian rider Egan Bernal became the first South American rider to win the race overall in 2019.

Professional cyclists of color have also faced blatant racism. In 2017, Frenchman Kevin Reza, who rode the Tour three times, was called a racial slur by Italian cyclist Gianni Moscon during the Tour de Romandie, a weeklong event in Switzerland.

Girmay’s path to the Tour wasn’t easy. Cycling is popular in Eritrea—a by-product of its colonization by Italy in the late 19th century. But because of the country’s largely agrarian economy and paltry racing infrastructure, even the best Eritrean riders rarely reach the big European leagues. Girmay grew up in the capital, Asmara, the son of a carpenter. His father loved cycling and began showing the Tour broadcast to Girmay when he was 11. Girmay began racing mountain bikes at 12, before switching to road racing.

He showed immediate talent, quickly rising to the top of the country’s road-cycling leagues. At 18, he was selected to train and race in the Union Cycliste Internationale’s World Cycling Center in Aigle, Switzerland, as part of a program that offers coaching and racing opportunities to up-and-coming riders from under-resourced nations.

The jump to Europe wasn’t easy. “The solitude was hard,” he told şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř. The new climate was also challenging. “I still struggle to perform optimally in the rain,” he added.

Girmay learned quickly and advanced rapidly. In 2021, three seasons after moving to Europe, he finished second in the under-23 world championships. The following year, he won the historic Gent-Wevelgem in Belgium. He also won a stage of the Giro d’Italia, becoming the first Black cyclist to do so at one of cycling’s Grand Tours. The 2024 Tour de France, with its history and significance, presented the next barrier. And Girmay broke through.

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“No one has done the Giro-Tour double since 1988.”

Cycling commentator Phil Liggett said this the other day during the broadcast of the Tour de France, which these days is beamed live on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock. He was referring to race leader chances of winning the Giro d’Italia and the Tour this year—a Herculean feat totaling some 4,000 miles of over nine weeks of racing. At any rate, Phil was wrong by a decade. Italian cyclist Marco Pantani last did the Giro-Tour double in 1998.

Hardcore cycling fans know this wasn’t the most egregious of gaffes, especially considering it was made during the heat of a live bike race. But alas, for the 80-year-old Liggett, it was par for the course. Dates, locations, statistics—Liggett often blunders these basic details during the Tour broadcast. Watch the Tour long enough and you’ll hear Liggett call a current racer the name of some guy who retired eons ago. Google Phil Liggett, and you’ll get Reddit threads and other forum rants ranging from the polite, “…” to the blunt, “.”

Yes, Phil Liggett is increasingly prone to what seems like amnesia. But I still love the guy, and will defend him and his cycling commentary against even the staunchest critics. Here’s why:

Back in the day, before Lance Armstrong took cycling mainstream in America, Liggett and his longtime co-host Paul Sherwen were our spirit guides into the wonky netherworld of European professional bike racing. Coverage was scarce at best, even as late as the mid-nineties. In those mostly pre-Internet days, I’d get my fix from monthly issues of VeloNews, mainlining the black and white broadsheet as if it were contraband.ĚýI was a cycling junkie, thanks in part to my European father, who’d passed on the bug, filling my head with stories of Eddy Merckx and Francesco Moser. Liggett took care of the rest.

For three weeks every July, he’d narrate my summers in his lyrical British accent, dropping metaphors and knowledge every few minutes.ĚýHe’d chant the names of my heroes with perfect diction—Claudio Chiappucci, Gianni Bugno, Laurent Jalabert, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov (trying saying that one three times fast)—and I’d parrot them back to my parents, or to myself. When I’d head out for long, lonely rides, my only companion Liggett’s voice in my head calling play by play: “and there he is, James Jung, the young usurper from America, the angel of the mountains!” At age 12, I knew what words like “usurper” meant because Liggett used them and I’d later look them up.

Liggett taught me other things, too. History lessons about cycling legends of the past—Federico Bahamontes, nicknamed the “Eagle of Toledo” due to his climbing prowess; Raymond Poulidor, the “Eternal Second” because he never won the Tour. Through Liggett, I learned that 51 is the race number with the most Tour wins, that Napoleon was exiled on the Italian Isle of Elba, and that a palindrome is a sentence that says the same thing forwards as it does backwards. Normal American boys had John Madden; I had Phil Liggett.

My father and I ordered video cassettes of Liggett calling other races that you couldn’t catch on TV—grand tours like the Giro d’Italia, and one-day spring classics like Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege—as if we were both part of some cult. One summer, when Dad was out of work and put the family on a strict budget that meant canceling cable, we swallowed our pride and went over to the neighbors to watch the Tour, rather than go Liggett-less all July. It was there that I remember, Dad and I rapt on the old couple’s loveseat, watching our hero Miguel Indurain drop the entire peloton on the finishing climb to La Plagne, sealing his fifth consecutive overall Tour de France victory. “Enough is enough!” Liggett shouted, narrating what he believed to be going through Indurain’s mind at the moment of the vicious attack.

My father loved it, and for the rest of his life he would repeat the catch phrase in his thick Austrian accent whenever things got tough, looking at me mischievously with his bright green eyes. Between Dad and I, Liggett was our love language.

Of course, as you age, your tastes change. While I enjoyed the increased coverage that came with Armstrong’s seven-year reign, I grew tired of his bravado and that of his fans, many of whom seemed to be the type of red-blooded American dudes who used to shame me for wearing lycra and shaving my legs. Liggett and Sherwen became their guys, not mine, like when your favorite band gets too commercial. şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř even profiled the announcing duo in a 2004 print feature. Liggett also, as some people criticize, graduated from objective cycling journalist to Armstrong fanboy, never once questioning the Texan’s ethics at the race. Why would he? Armstrong was good for business. Rather than gripe, I moved on from Liggett thanks to the proliferation of pirated online streaming feeds, instead watching illicit broadcasts of races called by equally eloquent Brits like Eurosport commentators Carlton Kirby, Brian Smith, and Irishmen Sean Kelly—announcers who get their facts right. During this era I acted like a snobby record store clerk out of High Fidelity. “Oh you like Phil Liggett,” I’d think when around the rubes. “Me? I listen to commentators you’ve never even heard of, maaaan.”

In recent years, however, I’ve returned to Liggett. Snobbery is something you should let go of in your forties, and besides, geo-fencing has gotten much better online. Rather than stream pirated feeds, I’m glued to NBC’s coverage. Things have changed since Liggett was the voice of the Armstrong era—tragically, Paul Sherwen died in 2018 of heart failure at age 62. These days, Liggett’s dulcet voice echoes through my home every July, his cringe-inducing metaphors filling the living room, his mistakes unfurling from the TV speakers, one after the other. My wife groans, just like my mother once did. My two boys, ages six and three, recognize his lilt as well. To me, it’s a lilt that sounds like summer.

My father is no longer alive to hear Liggett—Dad died almost five years ago. I miss him daily, but it is during the Tour de France that I feel his absence most acutely. I find myself reaching for my phone anytime something surprising happens—an attack, a dramatic finish, a white-knuckle descent—wanting to hear Dad’s voice, to laugh and marvel at whatever athleticism we’ve just witnessed.

Instead there’s Phil Liggett, talking to me from the TV, mistakes and all, just like he has nearly every summer since I was a boy. I’m glad we still have him.

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We didn’t see any snow until the last 15 miles of the drive. Not along the roadside, at any rate. Not the kind that clings to pine boughs and buries the guardrails, so that it feels as if you’re driving through a tunnel of white, even in the darkness of nightfall.Ěý

“My father would love this,” I said to my wife, Molly, as I wound our Subaru around another bend in the narrow road. Everything shimmered in the sweep of the car’s headlights, while behind us our two-year-old son slept in the back seat. It was hard not to imagine that we’d arrived in some hidden and enchanted place.Ěý

December, the first Friday of the month, and most of the Alps were still bone dry. Only a freak storm had blanketed the northern fringes of Italy with two feet of snow, and so off we’d gone in search of some skiing. Our drive had begun five hours earlier in Switzerland, where we were living at the time, and it had taken us across the Austrian Tirol, that vertiginous land of my farm boy father, over Brenner Pass, and down into the Trentino-Alto Adige of northern Italy. It’s a rugged region known for its white wine, crumbling castles, and apple orchards that blossom in spring under mountains still capped by snow.

But to skiers, it’s known for the Dolomites, a 6,000-square-mile Unesco-protected subdivision of the Alps made famous by sheer limestone peaks and the winter resorts nestled within its wooded valleys. For many, it’s the name Cortina that conjures dolce vita dreams. Yet unlike the jet set who flock there, we were stopping an hour short in a quiet town called Corvara, which a friend had assured me was the region’s true gem.Ěý

The wood floor of our apartment creaked as I walked over to the window and flung open its curtains the next morning. Mountains soared; snow abounded. Our son’s babysitter arrived soon after, and by 9 A.M. my wife and I stood in front of Corvara’s main lift, where bright-yellow gondolas bobbed out of a classic A-frame structure.Ěý

Technically, Corvara belongs to , a ski area famous for its annual World Cup giant slalom. Dubbed the Gran Risa, it’s a steep, twisty slope considered one of the Alpine tour’s toughest. Part of me—the part that will always be the ski-racing-obsessed boy who grew up in a New Hampshire winter resort with an Austrian father who ran the ski school—wanted to go check out the trail. But that was not the plan. Instead, Molly and I hopped on the gondola and headed west, up the southern flank of the 10,000-foot Grupo Sella. It’s a flattop massif that forms the central hub of the Sella Ronda—a 360-degree, 26-mile lift-served route that takes you into four valleys and nine villages over the course of a marathon ski day.

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Molly and I followed orange signs marking the clockwise route as we dropped into Arabba, its timber and stucco chalets still dark in the long morning shadows of December. The snow was a firm corduroy, and the wide, empty slopes begged to be carved. Elsewhere, up high beyond the marked trails, untracked powder sparkled. It’d been a week since the only dump of the season, but the snow looked as fresh as if it had fallen yesterday. Italians bombed past us along the groomers, mimicking the style of Alberto Tomba, who must still be the national hero considering how they were all attired: Briko helmets, tight Colmar parkas; not a rocker ski or avy pack in sight.Ěý

Our pace slowed at lunch. We grabbed pizza in a rifugio at the top of the Passo Pordoi and paired our pies with Aperol spritzes, because, hell, it felt like the most Fellini thing to do.

“I feel so guilty,” Molly said as she sliced into her pizza, fresh ricotta oozing on either side of her blade. She looked across the wooden booth at me. “You think he’s still upset?”

She was referring to our son and the fit he’d pitched just before we abandoned him with the babysitter that morning, but to me, she could’ve just as easily been speaking about my father. All his life, Dad mourned his Alps, the ones he’d abandoned in favor of my American mother, the woman he was crazy about but whom he sometimes unfairly accused of dragging him to a land not his own. I grew up constantly hearing stories about Dad’s Alps, his quick green eyes lit by some sense of boyhood wonder as he spun tales to keep alive the world he’d lost. He spoke of the mountains he’d climbed. The deep pulverschnee he’d skied—so light and wonderful compared to the cement we got on the East Coast. The alpine fields he’d farmed, some of which yielded views far down into Italy. My father had grown up in a village on the southwestern tip of Austria, with Italy on one side and Switzerland on the other, and to him the whole region was home.

A church in Alta Badia at sunrise. (Photo: Felicitas Hoamatgfui)

I’d always wanted it to be my home, too. When my wife’s company offered to transfer us to Switzerland, I practically accepted on her behalf. Then came the guilt. Dad was already in his mid-70s by then, and he was stricken by an aggressive strain of kidney cancer that kept coming back. I did my best to enjoy our new home, skiing and cycling and hiking whenever I could, but it was never without the lingering worry that I’d chosen my father’s mountains over my actual father.Ěý

şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř, Molly and I snapped pictures. To the south, I could see Marmolada, the highest peak in the region. The afternoon sun lent a blue-white sheen to its broad summit, and I remembered that this mountain was home to one of the few glaciers my father had ever graced. I imagined his footprints somehow still up there, fossilized forever in the ice.Ěý

“We better get going,” Molly said to me, her words hitting at the same time as the soft touch of her mitten on my shoulder. “We only have the babysitter till 4:30.”Ěý

Skiing in tandem, we banked big turns down into Val di Fassa under mountains slowly changing to the color of sandstone. Molly hooted and hollered, delighting in the gentle pitch and grippy snow. We met more than a decade ago in Manhattan, and as soon as things got serious, she picked up the sport, telling me she had no choice, considering the ski-crazed nature of my family.Ěý

Val Gardena came next, but there wasn’t enough time to check out the village. Shadow had returned to the valleys, and thumping après bars burst at the seams. We raced to one lift, then another, caught in the melee of people trying to make it back to their hotels. Atop the Passo Gardena, the sky burned pink and the moon already hung high overhead, its lunar surface stark as the seashells that can be found in the local rocks here, all of them belonging to a mountain range that once stood at the bottom of the sea.Ěý

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Molly snapped several more pictures. I stood beside her, breath puffing in the cold air, and thought again of my father, dead now these two weeks. It wasn’t the kidney cancer that got him but a gastrointestinal kind, one that spread far faster and took him in under three months, most of which I spent back in the United States by his side. He kept his spirits high throughout, often speaking of the mountains and our shared love of them. But in the end, that talk stopped, and in the last weeks of his life I sat vigil with my mother as we watched him recede from this world in the sheets of a rented hospital cot, this once ebullient and indomitable man silently fading away with all the disinterest of the soon-to-be dead.Ěý

It was Molly who’d suggested our Dolomites weekend. Why not get away, she said. Maybe it would take my mind off things. I feared a trip like this came too soon, was too indulgent, or worse yet, that I wouldn’t be able to face my father’s mountains again. I’d like to say that wasn’t the case. I’d like to say that somewhere on the last run down into Corvara, the light flat, just as it often was back in New Hampshire when my father and I skied together at the end of the day, the mountains darkening into silhouettes all around me, their ridgelines as broad as his big shoulders had once been, that I came to the understanding that to be in my father’s mountains was to be with my father, if only for a moment. But a conclusion like that feels too pat. And besides, it never happened.Ěý

We left the next morning, though a set of missing car keys delayed our departure. Four hours and several arguments elapsed before we found them, stuffed in my ski parka in a back pocket I never knew existed until that moment. I laughed and blamed our son, saying he must’ve hidden them there as payback for having gone skiing without him.

The sun was everywhere on the drive out, and underneath it the snow seemed so bright and textured that to look at it was to touch it, to taste it even. We were flooded by the simple relief of having found the keys, of being safely on the road home.

“Let’s come back soon,” Molly said, swiveling in her seat to grab one last photo, and I agreed, unaware that a simmering pandemic would soon prevent us from traveling anywhere. Ěý

But now, as I write this, a resident of Manhattan again, with the busy traffic of Third Avenue bellowing below my window, I realize the Dolomites did do something for me. What it is I can’t exactly be sure, but sometimes I like to daydream about that weekend and imagine what if we hadn’t found those car keys? That we’d somehow gotten stuck there in Corvara, maybe even come unhitched from time itself, and stayed, safe and hidden in that beautiful place, where it’s easy to imagine that only the world’s wonders, and none of its wickedness, have the power to reach you.

A Foodie’s Mountain Tour of the Dolomites

Where to Find the Best Coffee in the Dolomites

Tucked away in Arabba, serves up the perfect midmorning pitstop. Caffeinate for the skiing ahead with a cappuccino or doppio macchiato, both of which go down great alongside one of the bakery’s homemade chocolate bars (try the dark chocolate with walnuts).Ěý

A Lunch Spot Not to Miss

All the rifugios dotting the Sella Ronda offer delicious local fare, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t direct you to a blue-shuttered institution atop Val Gardena’s infamous Saslong downhill track that serves fresh grilled fish (delivered daily from the Adriatic) in a charming stube covered with photos of Italian ski-racing royalty.Ěý

Where to Après in the Dolomites

The Italians toast a day on the slopes almost as hard as the Austrians, albeit with a bit more effortless flare. Après options abound, though for those who truly want to get down, it’s worth veering off the well-trod track and heading south to the slopes of Alta Badia. There, you’ll find , whose cast of irreverent regulars swill South Tyrolean wine, munch on truffle-fondue ravioli, and dance to disco while still in their ski boots.

The post A Dolomites Trip and a Deeper Connection to Someone Loved and Lost appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

I was halfway up Italy’s Passo dello Stelvio, a 48-switchback beast in the Alps that’s widely regarded as one of cycling’s most mythic and punishing climbs, when the altitude kicked in. We were approaching 9,000 feet, after all. But rather than hurl my oatmeal breakfast, I settled into a manageable rhythm as the lead group of sinewy-legged climbers pedaled away from me.

Seasoned bike racers refer to this moment as getting dropped. But I hadn’t clipped in to win. The annual Dreilander Giro is a 104-mile, fully supported ride known as a gran fondo, and its main purpose is to challenge riders with dramatic terrain—vertiginous climbs, historic cobblestones—while also providing cushy comforts like aid stations, bathrooms, and a SAG wagon. Fondos are not like century rides: these are serious riders with high-end rigs. Still, they feel rewarding no matter where you place in the pack.

After losing contact with the leaders, I drifted back to another group and soaked up the views. Four hours and 70 miles later at the finish, I toasted my efforts alongside thousands of other newfound cycling brothers-in-arms with a few too many steins of Stiegl.

Since the mid-1990s, fondos have been all the rage in Europe. Towns shut down, feed stations crop up along the course, and TV networks occasionally descend, as upwards of 10,000 amateur cyclists and a few notable pros compete over terrain made famous in races like the and the . A select few riders target top-ten placings, but the vast majority go for the experience. Among cyclists, it’s the equivalent of playing softball at Wrigley Field, and more of them are being staged in the States.

“A gran fondo is like a marathon on bikes,” says Ulrich Fluhme, a former corporate lawyer who ditched his career to start the Gran Fondo New York with his wife in 2011. “At the front people compete for the win, in the middle they want the P.R., and at the end they’re simply having fun and trying to finish before the cutoff time.” Today, the GFNY is one of America’s largest, attracting an international peloton of 5,000 cyclists who ride a 100-mile out-and-back course in the Hudson Valley.

“There are no choices in a typical bike race. You have to go as hard as you can,” explains Greg Fisher, marketing director at , which organizes the annual with former pro Levi Leipheimer in Santa Rosa, California. “A gran fondo lets riders modulate their experience based on their goals. You can still treat it as a race, but how hard you go is up to you.”

That freedom to get what you want out of it—along with the gorgeous roads and ubiquitous wineries of Sonoma County—has made Levi’s Gran Fondo the most popular in the U.S., attracting 7,500 competitors.

There’s also a growing list of smaller, more curated fondos, like celebrity chef Michael Chiarello’s Bottega Gran Fondo. Limited to 300 riders, the inaugural Napa Valley event in April will put competitors on teams captained by retired pros like George Hincapie and David Zabriskie, while chef-sponsored rest stops will guarantee that the calories are as epic as the riding. Chiarello, an obsessive cyclist who has competed in some of Europe’s biggest gran fondos, sees it as the next step in the scene’s evolution. “We wanted something intimate, experiential, and not so large that it was stressful,” says Chiarello. “Like the best gran fondos, we wanted to make it fun, and we have.”

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Worn by legends like Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong, Giro has long been a preferred brand of top pros. And the new 21-vent Ionos is the company’s coolest lid yet, in terms of both looks and breathability. giro.com

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Surprisingly inexpensive despite its radical design, the fin-like Zuma cuts through the air but not your budget. rudyprojectusa.com

The post Rudy Project Zuma – Helmets: Reviews appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

At just nine ounces, the ĂĽber-flashy S-Works is the lightest lid on the planet. Deep vents, Kevlar reinforcement, and an ingenious full-head fit system make it as sensible as it is light. specialized.com

The post Specialized S-Works – Helmets: Reviews appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

The beefy visor and netted vents can handle the worst gunk, while its snug retention system and padded chin strap keep everything in place. uvexsports.com

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Sugarbush

Fresh Tracks

Heli- and cat skiing have long been luxuries afforded only to western skiers. Sugarbush changes half that with its new cat program, which gives 13 skiers free rein on the venerable resort’s New England–style trails any morning the fresh stuff falls. Congregate in Timbers Restaurant at 6:45 A.M., then pile into the Lincoln Limo, a flatscreen-TV-equipped cat that rolls the crew to Sugarbush South’s 4,000-foot summit. Reservations are best made a day in advance. (We suggest you bookmark NOAA’s storm-watch Web site, , and look for eastbound weather systems above the Great Lakes.) From $75;

: Stowe

Euro Style

Stowe Mountain Resort

With its exposed, alpine-style peak, international crowd, and plummeting trails, Stowe has always felt like a grand European resort. Now it finally has the lodging and amenities of one. Opened in 2008, the stone-and-timber Stowe Mountain Lodge affords Vail-style luxury (doubles from $230; ), while the nearby Spruce Camp Base Lodge—a complex of après bars, retail shops, and outdoor fire pits—provides post-skiing fun. The slopes have been upgraded, too: Intermediate-friendly Spruce Peak has two new high-speed quads and a fully automated snowmaking system, plus a ten-person gondola accessing Mount Mansfield’s superior steeps. Lift tickets, $84;

: Mad River Glen

Old-School

Mad River Glen

The only news coming out of Mad River Glen is that there is no news, and that’s how its 1,800 ski-hard shareholders like it. In fact, the closest thing to an upgrade happened in 2007, when Mad River renovated its legendary single-chair—the last in the lower 48—with an electric motor. Everything else remains the same. Which is to say, untamed. Steep trails follow the mountain’s fall lines, huck-worthy boulders abound in the glades, and lurching lifts ensure that slopes never get crowded. Showboat down the bump-rutted Chute, beneath the lift’s highly opinionated audience, then nurse your bruised ego over a pint of Magic Hat’s Single Chair Ale at the General Stark’s Pub. Midweek lift tickets, $39; weekend tickets, $62;

: Killington

Best Park

Due to its high prices and Manhattanite-choked slopes, Killington gets the worst rap of all Vermont ski areas. Which isn’t entirely fair—on this coast, the resort’s size and terrain go unmatched. Spanning seven miles across six peaks, Killington serves up more than 3,000 feet of vertical. Then there’s the Stash, a year-old, all-natural terrain park designed with the help of Jake Burton. The half-mile-long park offers glades, log slides, and even a sugar-shack warming hut, whose steeply pitched roof doubles as a massive kicker. At day’s end, saddle up to the Lookout Bar and Grill’s mountain-view deck, then crash at the Killington Grand Resort Hotel and Spa. Doubles from $199; lift tickets, $77;

Skiing Back West

WESTERN PREP


Fly Like a Grommet


There’s a reason those X Gamers make their aerials look effortless: They’ve got the world’s best training facilities at their disposal. Oh, and talent. This winter, Woodward at Copper, a new action-sports training academy at Colorado’s Copper Mountain, begins offering at least half that recipe with a three-story Snowflex center. Coaches like Olympic gymnast Phoebe Mills and X Gamer Jess Cumming will have you landing flips (in a foam pit) after the first lesson. Daylong courses, $199;

NORTHWESTERN PAD


Trail Trailers


Mazama, Washington’s year-old, steel-and-wood Rolling Huts take minimalist prefab architecture into the adventure realm. Set on 40 acres in the ponderosa-heavy Methow Valley, the six fireplace-and-WiFi-equipped huts, designed by architect Tom Kundig to resemble a souped-up trailer park, provide direct access to the Methow’s 125-mile network of groomed nordic trails. Hut rentals, $110;

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