If the word “hostel” reminds you of backpacking through Central America as a twentysomething, think again. A new breed of affordable shelter for travelers has arrived in North American adventure towns, with great rates, comfortable beds, and hotel-like amenities. You won’t have to bring your own sheets or sift through a sink full of dirty dishes to cook your ramen noodles, and there are some great deals to be had—provided you don’t mind sharing a bathroom or cooking your breakfast in the company of others. What’s more, many of these nine spots also offer private rooms.

Breckenridge, Colorado

The Bivvi

was born when two adventure-loving college friends decided to buy a run-down B&B and transform it into a modern hostel. Stay in a bunk, a private suite with an in-room hot tub, or a four-person apartment, and you’ll get a ski and bike storage room (equipped with boot driers), and a hot home-cooked breakfast of pancakes or eggs served each morning. A free bus to Breckenridge’s gondola picks you up out front, and wine and craft beer are served at the in-house bar. Bunks start at $29; private rooms at $129.

Truckee, California

Redlight Hostel

A block off Truckee’s main drag, offers easy access to skiing at Northstar, Squaw Valley, and Sugar Bowl. Located in a historic building first constructed in the 1880s, the Redlight derives its name from its previous life as a brothel. Bunks are available with privacy curtains, earplugs, and white-noise machines. There are also private rooms with shared bathrooms. A sauna and communal kitchen are on-site, along with ski and bike storage, plus a bar that attracts locals who pop in for a drink. Bunks start at $39; private rooms at $79.

Whistler, British Columbia

Pangea Pod

The private sleeping quarters at aren’t spacious, but you’ll get all the comforts of a nice hotel room, including fluffy towels, ski- and bike-savvy concierge services, and a lobby espresso bar. Guests share bathrooms, the gear storage room, and a more-than-spacious lounge that’s stocked with board games. Pods start around $40.

Ludlow, VermontĚý

Homestyle Hostel

Opened by a world-traveling couple in 2014, the feels like a charming New England bed and breakfast—only way more affordable. Homemade granola and Vermont-roasted coffee is served each morning, and dinner in the on-site restaurant is served Thursday through Sunday. A bar serves espresso by day and cocktails at night. In winter, a shuttle to Okemo Mountain Resort departs from across the street. A bunk in a six-person room starts at $75; private rooms start at $115.

Denver, Colorado

Hostel Fish

At , rooms are decorated with wall-sized maps, chandeliers, murals, and vintage clocks. There’s daily housekeeping, iPads available to borrow, free coffee, and a bar and kitchen. The front desk staff is happy to recommend adventures for you, offering tips on everything from nearby mountain bike rides to happy hour at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Bunks start at $35; private rooms from $160.

San Clemente, California

House of Trestles

Surfers make up the majority of guests at , a few miles from San Onofre State Beach, home to San Clemente’s most popular surf breaks. You can rent a surfboard for $25Ěýa dayĚýand add a cruiser bike with a surf rack for $15 a day. New to surfing? Book a lesson with the Baja Surf Camp. While drinking kombucha in the lounge, you’ll feel like you’re in the pages of a surf magazine, since each room is sponsored by a different surf brand. You’re relegated to a bunk bed here, but they come with curtains for a touch of privacy. Bunks from $29.

Ellijay, Georgia

Mulberry Gap

Mountain bikers love , a collection of cabins, plus a camp kitchen and dining hall, set on a 15-acre forested property deep in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The place is surrounded by a network of mountain bike trails that have been designated with status. Home-cooked breakfasts and dinners come included in your stay. Rent a cabin, a bunk cabin, or a campsite, and enjoy access to outdoor hot tubs, fire pits, and communal bathhouses. The staff will tune your bike or shuttle you to a trailhead for an extra fee. Cabins start at $65Ěýper person, or $19Ěýper person for camping.

Whitefish, Montana

Whitefish Hostel

The grants you superb access to skiing at Whitefish Mountain Resort, lake outings on Whitefish Lake, and hiking in Glacier National Park. In winter, you can book the whole house for up to ten friends for $225 a night. During summer months, reserve one of ten bunks starting at $35. The attached Super Sisters Café serves up tasty vegetarian lunches and smoothies.

Boulder, Colorado

şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Lodge

The opened on the west side of Boulder in 2015. You can rent a private cabin or suite, grab a bunk bed, or pitch a tent on wooden platforms on the banks of Fourmile Creek. Midwinter, the hotel offers free weekend shuttles to Eldora Mountain Resort, 30 minutes away. A newly built community room serves beer and wine near a wood-burning fireplace. Bunks start at $65; private rooms at $209.

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When tens of thousands of dead trout and whitefish showed up in the Yellowstone River in mid-August, Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks took the unprecedented step of to all forms of human recreation. (Some portions remain closed more than a month later.)ĚýThe fish died of a kidney disease caused by a parasite that is more prone to appear during low flows and higher water temperatures—which happen to be key indicators of climate change.

It was only the latest instance of how our warming planet is affecting America’s outdoorĚýplaygrounds. With global temperatures having now landed above average for 380 consecutive months (just shy of 22 years), it is no longer surprising to see hotter summers, meager stream flows, more desert dust, and snow thaws in the dead of winter. “We’re mountain biking into November, and it feels like we’re spring skiing all winter long,” says Ray Rasker, a 30-year Bozeman resident and executive director of , a research firm that has extensivelyĚýstudied the intersection of climate change and recreation.

“In April and May,” Rasker says, “rather than a snowpack that sits up in the mountains for a long time and feeds these rivers and streams bit by bit, we have a snowpack that gets washed off the landscape much faster. That affects drought and fires later in the summer.”

How will our favorite natural playgrounds fare as those impacts become more pronounced? And what can be done to mitigate them? Using climate predictions from WXShift.com and ClimateCentral.org, we analyzed five towns around the West—each a global hub for its respective sport—to find out.

Jackson Hole: Skiing & Snowboarding

• Mid-September average: 69 high, 31 low.
• 2050 projection: 73, 35.

At 6,200 feet elevation, steep-and-deep Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is an epicenter of climate change. The resort has seen “pretty consistent snowfall and business volumes” in the last decade, according to spokeswoman Anna Cole. Still, the rising snow-rain line is a concern. “Jackson Hole’s somewhat northerly latitude may provide a bit of a buffer compared to ski areas to the south,” says Kelli Archie, a lecturer at the Climate Change Research Institute in New ZealandĚýwhoĚýhas . “But lower-elevation ski areas are automatically at higher risk for seeing less snow and more rain.”

Archie listed a number of strategies that resorts can adopt to mitigate the effects of climate change: make more snow (which has its own environmental impacts)Ěýand develop new runs on north-facing aspects to avoid solar radiation; and clear current runs of rocks and stumps so they are skiable sooner and don’t require as deep a snowpack. Cole declined to say whether Jackson Hole has taken any of those steps, but the resort did announce last year it reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by more than ten percent and was taking other actions—like replacing its gasoline vehicles with diesels, and its two-stroke snowmobiles with more efficient models—to counter the impacts of climate change.Ěý

Moab: Mountain Biking

• Mid-September average temperatures: 85 high, 51 low.
• 2050 projection: 88 high, 54 low

Moab’s slickrock is not about to crumble, but the warmer, drier, hazier days could trigger changes in how and when people ride. For starters, says Mike Duniway, a research ecologist and soil scientist with the Southwest Biological Science Center in Moab, the season will likely start earlier, remain hotter for longer in the middle of summer (which would deter riders), and some trails could be too loose and dry to ride for months at a time. But the biggest impact is the increase in red dust that gets whipped up by gusty winds and can make riding miserable.Ěý

“The views from the trails are not what they used to be, even in the time I’ve been here,” says Ashley Korenblat, owner of Moab tour company Western Spirit Cycling and a 20-year resident. “There are just fewer and fewer clear days.” A 2016 study by a group of organizations including the National Park Service found the spring dust season begins one to two weeks earlier than it did 20 years ago. “We don't know where all of it is coming from,” Duniway says. “It's likely a combination of drought and human land use.”

Bigger rain events have forced locals to build trails with more water bars (to prevent erosion), but other than that, there’s not much they can do to combat the changes. “If Toyota would make a 15-passenger van that ran like a Prius,” Korenblat says, “we’d buy them tomorrow.”

Yosemite: Rock Climbing

• Mid-September average: 73 high, 44 low.
• 2050 projection: 76, 47

Rockfall is far and away the most salient climate-change effect impacting climbers in Yosemite National Park. This past March, a study by Yosemite geologist Greg Stock and U.S. Geological Survey civil engineer Brian Collins, , showed that hotter temperatures cause more rocks to release and ultimately weaken the overall face, making rockfall more likely from traditional triggers like melt-freeze cycles and rainstorms.

“We don’t know that there’s an increased rate of rockfall or not,” Stock says, since the increase in documented rockfalls, via photos and videos, could merely reflect an increase our ability to quickly notice and report them. “We probably won’t know that for another 20 years.” But, he adds, “I think it’s at least reasonable to think that if warm temperatures are part of a trigger, then warmer temperatures might be more of a trigger.”

The park mapped out a rockfall hazard zone on the valley floor beginning in 2012, which gave each campsite and structure a number based on the risk it carried. Ultimately the park closed or relocated a number of buildings and moved a handful of campsites from one side of Camp 4, the hub of climbing in the park, to the other.Ěý

Truckee: Whitewater Rafting

• Mid-September average: 74 high, 33 low.
• 2050 projection: 77, 36

May 14 was a big day in the whitewater rafting world on California’s Truckee River. After sitting out the 2015 season due to the drought, outfitters led their first trips since being shut down July 29, 2014 (which was two months earlier than usual).Ěý

This summer ended up providing the biggest water in years. Even still, halfway through the season, Tributary Whitewater Tours, one of the original operators to guide the Truckee, dropped its capacity from six people per boat to five, to avoid scraping bottom in the low river. Eventually the Reno Water Master shut down the river on September 6, three weeks earlier than normal.Ěý

As a boater, you can’t do much more than hope it rains—or better yet, hope it snows. Then hope the snowpack doesn’t all melt at once.

Missoula: Fly Fishing

• Mid-September average: 70 high, 41 low.
• 2050 projection: 74, 45.

Missoula, a town at 3,200 feet elevation near the junction of the Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers in Montana, currently sees 166 below-freezing nights each year. By 2100, that number is expected to drop to 67. Likewise, right now the average summer temperature is 80 degrees, but by 2100 it is predicted to be 92. None of this is good for fly fishermen.

“We’ve seen big changes in the past five or so years, especially in the last three,” says Rick Marcum, outfitting manager at Grizzly Hackle Fly Shop. “Runoff is a lot shorter; the springs are a lot warmer. So instead of having six weeks of runoff, we’ll have three weeks. Which means the stonefly and mayfly hatches happen two to three weeks earlier. Because of that, we’re starting the fishing in the beginning of June.”

Afternoons in mid- to late summer have grown so hot that there is hardly any water in the Bitterroot River—at a time that used to be prime fishing season. This year, the state required anglers to be off the water by 2 p.m. “If you catch trout in 70-degree water, you’re going to hurt ’em or kill ’em,” Marcum says. There is one plus, though. Even at peak runoff, the water stays clear so you can keep fishing.Ěý

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Cedar House Sport Hotel

Cedar House Sport Hotel

TAHOE GETS A WOODY: The Cedar House near Truckee

Truckee, California

When the Cedar House Sport Hotel opened in summer 2006, it instantly wiped out the drab Truckee, California, lodging tradition of Best Westerns and sugary B&Bs. The 36-room, six-suite inn, set among ponderosas just two minutes from downtown, is both industrial in aesthetic and homey in tone. Exposed cedar beams complement a metal-and-cement interior, featuring a modern bar and plush leather couches for kicking back in front of the lounge’s giant fireplace. But after a long day of skiing at Alpine Meadows, just 15 minutes away, you’ll appreciate the Cedar House’s warm touches: a large out-door hot tub, heated tile floors in the bathroom, and cozy platform beds covered with down comforters and Egyptian cotton. Doubles from $180;

Clay Brook at Sugarbush

Warren, Vermont

Sugarbush has 53 miles of trails and five high-speed quads, but, without any updated lodging, it lost its cachet as the Aspen of the East, oh, about 30 years ago. Things turned around last December with the opening of the $61 million base village. Lest you be fooled by the barn-and-silo construction, consider that it is equipped with a new day lodge, an upscale restaurant called Timbers, and Clay Brook, comprising 61 condos. With a design sensibility we’ll call farmhouse chic, the hotel showcases photographs and paintings by locals and is equipped with two giant slopeside hot tubs as well as a ski valet who’ll warm your boots by morning. Doubles from $259;

Arrabelle at Vail Square

Vail, Colorado

When developers started thinking about one of the first new hotels to be built in Vail Village since the seventies, they called RockResorts, which has a long history of delivering boutique accommodations, from Aspen’s Hotel Jerome to Santa Fe’s La Posada. Arrabelle’s 36 rooms and 50 condos, which open steps from Vail’s gondola in January, will feature canopy beds, in-room martini bars, floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass doors leading onto balconies, and marble bathrooms with deep cast-iron tubs. From the rooftop hot tubs, which have front-row seats to the alpenglow, it takes one turn of the head to procure vodka tonics from wandering servers, and for dinner reservations there’s a private concierge on each floor. Of course, if you can tear yourself away from all this, those classic Vail bowls await. Doubles from $850;

Stowe Mountain Lodge

Stowe, Vermont

It has all the prerequisites of a snug New England abode: a timber-and-glass exterior, a wood fire in the lobby, and views of Mount Mansfield and Spruce Peak. But at this 139-room lodge, opening slopeside at Stowe this spring, you won’t feel von Trapped. That’s because it will feature well-stocked in-room bars, personal shoppers who’ll fetch new duds from the base village or town, audio hookups, and alpine concierges who’ll tune skis, warm boots, and store gear. At night, organic cotton linens, Japanese buckwheat or goose-down pillows, and marble bathrooms with large soaking tubs will dull the pain of that late-afternoon yard sale. Doubles from $435;

The Sky Lodge

Park City, Utah

Sure, it’s got all the amenities you look for in a five-star resort—private decks with cedar hot tubs, 400-thread-count sheets, and wet bars in each of its 22 condos—but the lodge, opening a block from the lifts on Park City’s main drag this December, is more about the experience than the accommodations. Fire pits in the lounge, a Zen-inspired meditation room, and the spa’s Japanese hinoki-wood tubs will tempt you to spend as much time inside as out on Park City’s 3,300 acres of skiable terrain. Complimentary cocktails and hors d’oeuvres are served nightly at five in the Sky Club, which has a sunken bar and fireplace. One-bedroom condos from $925;

Hotel Terra

Jackson, Wyoming

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort will turn a shade greener next month when Hotel Terra, a LEED-certified property with 72 rooms and suites, opens in Teton Village, 50 steps from the new tram. The eco theme is everywhere—in the efficient windows, passive solar heating, and 80 percent recycled content in the steel beams. And while you probably won’t notice that, here’s what you will notice: the rooftop hot tub, with views of the Tetons, and rooms decked out with organic cotton sheets and towels, giant down duvets, and Fair Trade coffee. By 2020, owner and elite ski mountaineer Rob DesLauriers plans at least a dozen more green hotels worldwide. Doubles from $395;

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Location is Everything

Wanna live where the action is? The goal: trails out the back door, a serious Saturday-morning peloton, whitewater just up the road, and neighbors eager to join in. Our source: the best adventure athletes in America, who tell us where they live and why. The result: 20 communities where locals work, train, and play hard. Start packing.

Bellingham, Washington

New Paltz, New York

Boulder, Colorado

Sebastopol, California

Madison, Wisconsin

Bend, Oregon

Asheville, North Carolina

Durango, Colorado

Truckee, California

Haleiwa, Hawaii

The Gore-Tex Vortex

Bellingham, Washington

Population: 72,320

Paddlers in this hilly green outpost 90 minutes north of Seattle get it both ways: Bellingham offers back-door access to the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound, and it’s a launching pad to Canada’s Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island. Kayakers putting in on Bellingham Bay can ogle sandstone bluffs south of town, the San Juans on the western horizon, and the 10,778-foot volcanic summit of Mount Baker—all in one sweeping glance. The beginner-friendly local kayakers’ club, WAKE (Whatcom Association of Kayak Enthusiasts), gathers for frequent training sessions, gear exchange, and group paddles on 4,971-acre Lake Whatcom, on the eastern edge of town. Come spring, informal Wednesday-night races on the lake draw as many as 70 boats. Inevitably, all excursions end up downtown at Boundary Bay brewpub. Johnson Outdoors, parent company of Necky and Ocean Kayaks, has a regional branch just up the road in Ferndale, and Sterling’s Kayaks and Fiberglass, a custom-boat and repair shop, is a local fixture. Though residents tend to describe the job market as underwhelming, things seem to be perking up: Inc. magazine just applauded Bellingham as a boomtown for small techie startups like Microstaq.

REALITY CHECK:
“It rains a lot,” says WAKE president Ted Ullman. “Everybody gets moss between their fingers.”

NEXT BEST:
Bar Harbor, Maine. Chilly 50-degree water and droves of summer visitors to Acadia National Park are givens—but so are 100-plus-foot cliffs, bald eagles, seals, and the lovely Porcupine and Cranberry island chains. Membership in the Maine Island Trail Association provides access to 350 miles of coast and campsites.

New Paltz, New York

Population: 13,469

“The climbing here is so accessible, and there’s so much of it—we have literally years’ worth of routes,” says Evan Marks, who runs the New Paltz–based Web site Gunks.com. That’s Gunks as in Shawangunks, of course, the ridges that loom 200 feet above the orchards and farmlands between the Hudson River and the Catskills, just outside this college town 90 miles north of New York City. The Nature Conservancy dubbed the Gunks, with their quartz-conglomerate cliffs and cold-running streams, one of earth’s “Last Great Places.” Hundreds of climbers who come here each weekend from the city and points beyond—many of whom eventually put down roots in this community of SUNY–New Paltz undergrads, artists, homeschoolers, and tie-dyed street drummers—don’t argue the point. More than 100 miles of old carriage trails on protected lands nearby, like the Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska State Park, lead to some 800 routes, including such classic face climbs as Survival of the Fittest, boulder problems like Genghis Khan (a 40-foot overhanging cave), and hundreds of short single-pitch routes ranked 5.9 or lower. Amid the 300-year-old stone houses downtown, Rock and Snow is both gear emporium and gossip channel, and the beer list at Bacchus—400 strong—helps amplify untold numbers of postclimb recaps.

REALITY CHECK:
Easy access for city dwellers can mean overcrowded trails, especially during high-season weekends.

NEXT BEST:
Bishop, California. You’ll find more than 800 sport-climbing routes on volcanic rock in the Owens River Gorge, northwest of town, and some 3,000 bouldering problems within an hour’s drive. And you’re just a few hours from the storied big walls of Yosemite and world-class ice climbing in the eastern Sierra.

Boulder, Colorado

Population: 101,718

Is there anything quite so humbling as being a run-of-the-mill athlete in Boulder? After all, the guy leading spinning classes at Flatiron Athletic Club is six-time Hawaii Ironman winner Dave Scott. The co-owner of the Boulder Running Company is Mark Plaatjes, former world-champion marathoner; another local runner, Alan Culpepper, finished fifth this year at Boston. Triathletes migrate here to train. The University of Colorado ski team just bagged its 17th national title. Throw a dart in the air and there’s a fair chance it will land on an Olympian—more than 60 live in Boulder County, by one recent tally. Why do so many end up here? Because the 300-plus sunny days and 5,430-foot altitude make for ideal year-round training. Because the town’s decades-long status as Adrenaline Central has spawned a microeconomy catering to jocks: 3-D bike fittings at the Center for Sports Medicine; discount Zen shiatsu sessions at the College of Massage Therapy; mountain-bike clinics with a former pro racer at Outdoor Divas, a shop on the Pearl Street Mall. Because the city owns 43,000 acres of open space with more than 130 miles of trails for hiking, horseback riding, and cycling. Because there’s a bona fide job market, anchored by the university and knowledge-economy stalwarts like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Ball Aerospace, and brainiac federal labs. When it comes to measuring a place by sheer athletic excellence per square mile . . . top it or drop it.

REALITY CHECK:
Think life in America’s favorite outdoor mecca would be dreamy? Careful what you wish for. Click here to read Marc Peruzzi’s take on “The Gore-Tex Vortex.”

NEXT BEST:
Burlington, Vermont. Recipe for a multisport boomtown: Combine Green Mountain skiing, Smugglers’ Notch climbing, and Long Trail hiking. Blend in sailing and paddling on massive Lake Champlain. Top off with a thriving arts scene and direct flights to NYC. Shake, then chill.

Sebastopol, California

Population: 7,794

Apple orchards put this Sonoma County refuge for freethinkers on the map, but these days local pursuits in the name of holistic living go way beyond picking a few Gravensteins and baking a pie. At first glance it’s a pleasantly retro Russian River Valley farm town: good schools, a Methodist church framed by palm trees, rolling vineyards, quirky folk-art sculptures assembled from salvaged junk in front yards along Florence Avenue. Even in the post-hippie enclaves of Northern California, though, you won’t find many small farm towns that contain half a dozen yoga studios, two massage schools, several home-based meditation groups, an Ayurvedic healing center, a Buddhist zendo, a spa offering Japanese enzyme baths, two “equine experiential learning institutes,” and a clinic that treats cancer patients with not only conventional Western protocols but also Chinese medicine, acupuncture, osteopathy, and jin shin jyutsu. “Sebastopol is a hotbed of green/eco/health-conscious lifestyles and businesses,” says David Klein—and as editor of Living Nutrition magazine, which espouses a raw-food diet, he would know. Not too surprisingly, greens dominate town hall, and organics prevail at Andy’s Produce Market and the Sunday-morning farmers’ market. Even an alliance of vegan jocks, OrganicAthlete, is headquartered in town. Local businesses doing well by doing good include Traditional Medicinals (herbal teas) and Gourmet Mushrooms Inc. (suppliers to chefs and nutraceutical labs). If a career in the healing arts isn’t your bag, you can always become a cellar rat: More than 100 Sonoma County wineries are a short commute away.

REALITY CHECK:
Recent transplants from Marin County have helped inflate the median home price past $650,000. But with lots of under-the-radar options—granny units, barns, the occasional yurt—locals aren’t packing their bags.

NEXT BEST:
Santa Fe, New Mexico. A longtime draw for second-home-owning Texans, spa-goers, art collectors, artists, and ski bums with a creative side, the City Different is also a vibrant education center for alternative medicine, with schools like the University of Natural Medicine and the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts.

Madison, Wisconsin

Population: 220,332

A lot of the adjectives used to describe this Paris of south-central Wisconsin also apply to its cycling scene: inclusive, enlightened, accessible. The bragging starts with infrastructure, thanks to a city government that takes two-wheelers seriously. Over the past 30 years, it has instituted more than 30 miles of well-tended bike paths and 110 miles of on-road bike lanes. For trips under five miles, it’s faster to pedal than drive. Roadies devise endless variations of in-town loops, through parks and the arboretum and around 9,847-acre Mendota and 3,274-acre Monona, glacial lakes that define downtown. For rolling hills, they head for the paved, lightly trafficked farm roads west of town. Hammerheads, novices, and in-betweeners alike sign on for Bombay Bicycle Club rides (twice a week, April to October) and for summer Wisport citizens’ races (one of the few no-license-required race series in the country). Madison is also adored by runners, sailors, paddlers, and fans of locally owned co-ops, restaurants, and organic farms. Many are techie entrepreneurs; others work for the state government, the University of Wisconsin, or economic mainstays like Rayovac.

REALITY CHECK:
In December and January, when average highs dip below freezing and roads grit up with salt and sand, stir-crazy riders may find themselves Googling Tucson.

NEXT BEST:
Austin, Texas. Good roads, club and charity rides, bike-in movies, nonprofits like the Yellow Bike Project (it recycles used rides into free-floating loaners), and the rolling Hill Country just outside of town. The planned six-mile crosstown Lance Armstrong Bikeway, named for some local guy, will be a great pedal forward.

Bend, Oregon

Population: 70,328

Bend, Oregon

Bend's Steve Larsen picks up speed on the Deschutes River Trail

Bend’s central-Oregon mix-and-match topography—at 3,600 feet, it sits between the Cascade Range and the high desert—has spawned more hyphenated subspecies than Hollywood. It’s even money that the woman on the next barstool over is a climber-snowboarder-dogsledder, a telemarker-triathlete who ties her own flies, or some other ambitious combination. “Trail runner” generally shows up somewhere on the rĂ©sumĂ©. Pity if it didn’t, as the local stats are impressive: 48 miles of in-town trail, plus 11 miles of dirt path along the Deschutes River; 2.5 million acres of Forest Service land nearby; and almost 300 clear-sky days a year. Ultrarunners and 10Kers alike join in weekly club runs that start at FootZone, a shoe store downtown, where microbreweries and martini bars have replaced lumber mills. Bend’s many charms, of course, are no secret—as a city official recently told The New York Times, “a new family [moves] in every hour and a half.” But even with an influx of athletes as diverse as professional cyclist Chris Horner, formerly of San Diego, and Hawaiian surfing icon Gerry Lopez, who moved here in 2001, Bend can hardly be considered crowded. On a five-mile trot, you’re more likely to see a herd of elk or deer than another runner.

REALITY CHECK:
Exurbanites from the Bay Area, Seattle, and Portland have helped drive up home prices—to the tune of more than 50 percent in the past two years.

NEXT BEST:
Charlottesville, Virginia. This one’s a no-brainer, what with Shenandoah National Park, the Appalachian Trail, George Washington National Forest, and the rugged, waterfall-cooled Blue Ridge Mountains all within 20 miles. A burgeoning lineup of off-road races adds to an already sweet mix.

Asheville, North Carolina

Population: 69,338

Thank nature, God, or geological serendipity for the jackpot of whitewater riches in western North Carolina. Home to 6,000-foot Appalachian peaks, the region gets more than 47 inches of rain annually, and the runoff has to go somewhere. Hence the Class V runs on the Raven’s Fork, the Linville, the Toxaway, and the West Prong of the Pigeon, plus hundreds more Class II–IV stretches on the Nantahala, Nolichucky, Tuckaseegee, and Ocoee rivers, all within an hour or so of Asheville. Duke Energy also gets credit for a major assist: The power company’s near-daily dam releases on the Green River serve up legitimate Class V whitewater 12 months a year, on a 3.5-mile section known as the Narrows. The Green’s waterfalls, slides, eddies, and boulder gardens, 22 miles south of town, are where elite steepcreekers like Pat Keller and Tommy Hilleke cut their teeth. If no one answers the phone at local businesses like Astral Buoyancy (PFDs) and Liquidlogic (kayaks), they’re probably out there, too. Après-paddle, head forthe slacker-hip downtown, where art deco facades house indie cafĂ©s, an eclectic music scene, and a core of craftsfolk that rivals any in the nation.

REALITY CHECK:
Asheville’s low unemployment rate (3.5 percent) masks a disconnect between low-paying tourism and service jobs and a steeper-than-average (by Southeast standards) cost of living.

NEXT BEST:
Hood River, Oregon. Cascades snowmelt means Class V thrills on the Little White Salmon, beginners’ training runs on the Klickitat, and something for everyone on the White Salmon and the Hood. When the flow trickles off, there’s boardsailing on the Columbia River, skiing and climbing on Mount Hood, and lots of road and trail cycling.

Durango, Colorado

Population: 15,628

One small detail from the Mountain Bike World Cup time trial that was held here five years ago will tell you all you need to know about Durango. The course ran through the Steamworks Brewing Company, entering where the front window had been removed, passing the bar, and exiting via the side patio. That’s not the only clue that off-road biking trumps most other priorities in this dirthead arcadia, where the undammed Animas River flows past a backdrop of 13,000-foot-plus San Juan peaks. Photos and jerseys autographed by storied local riders—Ned Overend, Juli Furtado, Myles Rockwell—are boilerplate restaurant decor around the Victorian downtown. The Durango Coffee Company sells six different Tom Danielson blends, named for the Discovery-team rider and 2005 Tour de Georgia winner who stuck around after graduating Fort Lewis College. Indoctrination starts early: There’s a junior-high mountain-bike program and a Durango Wheel Club junior development team. Already graduated? Tuesday-night group rides subdivide into levels A through C and head off for terrain that starts right in town—there’s the rolling, 42-mile high-desert Horse Gulch network, the forested singletrack of 40-mile Hermosa Creek, or the steep shale of six-mile Test Track, to name a few. Fast-twitch riders fill up their calendars with weekly time trials and the brutal 48-mile, 5,700-foot-elevation-gain Iron Horse Bicycle Classic to Silverton each May.

REALITY CHECK:
With the Denver and Salt Lake City job markets both more than 300 miles away, all too many starstruck new arrivals join the ranks of advanced-degree holders who end up waiting tables.

NEXT BEST:
Moab, Utah. Why do thousands of riders pilgrimage to this onetime uranium boomtown? Because the prospectors left a thousand miles of singletrack winding over slickrock and through red-rock canyons. The 12,000-foot La Sal Mountains are an uncrowded bonus.

Truckee, California

Population: 15,936

If Truckee hasn’t had nine lives yet, it’s getting close. In the last century and a half, the town, bounded by the Truckee River and jaw-dropping Sierra Nevada mountainscapes, has been a stagecoach stop, a rough-and-tumble lumber-mill town (complete with a red-light district, opium dens, and routine gunfights), and a haunt of golden-age Hollywood movie crews—Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable both filmed on location nearby. These days, Truckee is best known as a locals’ home base in the resort-infested Lake Tahoe Basin, 190 miles northeast of San Francisco and just east of the crest of the Sierra Nevada. That a good number of those locals are freeskiers, ski-film makers, or members of the U.S. ski or snowboard team has much to do with the dozen lift-served mountains within minutes of town: 2,850 feet of vertical at Squaw Valley’s natural amphitheater, the quieter runs and backcountry of Sugar Bowl, and the intermediates’ paradise at Northstar-at-Tahoe, to name a few. On Commercial Row, the brothels are gone, but a funky Wild West feel lives on in Truckee’s downtown historic district, where covered walkways lead to shops, low-key bars, and a wider range of restaurants than a town this size has any right to, from Cal-Asian cafĂ©s to wood-fired- pizza joints. Not surprisingly, tourism accounts for about a third of local jobs, with retail and construction not far behind. But with epic hiking, trout fishing, mountain biking, and whitewater paddling nearby once snow season ends, no one actually comes here to be a workaholic.

REALITY CHECK:
With the year-round population ballooning more than 70 percent since 1990 and golf courses multiplying, debates about growth and development threatening Truckee’s small-town vibe won’t end anytime soon.

NEXT BEST:
Jackson, Wyoming. It’s steep: Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has 4,000-plus feet of vertical drop. It’s deep: Jackson gets about 38 feet of annual snowfall. It’s a leap: off towering cliffs and into narrow couloirs. But it’s definitely not cheap: The average house price tops $1 million.

Haleiwa, Hawaii

Population: 2,225

Surf capitals come and go, but for nearly half a century, one thing hasn’t changed: The road to surfing stardom still rolls right through Haleiwa, gateway to Oahu’s North Shore and some of the sport’s most fabled waves: Pipeline, Sunset, Waimea. In a sense, Haleiwa, which marks one end of the “seven-mile miracle” stretch of beaches and some 40 surf breaks, is two different towns. One materializes every winter, when thousands of fans and photographers follow the planet’s best surfers—including North Shore residents Jamie O’Brien, Pancho Sullivan, and Fred Patacchia—as they converge for high-profile contests like the World Cup and the Pipe Masters, braving sometimes-lethal shallow reefs, monster tubes, and wave faces that can top 30 feet. Once the mobs and the hype (and the swells) die down, the other Haleiwa reappears: a sleepy old sugar-mill town where Jack Johnson learned to strum a guitar at backyard barbecues. It’s a laid-back anti-Waikiki, where feral chickens shriek from the branches of mango trees, locals gear up at any of a dozen or so surf shops and refuel on ahi tacos at Cholo’s, and grandparents cheer on longboarding preteens in the annual Menehune Surf Championships. On the job front, survival often entails doubling up on tourist-related gigs, driving an hour or so to Honolulu, or sponging off your friends. On the surfing front, respect is earned, not granted: Wise newcomers start out at the less hyped, less crowded breaks, such as Kammies or the more challenging Pupukea, until they find their place in the pecking order.

REALITY CHECK:
The good news about real estate on the North Shore: Prices are leveling off. The bad news: The median home price is around $900,000, and even that won’t get you oceanfront. Plan B? Pony up $1,500 to rent a modest one-bedroom until the rep from Quiksilver calls.

NEXT BEST:
Ventura, California. Close to Rincon, one of California’s best point breaks, along with stellar surfing at Emma Wood and Silver Strand—and just far enough from Los Angeles. Ventura hosted the first prize-money surfing contest (in 1965), and it was here that three-time world champ Tom Curren and the surfing/filmmaking Malloy brothers perfected their moves. Ventura’s cool old downtown—wedged up against the foothills a few blocks from the Pacific—is packed with eateries, thrift shops, and bookstores.

The Gore-Tex Vortex

Think life in America’s favorite outdoor mecca would be dreamy? Careful what you wish for.

So you want to move to Boulder, Colorado, the perennial best town in America for (circle one or all depending upon your level of outsideness) roadies, rock jocks, organic consumers, backcountry skiers, mountain bikers, trail runners, ultrarunners, whitewater boaters, alpinists, credit-card environmentalists, New Agers, sellers of waterproof-breathable canine accessories, and those who support prairie dog emancipation at the expense of baseball fields. It's a great place to live, because everyone looks and thinks exactly like you.*

Except they're better than you. Get that straight and you'll fit in. But you'll matriculate quicker if you come with some attitude. Pose if you must. It's the best town in America, for Christ's/Buddha's/Ganesh's/Chris Carmichael's sake. Step up.

But what's it like to live here? Well, Boulder exudes a unique blend of over-the-top liberalism and extreme fitness. How to describe it . . . If Lance Armstrong and Amy Goodman had a love child, the prodigy would drive his Audi A4 to Boulder, buy a Maverick to decorate the roof rack, and then not ride the $5,000 bike because he didn't want to encroach upon mountain lion habitat. Are you feeling the zeitgeist? Some more Boulder color might help:

A Buddhist monk moved into our condo complex. Shaved head, full regalia, real deal. He drives a 30-cylinder pickup truck named after a subarctic ecosystem where trees don't grow and frost lingers.

Two strangers have said the word excelente to me in the past four months.

My barista (Oh, dear Lord, what's happening to me?) to a fellow barista: “Cuba is, like, this paradise. Nothing has changed since, like, the fifties. They drive these old cars and play this great music.” Me: “Cuba? They put AIDS patients in concentration camps and throw journalists in jail for printing the truth.” Barista: “Uh, yeah, but the people are so happy down there. Who had the tall rice-milk latte?”

Need more telling details? The Dunkin' Donuts went out of business, but the oxygen bar next door to the gay-and-lesbian bookstore seems to be doing well. The panhandlers on the Pearl Street Mall sport $70 sandals and pull in upwards of 25 bucks an hour. Did anybody mention that the median sale price of a home here is $525,000? That's $302,000 more than the national figure. The best don't come cheap. If that's too pricey for you, maybe you should check out Burlington or Santa Fe. Oh, right: bad sushi.

OK, that's all lifestyle stuff that comes with living in a town that has a large contingent of soft-palmed check-of-the-month-clubbers. Could just as easily be Marin County. Buy a meditation table, slap a GO VEGAN! sticker on your roof box, and you'll blend. You're here for the fitness pursuits anyway.

Except that's where Boulder gets weird. In most American towns, outdoor-sports aficionados are part of an elite counterculture minority. Mountain bikers and climbers have cachet. Not so in Boulder. Recreating outdoors is the norm here, and it's in your face. There's always some horse-toothed mountain-town equivalent of Laird Hamilton ready to kick your athletic pride through the dirt. Remember the 2005 Tour, when T-Mobile kept attacking Discovery, trying to break Lance? That's what a casual bike ride is like in Boulder. Strangers attack. Old guys with gray beards and steel bikes attack. Reach for a shot of Gu and even your friends attack. And women: Women always attack—they're the worst.

Even slow guys like me attack. The other day I was reeling in a pro cyclist on a brutal local climb. My heart rate was near its max, but I was feeling good. I was in the zone. Maybe four years of living in Boulder have paid some fitness dividends, I thought.

Then I figured it out: He's between intervals, and once his heart rate drops below 65 bpm, he's gone. At least he said “No offense” before he accelerated.

It doesn't matter what sport you do; you will suffer similar humiliation. Go nordic skiing in North Boulder Park and two Olympians shout “Track!” from a meter back. Climb the Flatirons only to learn that someone once ascended in Rollerblades. Get Maytagged in a hole while paddling Boulder Creek and a World Cup champion slalom kayaker will toss you a rope bag. Running? Not me, not in Boulder. Boulderites run like gazelles. Fancy yourself a mountaineer? The waiters at Sherpa's have summited Everest. But at least those guys are nice. If Reinhold Messner himself walked into south Boulder's mountaineering shop to buy a carabiner, the sales staff would give him attitude. It's enough to make you revolt against the blue sky (300 sunny days a year), pull down the blinds, and watch NASCAR.

I know what you're thinking. If you don't like it, why don't you get the hell out? I'll tell you why: It's pretty damn nice here, actually. I just bought a German automobile—gonna chip it. My four-year-old has attended two birthday parties in climbing gyms—little dude will be free-soloing soon. Maybe it's the endorphin equivalent of a contact high, but I've never been in better shape. The sun is shining. The prairie dogs in the infield are chirping. One more round of whitening strips and my choppers will be gleaming. Everything's, like, most excelente.

* If your teeth are pearly white and your resting heart rate is below 45 bpm.

The post Best Towns 2006 appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Majoring in steeps at New Mexico’s Taos

Q: I’m getting older and I’d like to learn to ski better. Even if you’ve never been to my home state of Illinois, you probably know there aren’t many ski slopes nearby. I’d like to spend a week to ten days at a resort with a ski school tailored to taking a relatively fit and athletic adult from beginner (me) or advanced beginner (my wife) to close to expert. The şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Advisor opined some time ago that the world’s best school is at St. Anton. Is this still true? Is there a school in the U.S. or Canada that’s comparable? Thanks!

— Jon Lewis, Geneva, Illinois



şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Advisor:

A: No skiing in Illinois? We would have figured your fellow citizens would have come up with some sort of creative solution. You do, after all, have a paucity of rock climbing cliffs but some of the coolest (and most creative) artificial routes in grain silos peppered with plastic holds. But we digress. You ski with the grace of an aging Bulgarian weight lifter but want to shred like Schmidt. What to do?

Saint Anton in Austria is indeed home to a great school, but you’re wise to try to stick closer to home to hone your skills. You’ll enjoy the Alps much more once you are about a solid Level 4 skier. It sounds like you are about a Level 3, meaning you are comfortable making turns from a snowplow position on beginner runs. Your wife sounds more like a Level 4 or 5, meaning she can match her skis in each turn on beginner and some intermediate runs.

It’ll be tough for you to go from beginner to expert in a season. Experts are, after all, experts for their years of dedication to the sport. But that’s not to say you can’t drastically improve your confidence and carve under the expert tutelage of a great ski instructor. According to the North American Ski Training Center (; 530-582-4772), a Truckee, California-based, ski school that holds clinics all over the world, you’d do well to sign up for a batch of private lessons at a ski resort like Vail, Aspen, Alpine Meadows, Sugar Bowl, or Taos. More important than place is that you do sign up for numerous lessons at once with a Level 3 certified ski instructor for you, a Level 4 or 5 for your wife. That way you’ll be sure to keep the momentum going and get the most out of your trip.

Of the resorts mentioned, New Mexico’s Taos (; 800-347-7414) seems to have the best deal going at the moment. If you buy a six-day lift ticket from January 5 through January 11, you’ll get six days of “total immersion” ski lessons for free. That means some of the nation’s best ski instructors will work with you two hours each morning for six days and give you “tech talks” on equipment, biomechanics, and snow safety each night. A six-day lift pass will set you back about $225. The “Learn to Ski Better Week” at the Ernie Blake Ski School () is offered throughout the winter and normally costs $180. The Hotel Saint Bernard, a 28-room French chalet on the slopes run by Jean Mayer, an affable Frenchman and renowned ski instructor, will give you a room, three meals a day, morning stretch classes, and lift tickets for those six days for $1,410. The lessons would still be free during that week in January.

Once you get yourself up to a Level 6 skier (can ski groomed intermediate and some advanced runs with parallel turns most of the time) you’re ready for a North American Ski Training Center clinic. These guys employ the PhDs of ski instructors; the teachers here actually help write the protocol for all ski schools and instructors across the nation. During a three-day course you’ll work with these instructors at a six-to-one teacher-to-student ratio on runs ranging from groomers to bumps to crud to ice and steeps. By the time you complete one of these courses, you’ll be a skier capable of tackling just about any condition Mother Nature could throw your way. Well, Illinois sleet not included.

The post Powder 101 appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

BACK IN THE Age of Innocence—let's say winter 1974­'75—we used to exit the ski area all the time. During late season at Bear Valley in California's Sierra Nevada, the best sliding was often beyond the ropes in Horse Canyon.

Good and gone: ripping Telluride backcountry

Actually, there were no ropes. So when we slipped out the back way, through the trees, we didn't feel like outlaws so much as pioneers. The corn snow in Horse rolled away beneath us, untracked by man or machine. We skimmed the pates of buried boulders, swept across meadows, and checked hard—throwing crescents of frozen spray down the steeps. And we inevitably came back in-bounds changed by these ventures to outer realms.

Maybe we should call those days the Classical Era. That is, pre-1977, before the case of James Sunday v. Stratton Mountain (in Vermont) changed everything. A jury awarded Sunday, a novice skier paralyzed in a simple fall, $1.5 million, and the whole notion of risk assumption in skiing was turned on its head. Out came the ropes and signs, the Skiers' Responsibility Codes, and the dire warnings on lift tickets. Ski patrols were cast unhappily in the role of border guards. Lift-served skiing lost its sense of adventure and entered a kind of amusement-park Dark Ages.

Now things are changing again. The nineties brought revolutions in equipment (snowboards, fat skis), technique (carving and jibbing), and attitude—the stuff flaunted in films like Blizzard of Ahh's and Mind the Addiction. While boomers dropped out, the pool of younger experts grew, and grew more demanding. True experts, like large carnivores, need a lot of terrain.

Clueing in to the economic necessity of providing the extreme element, ski area management has heeded the call. Resorts are still liable for their in-bounds skiers, but they can't afford not to offer double-diamond steeps to the new passel of experts. Chutes and cliffs are now as de rigueur as bumps and blue boulevards, resorts are thinning forests to offer more tree skiing, stringing lifts to new steeps, and opening boundaries to allow skiers, once again, into the backcountry.

But there's no hand-holding in this new age. Aspen's Highland Bowl Guide asks that you “Please do not underestimate this terrain or overestimate your ability.” Meaning: Get yourself in trouble and it's unlikely a sled will show up soon. We're still not talking European go-anywhere laissez-faire. Ski patrols will continue to perform avalanche control and mount rescues inside and sometimes even outside permit boundaries. And there will still be closed zones.

Call the early 2000s the Semi-Enlightened Era. We aren't quite back to the unfettered ways of the seventies. But we can celebrate the new freedom, which encourages exploration and experimentation and here and there opens doors to skiing's wild, timeless heart. —Peter Shelton

Rocky Mountain Dry,

Champagne powder, feathery light fluff—there's a reason for the clichés. They're true.

Powder burn: first tracks on Aspen Mountain

Alta/Snowbird
ALTA, UTAH

On an average fresh-powder morning at Little Cottonwood Canyon (and there are lots of them), the snow at Snowbird is tracked by noon. But it's no big deal. What remains is dry and easy to bury an edge into, and you can still find great lines between the trees on Soma Trophic Hormone (aka STH or Steeper Than Hell), or in the wide-open spaces of the Cirque. And starting this season, you can buy the Alta Snowbird Ticket, which lets you ride the new Mineral Basin lift to the top of Sugarloaf Saddle. From there you cross over into Alta Ski Resort, and then hike and traverse about 30 minutes toward the open steeps of East Devil's Castle, the off-angle face that ski patrollers open when the snowpack has settled.

The new dual-resort passes are for skiers only; Alta still stiff-arms snowboarders. But any experienced group of two or more boarders or skiers can cross through gates above Snowbird's Gad II lift and explore the 2,200-acre White Pine Canyon backcountry. After huffing your way to the top of chutes like Birthday (1,000 feet) and Tri (1,500 feet), you may find a crowd of heli-skiers beat you to the prize. Don't sweat it. There's plenty of snow, and you get it for $600 less than they do. —Peter Oliver

Park City Mountain Resort
PARK CITY, UTAH

The closest thing to raw terrain inside Park City's closed boundary lies above the sprawling corduroy off Jupiter Peak, the most prominent feature on the resort's major ridgeline. Because the peak is accessible only by scrambling—at least ten minutes from the top of the Jupiter lift—the 45-degree chutes on the east face (the steepest at Park City) remain untracked for days after a storm. Once those are worked over, head farther east along Pinyon Ridge to the new Black Forest Glades, a low-angle intermediate area with widely spaced trees. If you need a sure powder fix, head west from the top of the Jupiter lift, and then traverse and hike 25 minutes along Pinecone Ridge. On clear days, sunshine quickly turns the west-facing slopes to slush, but so few skiers venture in this direction that fresh tracks are almost guaranteed. —±Ę.°ż.

Vail Mountain
VAIL, COLORADO

Vail's commercial success (1.6 million skier visits last year, 20 percent more than any other U.S. resort) is based on the front side's groomed cruisers, but it's the adjacent backcountry, unmanicured Back Bowls, and now Blue Sky Basin that bring in the experts. Blue Sky Basin, which opened amid much controversy over the last two winters, features 645 acres of powder served by four high-speed quads. The terrain faces north and stays largely ungroomed because every run weaves through trees. Huge and varied though Blue Sky is, some locals feel it's a relatively minor addition to the 2,700 acres and 1,850 vertical feet of the Back Bowls that they've carved for years. These monsters stretch six miles east to west, the biggest single swath of lift-served terrain in North America. Southern exposure means the snow here changes fast: If it dumps on Monday, you'll ski powder on Tuesday, crust on Wednesday, and junk on Thursday—the entire palette of off-piste snow in a few days. For an epic final run, link in-bounds off-piste with thousands more feet of backcountry. Blue Sky Basin, Game Creek Bowl, and Mongolia Bowl all have inconspicuous access gates opening onto thousands of acres of unpatrolled wilderness that lead down to roads. —Seth Masia

Telluride Ski Resort
TELLURIDE, COLORADO

This year the new Gold Hill lift will take skiers directly over what used to be a hidden stash that locals dubbed Claude's Couloir. From the top of Gold Hill you'll be able to dive into Claude's and other formerly hike-to chutes like Electra, Dynamo, and Little Rose. If by chance the snow is stable (which usually isn't the case; the San Juans of Telluride are the most avalanche-prone range in the Lower 48), the ski patrol will let you trudge out of bounds up the ridge to Palmyra Peak for a 40- to 50-degree descent down 3,000 feet of open summit slope. Last year, after Telluride announced its intentions to install two new lifts, it opened this backcountry access gate for those mourning the development of the other new lift, Prospect. (If you're not an avalanche expert, stick to Prospect: It drops you above intermediate glades and beside four short double-diamond chutes.) Head up Palmyra unprepared and locals will chew you out—not because they care about your fate, but because you might trigger an avalanche above them. —ł§.˛Ń.

Aspen
ASPEN, COLORADO

Aspen, with its Learjets and $20 million mountain hideaways, still lives up to its reputation as the Gomorrah of the Rockies. But don't be fooled. With four mountain resorts only 15 minutes from town—Aspen Mountain (sometimes called Ajax), Buttermilk, Snowmass, and Aspen Highlands—and vast backcountry, much of it in the 181,000-acre Maroon Bells­Snowmass Wilderness, the Aspen area remains one of the best places in Colorado for serious big-mountain skiing.

Expert locals and a handful of adventurous visitors head beyond the warning gates on the western perimeter of Snowmass, where rock-lined couloirs plunge 4,000 feet into the East Snowmass Creek drainage. Or they hike five minutes from the High Alpine lift to reach the bowls of West Willow Basin, equally steep and hazardous, but where they're less likely to get stranded above a cliff.

Two years ago, Aspen Highlands extended its boundaries to include Highland Bowl, a steep, east-facing, avalanche-prone swath of mostly treeless terrain atop 12,382-foot Highland Peak. This used to involve a 45-minute experts-only hike from Loge Peak lift to the top of Highland and Bowl. Now it's a 20-minute experts-only free snowcat ride and a 20-minute hike. —±Ę.°ż.

Range of Light,

Sun feels damn good when you're atop a 12,000-foot peak, staring down a 40-degree face

Squaw Valley USA
TAHOE CITY, CALIFORNIA

Right from the start, 1949, Squaw Valley skiers were cliff jumpers, and Warren Miller was there to film them hopping off cornices built up across the main ridge by the prevailing west winds. From the top of the Granite Chief, Emigrant, or Headwall Express lifts, a short hike takes you to dizzying launch points—all with beautiful views of Lake Tahoe below. Granite Chief Peak and the treacherously steep and sheer Squaw Peak Palisades, which formed the training ground for freeskiing revolutionaries like Rick Sylvester, Scot Schmidt, Tom Day, and C. R. Johnson, are still immensely popular. So if you're looking for more tranquil rippin' grounds, head to the locals' favorite peak, KT-22. It's less crowded than the main ridge and offers 40-degree pitches across its entire northern exposure. Most runs haven't been regularly groomed since the Swiss Army bootpacked them in preparation for the 1960 Olympics. Though locals sometimes poach the backcountry behind KT-22, Squaw doesn't allow it, and resort managers have no plans to open the ski resort boundary. —ł§.˛Ń.

Northstar-at-Tahoe
TRUCKEE, CALIFORNIA

Northstar was born as a family-oriented (read: intermediate) ski area in the central Sierra, but it's matured nicely. Last season the resort opened 200 acres and 1,200 vertical feet of expert plunges on Lookout Mountain, far north of the intermediate-level traffic. From its 8,120-foot summit, Lookout offers views north to the Martis, Boca, Stampede, and Prosser reservoirs, for which the runs are named. On the afternoon of a powder day, the trees between the Stampede and Prosser groomers are like eastern glades (tight) holding light western snow, and you can do laps on the Lookout Mountain Express lift. Gooseneck, the fifth of five black-diamond Lookout runs, hews close to the lift line, making its trees the steepest, and sometimes most skied, in the group. While you're skiing Lookout, your rookie friends can ski the 1,860 vertical feet of fast cruisers and glades off the Backside. Its gentle, 14-degree pitch and generous 15-foot spaces between trees mean the only thing they'll hit is planing speed. —ł§.˛Ń.

Sugar Bowl Resort
NORDEN, CALIFORNIA

The American River Gorge lies just south of Sugar Bowl's main summit, Mount Lincoln, and channels Pacific storms right into its sharp ridgeline. The heavy ocean air drops its condensation and piles up more snow here than anywhere else in the central Sierra. This winter, with the inauguration of Mount Lincoln's Express Quad, skiers will eat more pow and log more vertical feet than ever before. And we do mean vertical.

From the new lift you look straight down at The Sisters, a 500-foot-wide, 50-foot-tall broken cliff band that acts as a speed bump on 40-degree Fuller's Folly. Down Lincoln's west shoulder are the wide, smooth, and steep chutes of The '58, named for a 1958 avalanche, and The Palisades. Both are bare of trees and too steep to get bumped up. At the beginning or end of the season, thin snow leaves them skinny and rock-studded—enough so that ski mountaineering brothers Rob and Eric DesLauriers use them to tame hubris in their freeskiing clinics.

The snow piles up just as deep off Crow's Nest Peak, a gentler hike-to preserve along the resort's western boundary. Here, Crow's Face and Strawberry Fields trace shallow ravines past thickets of trees. Ski them during a storm and airy fluff fills in your tracks after every run. —ł§.˛Ń.

Mammoth Mountain
MAMMOTH LAKES, CALIFORNIA

Ride the Panorama Gondola to the top of Mammoth, just 20 miles east of Yosemite National Park, and skate out along the ridge—the damned thing is seven miles long. At least 13 named runs, and a handful more off-piste runs, all of wildly varying shapes, plummet between rock buttes. On a powder morning, peer down Climax's 800-vertical-foot drop, near the gondola off-loading area. If it's tracked, shuffle one slot west to Hangman's Hollow—rocky ridges make it a vertical half-pipe. Or head east to challenge the scimitar curve of Huevos Grande. When a three-day storm blows in and closes the upper lifts, drag out your widest boards, and hit Mammoth's lower summits. Cinder cones like Lincoln Mountain, Hemlock Ridge, and Dragon's Tail sit at timberline, so their wind-sheltered slopes harbor perfect powder. —ł§.˛Ń.

Wicked Pitch of the West,

You ain't sick, rad, or bad until you drop these ski-movie steeps

Big Sky Resort
BIG SKY, MONTANA

No single summit in American skiing is more aptly named, or offers more steep lift-served skiing—2,160 acres of advanced or expert terrain—than the solitary pyramid of 11,150-foot Lone Peak at Big Sky in the Madison Range. Some two dozen off-piste chutes and couloirs fall more than 1,400 vertical feet from the top. Wind and high-altitude sun can blast and scorch this monument to adrenal thrills, but more often, you surrender yourself to the sky-blue ether, affixed to Mother Earth by only a thin metal edge. The gnarliest chute of all is Castro, a summit-to-lift elevator shaft that hits 50 degrees, but all of the A to Z Chutes on the north summit ridge are nearly as steep, if only slightly shorter. Reach them by passing through a checkpoint at the base of Lone Peak Tram, where the ski patrol will make sure you're armed with a shovel and transceiver and a partner who's not inept. Then climb 20 minutes to the A to Z, or ride the tram to the top and carry your skis out along the vertiginous ridge. Though Big Sky's boundary is firmly closed, these runs are like in-bounds backcountry. Lower down, in a tamer universe, resort management cleared two new glades over the past two summers— Bearlair and Congo—as tests for additional in-bounds off-piste expansion.‱÷.°ż.
Bridger Bowl
BOZEMAN, MONTANA

It's not the Bowl that put Bridger on the map. It's The Ridge above it. Ski The Ridge before you die. Five hundred vertical feet of glades, cliffs, couloirs, and other impending disasters loom over this unpretentious Bozeman commuter area. Bridger newbies should join the $90 tour offered by the ski school. If you decide to hook up with locals at the gates above Bridger lift instead, you must convince the ski patrol that you and your teammate know the area. They'll check for your shovel and map, and pass a sensor over your chest to verify that your avalanche transceiver is transmitting before you're allowed to throw your skis over your shoulder, bootpack 20 minutes up the trail, and drop into 450 acres of steep runs. When one of those subzero Montana storms dumps a foot of powder, jump-turn down near-vertical chutes like The O's and Sometimes A Great Notion. Then do it again. And again. A new ski-patrol-only Poma lift ensures The Ridge will be avalanche controlled more often this year. (Bridger management doesn't plan to open the lift to the public or allow out-of-bounds skiing anytime soon.) If you need a warm-up before dropping into extreme terrain, head to The Fingers, a sort of lesser Ridge comprising four expert chutes at the southern edge of the ski area. A new triple chair, Pierre's Knob Lift, will quickly shuttle you to the beginning of the ten- to 15-minute hike. Take your pick, and take our advice: Visit when Montana State University's 12,000 ski fanatics are in school.—Ron C. Judd

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort
TOTEN VILLAGE, WYOMING

Look at the Tetons from the east and it's tough to pick out the Jackson Hole ski area. Eighty-four mostly expert runs blend seamlessly into the mottled facade of granite, limestone, spruce thickets, and open slopes, all jumbled together at different angles and exposures. It's a rocky muscularity you simply won't find at any other ski resort in America—and if you think Jackson's in-bounds terrain is challenging, wait until you get outside the ropes.

Since 1999, skiers have been legally venturing through the gates on Rendezvous Mountain to explore thousands of square miles of unpatrolled, unmanaged backcountry. The most accessible extreme terrain is in Granite Canyon, a ten-minute climb up the headwall behind the gondola off-loading area, and Cody Bowl, a half-hour hike south from the top of the tram. Cody's lower, east-facing slope, No Shadows, features superb open-bowl powder skiing and a small cornice jump, although the run is relatively short. Head ten minutes farther up the ridge and along a cornice to sheer and narrow Four Shadows and hair-raisingly treacherous Central Couloir. Still not satisfied? Schlepp a half-hour around the south side of Cody for even more open bowls, rock-lined chutes, and well-spaced trees. A word to the wise: Hire a guide for at least your first adventure—avalanche danger is high and it's easy to end up stranded one valley too far south. And warm up on a relatively easy in-bounds run like, say, 50-degree Corbet's Couloir.‱÷.°ż.
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East Beats West,

If you love tree skiing, there's no better place to do it…even in an ice storm

Jay Peak Resort
JAY PEAK, VERMONT

If you're looking for powder east of the Mississippi, Jay Peak is your place. Last year, storms whacked this remote resort, eight miles from the Canadian border, with 571 inches of white stuff. That happened to be a record, but the five-year average is still 428 inches, a figure that many resorts in Colorado can't match. Thanks to minimal crowds and numerous hidden glades, untracked snow is as common in-bounds here as it is out-of-bounds at other places in New England.

Like the 22 glades and chutes elsewhere at Jay, one-and-a-quarter-mile-long Everglade, the mountain's longest run, wasn't carved out to match some developer's master plan. It was thinned according to the angle of the fall line and the natural paths between trees. Jay's resort boundary has also been changed to make the most of local timber; it was recently stretched to embrace backcountry favorite Beyond Beaver Pond, an enclave of birch, spruce, and maple trees. And this winter Deliverance, a 20-acre glade, opens.

şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř the boundary, Jay boasts atypically rugged terrain and offers guided tours into the most accessible swatch of backcountry— the Dip, a roughly 1,300-vertical-foot backside run down to Vermont 242. Locals leave their salt-corroded pickups here for the shuttle back to the base area. They're happy to give you a lift, especially on a powder day.‱÷.°ż.

Stowe
STOWE, VERMONT

Mix seven decades of skiing tradition, the tallest mountain in Vermont (4,395-foot Mount Mansfield), and locals who surreptitiously brush-cut new lines in the summertime, and you've got some of the best glade skiing in the world. Skiers accustomed to unobstructed slopes should warm up on a run like Tres Amigos, a moderately steep forest with trees spaced like slalom gates. Then, if you're lucky, some chainsawer will steer you to his or her private line (perhaps around Chin Clip, near the summit, or the Kitchen Wall, above Nose Dive).

But what really makes Stowe special are the steep and narrow chutes on the east face of the Chin. These runs are accessible only after a 35-minute grunt to the top, and few places in the East serve up so many obstacles—everything from stubbled trees to wind-scoured ice to cliffs—or threaten such drastic consequences. Navigating the tight quarters and obstacles off the Chin—like those of the perfectly named Hourglass and Hell Brook— demands technical finesse, precise turns, and line selection that separates tree skiers from open-bowl cruisers.‱÷.°ż.

Sugarbush Resort
WARREN, VERMONT

Ski Sugarbush's Castlerock and you can ski anything in the East—or, for that matter, almost anything anywhere. The Rock's ten narrow trails all weave through patches of granite and ice, and drop 1,669 vertical feet. Some chutes, like Middle Earth and Coutillion, fall as much as 40 degrees and are skied only by a handful of kamikaze experts. One trail, the infamous Rumble, snakes through a patch ofoverhanging branches so dense that, when seen from below, it looks like virgin forest. When you're ready to dull your edges elsewhere, duck the boundary rope near Lincoln Peak and continue up the mile-long ridge—a section of Vermont's Long Trail—to great unpatrolled out-of-bounds terrain. There, the Saddle follows a gully through the trees, while a rocky outcropping known as the Church features a number of lines that require air time. Finally, hit Lincoln Peak's Paradise glade, often a powder cache, or hire a Sugarbush guide to lead you through Slide Brook, an out-of-bounds National Forest Service basin north of Castlerock with scores of tree lines.‱÷.°ż.

Sugarloaf/USA
CARRABASSETT VALLEY, MAINE

Vacation brochures justifiably brag about the unique thrills of Sugarloaf's above-timberline skiing. But more significant was Sugarloaf's quiet decision to adopt a “boundary-to-boundary” policy in the mid-1990s. With that, everything within the resort—all the unfenced glades and thick forests between trails—became fair game. Now, when midwinter wind blows snow off the peak and makes the summit Snowfields an ice rink, you can ski the spruce glades below, where all that snow ends up. Snowboarders especially love these tight spaces; unlike skiers, they don't catch their tips on exposed saplings, and they can turn easily to slough speed as openings disappear. Down below, the brush thickens into an impenetrable forest.

So, a standout Sugarloaf run goes like this: Start on the Snowfields, pick a line through the trees for another 400 vertical feet, and then connect with Rip Saw, a rough-cut trail in the King Pine area, for a final 1,000 vertical feet to the bottom. It's off-piste and on-trail merged seamlessly in a single descent.‱÷.°ż.
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Storm Warning,

Soggy coastal weather may suck, but there's a flip side: epic dumps up high

Clearly Canadian: unlimited visibility at Whistler Blackcomb

Crystal Mountain
CRYSTAL MOUNTAIN, WASHINGTON

Before marketing flacks ever used “freeskiing” to describe a supposedly new style of carving backcountry terrain, powder hogs were doing just that at Crystal Mountain. The resort's combined 1,000-acre North and South Back have a well-earned reputation for untracked snow—heavy powder, but steep and long enough, around 1,200 vertical feet, to keep the tips bobbing. Sheer runs like Brain Damage, a 45-degree pinnacle, punctuate half a dozen open bowls that funnel either to the main base area or to a shuttle stop on the resort road. So far, the 10- to 30-minute traverses from the tops of Green Valley and High Campbell lifts, intimidating warning signs, and common sense have kept these haunts off-limits to the masses. But this December, the Forest Service will rule on a $60-million resort revamp, which could change everything. The plan would double Crystal's lift inventory, stringing a tram to the summit and a new lift to the top of Snorting Elk, centerpiece of the double-diamond North Back. Bottom line: Ski Crystal soon. Â‸é.°ä.´ł.
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Mt. Baker
MOUNT, BAKER WASHINGTON

Baker didn't build a terrain park until last spring, for good reason: The whole North Cascades resort is one—full of contorted side hills, U-shaped gullies, uneven creekbeds, rocky faces, and treed slopes. Management would have bulldozed these hazards into smooth, groomable runs, but because Baker can get more snow than anywhere in the world (100 feet fell here in the '98­'99 season), the mountain is naturally transformed into a gigantic, powder-cushioned obstacle course. Within resort boundaries, skiers can jump turn on the open, double-black expanse of Pan Face, dodge branches on the tree-studded Sticky Wicket, or struggle to maintain composure among the house-size boulders on the Gabl's cliffatorium beneath Chair 5. Add the out-of-bounds bonus, the wide-open glades of Shuksan Arm, and Baker offers the total package for anyone who likes to color outside the lines. Â‸é.°ä.´ł.

Whistler Blackcomb Mountains
WHISTLER, BRITISH COLUMBIA

You could spend a lifetime discovering all the ins, outs, and way-outs of 7,071-acre Whistler Blackcomb, a pair of sister resorts in the Canadian Rockies. (They share the same base area, so you can ski both for the price of one.) Off-piste tyros should immerse themselves slowly. First, ride Whistler's Garbanzo Express lift to Club 21, Side Order, Unsanctioned, and In Deep, four thin glades cut two years ago for intermediates. Then, take the Harmony Express to the top of Harmony Bowl, where you'll find a couple dozen in-bounds routes through the moderately steep treed bowl below. And then there's all the rest: at least a dozen other in-bounds stashes visible from the same vantage point, and a dozen more chutes on ridges that stretch to the horizon. Garnet and Ruby Bowls in the Blackcomb Glacier area and Whistler Bowl in Whistler are the standout off-piste double-diamonds. They're big, long toe-curlers—some reached by narrow chutes. Since fog often cloaks the base while wet snow or rain falls up top, ask around about where the weather's best. Â‸é.°ä.´ł.

Schweitzer
SANDPOINT, IDAHO

Skiers come to Schweitzer, in the Purcell Mountains, for the groomed runs and leave raving about the powder. Last year, after installing the six-person Stella lift, Schweitzer management redrew the ski-area boundary to include 150 acres of formerly out-of-bounds glades. The Northwest Territory is perfect for intermediates. The trees are far enough apart to make you feel like a trunk-dodging pro, the pitch is moderate, and, like all other runs at this hideaway resort outside Sandpoint, these runs are usually uncrowded and covered in snow that is drier and lighter than that at resorts near the coast. Hit the steeper tree runs and open slopes off the main summit lift, Snow Ghost, and if you're not enshrouded in fog, views of 43-mile-long Lake Pend Oreille stretch out below. From there you can see tracks down Big Blue and Little Blue peaks, the best dividends from a three-year-old open-boundary policy. Follow a local through roughly 1,200 vertical feet of “snow ghosts,” head-high trees flocked with snow and ice, and then pick your way back to Stella. Â‸é.°ä.´ł.

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