Places

zoom

photo: Courtesy of Viceroy Hotel

The best lodging at Snowmass is at the Viceroy, a sister property to the ones in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Palm Springs, Miami, and Anguilla. The hotel features a tasteful décor in zen gray, browns, and blacks, and handsome hallways full of contemporary sculpture and abstract art.

zoom

photo: Courtesy of ARC

There you are, charging up I-70 on your way to a foot of fresh Colorado powder, when an elk the size of your grandmother’s china cabinet decides that the other side of the highway is the place he wants to be. It’s bad for your fenders, very bad for the elk, and bad for the economy, at a cost of $8 billion a year.

zoom

photo: Brooke Slezak

It is an idiosyncratic species, the Mad River Glen skier, and among its distinguishing features, pride leavened with self-effacing humor is its most endearing. That, and the bumper stickers.

zoom

photo: Hank Devre

We’ve skied our share of Squaw Valley in our time, but we couldn’t tell you a single run we’ve taken, and it has nothing to do with that mild concussion over on Granite Chief. Rather, it’s because for the 62 years the resort has been around, Squaw has never formally named its runs, only the lifts that serve them.

zoom

photo: Courtesy Doppelmyr

Among the big things happening in Sochi in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics is the installation of a gondola big enough to carry cars. It seems that Olympic rules require two vehicular routes to venues, and there is but one road to the Rosa Khutor ski area where alpine events will take place. Lift manufacturer Doppelmayr is modifying 25 of its giant 3S gondola cars to carry the loads, and presumably testing the cables. In a pinch, we suppose it could work as overflow parking.