Travel & Transport

I love exploring the mountains and there are more peaks than I could ever hope to see in my lifetime. Of course the Seven Summits are on my list but, I haven't even summited one of them yet. So, what is a frustrated, wannabe mountaineer to do? You can start exploring any of the Seven Summits with StreetView in Google Maps. Go to maps.google.com, type in the name of the peak, zoom in to the street view level and start planning your approach from base camp.

Hey, ski resort. I know we haven't seen much of each other for a few months but the mornings have been getting cooler and I was thinking about you. I want us to be together every winter, but we need to talk. I love the great times we've had together but we can't keep going on like we used to. We could talk about the weather all the time: When will it snow? How much? Will it be light, fluffy powder or a heavy, wet blanket of snow? But things have changed and I'm worried about our future. We need to talk about CO2 and climate change.

We are well into the heat of summer in the Northern Hemisphere (I hope the skiing is great South of the Equator!) and warm weather mountain sports are in season. Heading to the mountains is a great way to escape the heat and find other ways of earning your turns. One of my favorites is Mountain Biking, just a whippersnapper compared to skiing, but it has been around since the early 1970's.

Welcome to Summer all you Northern Hemisphereans (is that a word?)! While winter is half way around the sun for many of us, now is a great time of year for all forms of warm-weather outdoor recreation. If you work in the 'fun' world of outdoor recreation you might feel like some people don't take the outdoor industry very seriously. What if you could tell them that the Outdoor Industry employs nearly three times more people than the fossil fuel industry? It turns out that outdoor fun is serious business.

Thanksgiving has just past and many ski resorts have opened or will be spinning their lifts soon. Ski resorts with snowmaking or with good weather compete to see who can open their lifts first, often with only one run open. That friendly competition usually leaves out the smaller ski areas. Many town ski hills must wait for natural snowfall to cover their runs.

Winters of My Life from Jonathan Burhop on Vimeo.

'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.' That saying applies to skiing and snowboarding as well as time-share condo seminars. Peter Frick-Wright discovered as much in his attempt to reduce his carbon footprint (snowprint?) by snowboarding in the backcountry. Peter rode a train to 'see whether I can ride the rails to a near-zero-emissions vacation'. Unfortunately, Peter wasn't able to avoid car trips to the trailhead and he got a crash-course in backcountry ski safety too.

Get your boot bags together, go bring your ski friends too, ‘cause its getting nearer, it soon will be with you. Yes, the Denver to Winter Park ski train is returning on December 27, 2009. Now called the Rio Grande Scenic Ski Train, the train departs from Union Station in Denver at 7am, arrives at Winter Park at 9:15am. The return trip departs Winter Park at 4:15pm and arrives at Denver at 6:30pm. The ski train will run through March 28, 2010 with a weekend schedule in January, adding Thursday and Friday service in February and March.