PLACES

Smart travel. Luxury travel. Sporting travel. Family travel. Mountains. Far-flung places. Spas.

Regions of particular expertise:

California, Alaska, British Columbia, Switzerland, the Alps, French ski resorts, Croatia, Chile, Argentina

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SKI Magazine
January 2004
 

The Essential Tahoe
 

SKI Magazine
November 2005
 

Where Now: Les Arcs, France

SKI Magazine
January 2005
 

Where Now: Mammoth Mountain, California

SKI Magazine
January 2004
 

Mountain of Dreams: Kicking Horse, British Columbia

SKI Magazine
December 2001
 

Dad's Love Child: Lookout Pass, Idaho

SKI Magazine
December 2001
 

Rafting Sixmile Creek

SKI Mountain Summer
May 2001
 

L.A. Ski Story

SKI Magazine
March 2001
 

Cosmopolitan Vancouver

SKI Magazine
January 2001
 

Family Friendly Switzerland

SKI Magazine
November 2000
 

Boom Town, B.C.

SKI Magazine
November 2000
 

Fantasy Camp

Skiing Magazine
November 2000
 

Balancing Act: Kirkwood, California

SKI Magazine
November 1999
 

Mammoth Meets Its Maker

SKI Magazine
November 1998
 

Aim High: Alaska's Chugach Mountains

Skiing Magazine
September 1998
 

Flume Trail

SKI Mountain Summer
May 1998
 
 
What every skier needs to know to tackle Tahoe.
… Tahoe may have matured, but it's still known best for its postcard good looks: the vast, deep blue lake and thick pine forests, the monster boulders and craggy spires, the ancient, gnarled junipers jutting into the broad, spacious sky. …
 
From the blustery summit of Les Arcs' Aiguille Rouge, the view is nothing but Alps, cresting and white, sprawling to all horizons. "Allez," says Vincent, my guide. Let's go. We slip away from the crowds on the piste, skirting around the summit to the top of a broad, steep pitch of virgin powder that …
 
Fifty years ago, the story goes, Warren Miller would sleep in his freezing '49 Chevy at the foot of Mammoth Mountain, Calif., waiting for the lifts to open. Ever since, the resort, which Blackcomb creator Hugh Smythe calls "the best ski mountain in the United States," has inspired great devotion despite …

 
Another Whistler. Another Whistler. Another Whistler. No one's saying it anymore, but it was said so much in the beginning that the echo still reverberates around Western Canada's Kicking Horse River Valley like the shout of a lost man in the wilds. It bounces down the gravelly, lackluster streets …
 
Lookout Pass is not big: Its 195 skiable acres boast exactly one ropetow and one chairlift. It is not pretend-swanky: The most popular beer on tap in its warmly rustic 60-year-old day lodge is something called Moose Drool, and corn-battered french fries are the favored hot snack. And though the slopes …
 
At midnight on summer solstice, the narrow canyons and swift, silty waters of Alaska's Sixmile Creek are only slightly more treacherous than they are at high noon. The only hints of night are the full moon's faint, luminous trace in the bright sky and the slight sapping of color from …
 
The first thought that comes to mind when driving through the sunbaked, concrete sprawl of L.A. is not "Let's go skiing." The air is often so milky with haze that you can't even see the monumental mountains that encircle the greater L.A. basin until you are quite literally in them. …
 
Grouse Mountain rises above the sandy beaches and gleaming skyscrapers of Vancouver as distinctively as the Hollywood sign beckons across L.A.. The mountain's hulking presence is not merely visible from all over Vancouver, it is impossible to ignore. Caked in snow, with its wide main slope …
 
When night comes to the tiny Swiss village of Rougemont, there's little to hear but the beckoning of bells from a church tower that has sent harmonies echoing through the Vaudois Alps for more than 900 years. Set amid open mountain pastures and framed by dramatic, rocky peaks, Rougemont and neighboring …
 
A train whistle wails through a broad valley in the Canadian Rockies. The valley, flanked on all sides by monumental mountain faces, cradles a 100-year-old town called Fernie, B.C. The town scatters its unpretentious, coal-mining self along one bank of the broad Elk River as it curves through …
 
Monday 6 A.M. The clock-tower bell rings six times, echoing through the predawn mists that cling to the narrow, sloped streets of Champery, Switzerland. A weeklong ski adventure in the Alps begins today -- but I appear to be the sole member of our group roused by the bell. Small wonder: The six others …
 
Old Dick Reuter is just about the only person who can lay claim to feeling crowded in Kirkwood, Calif. Only 135 people live there. Some call it a ski town, but in reality it's a small cluster of buildings at the base of a serious ski area at the end of a road that wends its way through nearly a million acres of …
 
At the mouth of the road leading from the town of Mammoth Lakes to the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, in what formerly served as the manager's quarters at the dowdy Thrift Lodge Motel, a half-dozen Boomer couples are ushered into a lushly appointed screening room. Two faux evergreens flank…
 
Clouds hang wet and low over Alaska's Cook Inlet. The ocean's surface looks oily and gray. Twenty would-be heli-skiers mill around on a low bluff. A bright orange clay target slings out over the inlet. There's a crack of a shotgun, the hiss of a beer can opening, some rough laughter. …
 
The Flume Trail clings boldly to Lake Tahoe basin's upper rim at a height of 7,700 feet. On one side of the trail, rocks scrape handlebars. On the other, the slope drops off steeply, plummeting 1,500 feet through the dense pine forest to the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe. …
 
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