Not a whole lot of relevant “Z’s” around for snow, but I’ve settled on Zephyr. By definition, a zephyr is a light warm westerly wind, or gentle breeze. In the context of my A-Z, it stands for two things: the California Zephyr passenger train and the Zephyr Express lift at Winter Park Resort.
The California Zephyr is a 2,438-mile (3,924-km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak in the Midwestern and Southwestern United States. (more…)
Originally, my thought for Y was going to be Yellow Snow and the lyrics to Frank Zappa’s 1974 song “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow”, but then I thought I’m showing my age (and poor taste – yuk), so I choose Yard-Sale instead.
I found a number of definitions of yard sales while searching:
Ok, I know I’m stretching it a bit by using Xmas as my X, but there’s not a whole lot of choice out there! I could have had X-country skiing, or the annual Winter X-games in Aspen, but Xmas day is on Monday, so let’s have a nice warm and fuzzy feeling going here. After all, the abbreviation of Christmas to Xmas has a long history. In early Greek versions of the New Testament the letter X (chi), is the first letter of Christ (Χριστός). Since the mid-sixteenth century Χ, or the similar Roman letter X, was used as an abbreviation for Christ. So I’m fine with that.
The song White Christmas is undoubtedly the most famous and popular of all the Christmas songs. The music and lyrics for White Christmas were written by Irving Berlin in 1942 and originally featured in the movie Holiday Inn starring Bing Crosby. (more…)
Global warming is the specter threatening the ski industry, both in North America, and especially in Europe. This threat however, has not suddenly burst on the scene. With a background of skiing in Europe, and after two decades of poor or inconsistent snow, I wrote an article back in 2000 covering the predicted demise of the ski industry as we know it today.
A recent study by Zurich university geographers forecast that within a generation up to 70% of the Swiss glaciers will have disappeared. The impact will be even more severe elsewhere where the Alps are not so high. “Many mountain villages in central and eastern parts of Austria will lose their winter tourist industry because of climate change,” the geographers predicted. “In Italy, half of the winter sport villages are below 1,300 meters. In future there will only be a few winters with snow in these resorts.” This gloomy prognosis means, according to industry analysts, that the future of skiing in the Alps will belong to relatively few but huge and high resorts. (more…)
When I was living in England, one of the stats I was most interested in when the venue for our “next” ski trip to Europe was announced, was the resort’s vertical, i.e. how many continuous vertical feet could one ski from top to bottom without (technically) stopping. Yes, snow record and current conditions were important, number of trails, quality of accommodations, etc. But vertical feet implies size and size, as we’ve said before, does matter.
Whatever ski resort we were skiing, a ski buddy and I would always try to ski top-to-bottom without stopping at least once during the trip. And in Europe, this was some feat. In the USA a respectable descent down at a resort is something in the range of 1,500 to 2,500 feet. Resorts tout their vertical drop as a major selling point. Whistler Blackcomb, in British Columbia, Canada, has the greatest vertical drop of any ski resort in North America. Officially at 5,123 feet, this is allegedly exaggerated to 5,280 feet – or 1 mile – for marketing purposes. Snowmass comes in at 4,406 feet, Big Sky 4,180 feet, Jackson Hole at 4,139 feet, and you have to look down the list on the Vertical Feet website for Winter Park (actually the Mary Jane mountain) at 2,610 feet. Stratton, in Vermont, has 2,003 vertical feet, normal for New England. (more…)
