Breckenridge, CO

Breckenridge is a charming Victorian town with lift-served skiing on four interconnected mountains. There’s easy-street skiing and snowboarding on Peak 9, tough stuff on Peak 10, and splendid backcountry-style skiing on Peak 7—155 trails in total, with a vertical rise of over 3,000 ...

Keystone, CO

If nearby Arapahoe Basin is a streamlined alpine experience with nominal infrastructure and very little to get in the way of you and the mountain, Keystone is Colorado skiing on steroids—only sans the haute vibe typical to Aspen and Vail. Its statistic pedigree tells only part of the tale, ...

Park City, UT

As if wrapped in the latest zany installation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Deer Valley is a lattice of metaphorical red carpet: trails groomed to perfection, multimillion-dollar lodges peppering the promontories, polite liftees who'd give palace butlers a run for their money, ...

Bethel, ME

What has been developed here is a widely rambling resort on nine peaks, where the dedication to superb snow farming and affordable lodging is second to none. The result is a major ski area just 90 minutes from Portland that offers something for everyone. If there's a weakness, it's that the ...

Truckee, CA

Look at the trail map, and it might seem as though there is relatively little beginner terrain. But trust me—most of the intermediate runs at Northstar ski more like novice runs, and most of the advanced runs ski like intermediate runs. I've heard north-shore locals deride Northstar, ...

Timberline Lodge, OR

Mt. Hood's Timberline was the first ski area on the continent to offer lift-served summer skiing, and more than 50,000 skiers a season now take advantage of this novelty. There's nothing in the ski world to match a ride up the Magic Mile Super Express over the Palmer Snowfield. Palmer is ...

Stratton Mountain, VT

Snowboarding was born here, and the resort remains a favorite among riders. The sport's roots are honored each March with the annual staging of the U.S. Open competitions. Stratton was also one of the first mountains to install a six-passenger, high-speed chairlift. The downhill boarding is ...

South Lake Tahoe, CA, CA

Heavenly is unique in that it sprawls across state boundaries. Part of the ski area is in California and part is in Nevada, and for my money, the Nevada part is the better part. The fall line is more sustained, meaning that runs tend to be longer.

For novice skiers, Heavenly can be ...

Beaupre, QU

It's somewhere around the mid-run sugar shack stop for tire d'erable—a maple taffy made from hot, locally tapped syrup poured onto a trough of snow to cool and rolled, lollipop-style, onto a stick—that it dawns on you: Skiing in Quebec isn't just a colder, Frenchier version of ...

West Dover, VT

Mount Snow was once the province of bizarre innovation and the nonstop partying weekend. Today, it sprawls over more than 630 acres and 135 trails, and remains one of the "happening" eastern resorts on weekends. These days the "with it" clientele is snowboarding teens and mogul mashing Gen-Xers. ...