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 ...

Aspen, CO

Although it’s the smallest of the four Aspen resorts (the others being Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, and Snowmass), size is alwaysrelative—with 470 skiable acres and a vertical rise that extends over 2,000 feet, Buttermilk still demands respect as some of the region’s ...

Copper Mountain, CO

If the Gods of Winter were looking for the perfect model for future ski resorts, Copper would be their template. The stats listed below paint part of the picture, but the geographical composition of the mountain itself, which naturally segregates skiers of different levels, really elevates ...

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, ...

Durango, CO

This friendly resort in southwestern Colorado is a charmer with a reputation for the mildest, sunniest weather, but still with good snow. The beguiling terrain ranges from a separate beginner area to mogul-dotted steeps. The delightful town of Durango offers economical lodging and plenty of ...

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 ...

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, ...

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. ...

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, ...