Above, view atop Crystal Mountain this morning
12 October 2016 — that roar you hear out of the Pac NW comes from the resounding cheers from skiers & boarders as the first snow of the season has dusted slopes at Mission Ridge, Stevens Pass, Summit at Snoqualmie, and as seen in the photo above, Crystal Mountain got in on the action…Utah preseason news, Snowbird guests are in for a treat with a remodeled Cliff Lodge and a completely new Creekside Lodge. The new Creekside will have about three times the original square footage, and will be the new base for the ski school…In Colorado, the city of Steamboat Springs is trying to find a third-party operator for venerable Howelsen Hill, which the town currently runs in conjunction with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. Howelsen, if you aren’t familiar with it, is an in-town area with impressive nordic facilities and serves as a key US Olympic Team training facility. According to the RFP the town is underwriting the operation to the tune of $625,000 per season, and they want to reduce that nut. The plan is to turn over operations in time for 2017-18…Ski Maine Association and the Sugarloaf Mountain Ski Club are presenting “Down-Mountain and Cross-Country: 145 Years of Skiing in Maine,” next Thursday (Oct 20th) at 7 p.m. at Paris Cape Historical Society, 77 High St. in Paris Maine. Featuring more than 100 historic photos, the program will be narrated by Scott Andrews, a Portland-based ski journalist and Ski Museum curator who assembled the photos and performed most of the research…sorry to report the first North American ski tragedy of the “season,” back on September 25, Trevor Sexsmith, 27, of Golden British Columbia was killed in an avalanche on Mount Victoria in Banff National Park. Sexsmith and a partner were attempting an early season backcountry ski route when conditions forced their retreat. They were descending when the avalanche hit.