March 26, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Spring sings with skiing and shopping

One spring option close to home is the slopes of Smugglers' Notch in Vermont. (photo: Smugglers' Notch)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I cannot overstate the case for spring skiing — and shopping.

One of my usual moves in spring is to ski early and take the warm middle of the day to do some foraging in the ski shops at or near the area I’m visiting. If you anticipate needing new equipment or clothes next year — especially for those fast-growing kids, this is the season for the deepest discounting.

Retailers are eager to move last season’s stuff out the door, not back to the storage racks. Especially this season, with the slow economy, you’ll find not just stuff marked up to be marked down, but real deep discounting.

This is especially true if you need the expensive items such as skis boards, boots, and bindings.

Often, we think of major ski trips as winter activity. But since March and April are such snowy months in many places, this is the time of year that you’ll find the best travel deals to ski country, and some of the deepest, softest snow of the season.

If you have the travel bug, here are a few options.

Obviously, altitude and north-facing slopes are the best. With that in mind, this would be a great month for a trip to Whistler Blackcomb. Site of next year’s Winter Olympics, the area around Vancouver is eager to show off, and the lodging/lift deals are terrific right now.

Whistler, the venue for next February's alpine races, has great altitude and good exposures to hold snow.

California has two good late-season areas, including Kirkwood, the highest summit in the state. Mammoth may not be too easy to reach, but the snow remains sometimes well into June.

Utah has several late-opening mountains, and is one of the easiest destinations to travel to. Salt Lake City leaves an easy hop to Park City, which also has Deer Valley and The Canyons. Spring is also time to get into Alta’s powder chutes and Snowbird. Both of these stay open well into April.

Colorado has its late-season pickings. Arapahoe Basin skis well into June (sometimes into July) and both Copper and Winter Park have both altitude and north-facing slopes. These are also fairly easy to reach from Denver (about 70 miles) and the lodging deals are amazing this month.

As favorable as domestic travel is this spring season, so, too, are trips to Europe. The candidates here are almost too numerous to list here, but the operative move is to ski on the glacier, which remains (though it’s shrinking) year round.

Zermatt in Switzerland skis almost the entire year as does Val d’Isere, France, and Italy’s Piemont region with Sestriere, and Bardoneccia skis well into June.

This is a kind of tween season in Europe. Most of the big ski crowds have tapered off, and the hiking/biking vacations have not yet begun.

Closer-to-home spring trips are best in the Northeast Kingdom — Burke and Jay — Sugarloaf and Saddleback in Maine, Smugglers' Notch, and Killington in Vermont.

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Spring sings with skiing and shopping

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