Big Mountain

Forget Atkins, the Zone, and South Beach. I lost five pounds in eight days on the Altitude Diet. Of course, there are side effects: headache, sleeplessness, nausea, vomiting, exhaustion, chills, and shortness of breath. While most folks, even if they take no precautions, feel few symptoms of altitude sickness at elevations higher than 6,000 feet, others can do everything right and still end up sick. I’m one of them. The best strategy for averting altitude sickness is to skip vacationing at elevations that trigger it. Here are my favorite western resorts where the altitudinally...

Maine's Sugarloaf ski resort is being recognized for its marketing efforts. The National Ski Areas Association has named Sugarloaf co-winner of this year's best overall marketing campaign. It shared the award with Wyoming's Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The award announced at the trade association's annual convention in San Antonio, Texas. Sugarloaf was recognized for its "Big Mountain, Big Love" campaign that ran through the past ski season highlighting the resort's mountain and the people who ski there.

Spring has arrived, a wonderful time of year to hike alongside New Hampshire's many natural attractions: rushing waterfalls, warbling songbirds, and showy wildflowers to name a few. With increasing daylight, fewer crowds, and lower heat and humidity than in summer, this time of year can be ideal for visiting some of the state's most popular trails. Spring hiking in the Granite State also presents unique challenges. Winter conditions often last well into May in the highest mountains.

Spring has arrived, a wonderful time of year to hike alongside New Hampshire's many natural attractions: rushing waterfalls, warbling songbirds, and showy wildflowers to name a few. With increasing daylight, fewer crowds, and lower heat and humidity than in summer, this time of year can be ideal for visiting some of the state's most popular trails. Spring hiking in the Granite State also presents unique challenges. Winter conditions often last well into May in the highest mountains.

Maine's Sugarloaf ski resort is being recognized for its marketing efforts. The National Ski Areas Association has named Sugarloaf co-winner of this year's best overall marketing campaign. It shared the award with Wyoming's Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The award announced at the trade association's annual convention in San Antonio, Texas. Sugarloaf was recognized for its "Big Mountain, Big Love" campaign that ran through the past ski season highlighting the resort's mountain and the people who ski there.

Saturday marks one big day for one big mountain in Maine. Sugarloaf will debut the new Skyline Quad at noon, when a ribbon-cutting will precede the first riders on the $3 million Dopplemayr lift installed this summer, replacing the two old Spillway double chairs that accessed the same mid-mountain terrain at Sugarloaf. The first thing skiers and riders will notice about the new Skyline quad is the conveyor loading system, it's like a magic carpet that eases loading, therefore reducing human error and lift stops.

Every year in the national ski magazines, the season starts out with a breathlessly anticipated list of ski areas, rated in order of popularity by readers. The order may shift year to year, but the Eastern lineup is always about the same: Tremblant, Killington, Okemo, Sunday River, Loon . . . Great areas all, to be sure. And of course, though not every rural town has its own ski slope anymore, there are still the small local areas where people get their start and families go skiing together after work.

FRANCONIA, N.H. -- The smaller the town, the crazier the hours. Say you wanted to visit the Franconia Heritage Museum; that would be Thursday and Saturday afternoons. To check out the library on Main Street, you have a four-hour window Monday through Wednesday, a split shift on Thursdays, three hours on Friday, or you would have to make a Saturday-morning stop. Pick up bread at the bakery? That's open three days a week in winter. The outlet store in town is open three days a week year-round, though not the same three as the bakery next door.

JAFFREY, N.H. -- On a sunny morning, a stiff northwest breeze airs out the bare-rock summit of Mount Monadnock. Ravens soar in great loops on the thermal updrafts, and bands of hikers pass around sandwiches and energy bars as they pose for pictures with a backdrop of distant peaks in the White Mountains, Green Mountains, or Berkshires. On a clear day, the 100-mile view is about as good as it gets. But as we discovered in two days of talking to people on the trails, few hikers climb the mountain solely for the scenery.

LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK - At about 9,000 feet, the persistently steep trail up Brokeoff Mountain levels off at the edge of an abyss. To the northeast, framed between jagged cliffs, sits hulking Lassen Peak, a dozing volcano more than 1,000 feet higher, still mostly bare of trees and cloaked in gray dust from its last big eruption, 94 years ago. The sight could inspire an overcaffeinated Type-A tourist from the East Coast to renounce his...

Saturday marks one big day for one big mountain in Maine. Sugarloaf will debut the new Skyline Quad at noon, when a ribbon-cutting will precede the first riders on the $3 million Dopplemayr lift installed this summer, replacing the two old Spillway double chairs that accessed the same mid-mountain terrain at Sugarloaf. The first thing skiers and riders will notice about the new Skyline quad is the conveyor loading system, it's like a magic carpet that eases loading, therefore reducing human error and lift stops.

Forget Atkins, the Zone, and South Beach. I lost five pounds in eight days on the Altitude Diet. Of course, there are side effects: headache, sleeplessness, nausea, vomiting, exhaustion, chills, and shortness of breath. While most folks, even if they take no precautions, feel few symptoms of altitude sickness at elevations higher than 6,000 feet, others can do everything right and still end up sick. I’m one of them. The best strategy for averting altitude sickness is to skip vacationing at elevations that trigger it. Here are my favorite western resorts...

LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK - At about 9,000 feet, the persistently steep trail up Brokeoff Mountain levels off at the edge of an abyss. To the northeast, framed between jagged cliffs, sits hulking Lassen Peak, a dozing volcano more than 1,000 feet higher, still mostly bare of trees and cloaked in gray dust from its last big eruption, 94 years ago. The sight could inspire an overcaffeinated Type-A tourist from the East Coast to renounce his...

JAFFREY, N.H. -- On a sunny morning, a stiff northwest breeze airs out the bare-rock summit of Mount Monadnock. Ravens soar in great loops on the thermal updrafts, and bands of hikers pass around sandwiches and energy bars as they pose for pictures with a backdrop of distant peaks in the White Mountains, Green Mountains, or Berkshires. On a clear day, the 100-mile view is about as good as it gets. But as we discovered in two days of talking to people on the trails, few hikers climb the mountain solely for the scenery.

Every year in the national ski magazines, the season starts out with a breathlessly anticipated list of ski areas, rated in order of popularity by readers. The order may shift year to year, but the Eastern lineup is always about the same: Tremblant, Killington, Okemo, Sunday River, Loon . . . Great areas all, to be sure. And of course, though not every rural town has its own ski slope anymore, there are still the small local areas where people get their start and families go skiing together after work.

FRANCONIA, N.H. -- The smaller the town, the crazier the hours. Say you wanted to visit the Franconia Heritage Museum; that would be Thursday and Saturday afternoons. To check out the library on Main Street, you have a four-hour window Monday through Wednesday, a split shift on Thursdays, three hours on Friday, or you would have to make a Saturday-morning stop. Pick up bread at the bakery? That's open three days a week in winter. The outlet store in town is open three days a week year-round, though not the same three as the bakery next door.

New Hampshire's venerable Waterville Valley provides "big mountain" skiing close to Boston (2-hour drive), with its 4,000-foot summit and 52 trails over a 2,000-foot vertical. This weekend, the area will host the 20th running of the Jack Williams Ski Race for Wednesday's Child, which raises money to aid the adoption of kids with special needs. Williams, a Channel 4 news anchor, anticipates raising some $425,000 at an event where "the kids are the celebrities. " Visitors to Waterville Valley who are novice skiers can practice turns on Southstreet and Pasture, while Upper Valley Run, White Caps, and Old Tecumseh...

Every spring, my friends ask me about "skiing Tucks?" They think it sounds like such fun, a big spring ski party! Tuckerman Ravine is typically the last chance to ski, the last vestige of vertical after ski areas have closed, and a big party on snow on the biggest of the east - Mount Washington at 6,288 feet. But to me, Tuckerman Ravine is a serious hike, not to be entered into lightly, since you will be hauling your ski gear 3.1 miles up a trail, to a high alpine environ where conditions are ever-changing, and the skiing is for experts.