As snow creeps into the weather forecast — and some New York metro areas actually got a dusting over the weekend — it’s time to start planning winter activities. As snow lovers start dreaming of knee-deep powder and evenings in the lodge, why not grab a cup of hot chocolate and read on to find on what’ll be hot when it gets cold.
Skiing
The current issue of Skiing is awash with awe-inspiring shots of mountains and skiers flying through the air — none better than the fantastic cover shot of a skier blasting through deep powder — but it takes the sport a step further with its “Adventure Guide.” The book offers compelling stories about extraordinary people risking their lives — or at least tempting fate — to ski in far-flung places like Denali, Alaska, at an altitude of 16,000 feet. It’s a travelogue about a group of 27 skiers from 15 countries who won a contest and got to travel to Norway but reads like a short story populated with engaging characters. The Active Interest Media title also looks at the business of skiing through the lens of local residents of resort towns like Telluride, Aspen and Salt Lake that have become too expensive and are in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. The mix of articles, crisp writing and top-notch photo journalism gets our highest praise.
TransWorld Snowboarding
Transworld Snowboarding smokes out the popularity of weed in the sport, tracing the history of the drug’s lure to British Columbia, where apparently pot and “the nascent sport grew up together.” The magazine is big on snowboarding fashion, devoting about a third of its pages to pricey jackets — $400 and up — and other gear to keep you warm in sub-zero temperatures. The title, celebrating its 30th anniversary, profiles some gritty characters — like Aaron Lebowitz, a mobile bus-living maker of surf-inspired snowboards — who give the must-do winter activity its spice. The current issue provides a timeline for the evolution of snowboarding, what influenced it and its parallels with the skateboarding culture, serving up smart writing with some service journalism.
Powder
Powder offers edgy writing, including first-person accounts from locals in ski resort towns who offer hilarious and bitter takes on their love-hate — mostly hate — relationships with tourists. But it really excels with its travel features, including photography that rivals that in any issue of Travel & Leisure (except the beach profiles, of course). The issue also takes you to Cascadia, Alaska, to Alberta, Canada, and to Narvik, Norway, a World War II battleground turned skiers’ paradise. If you’re looking for the latest in gear and fashion, Powder is not that. It will, however, give you a serious itch to buy a plane ticket to a mountain resort.
Snowboarder
Snowboarder taps Bode Merrill to guest-edit its current issue. The 30-year-old snowboard phenom interviews about a half-dozen friends as part of a deal he cut with the book, which is making a movie, “Reckless Abandon,” with Merrill. “I picked all my friends for the features,” Miller writes in the editor’s note, adding, “and made the staff regret their decision with my extreme demands.” His father, Bob Merrill, also offers an editor’s note on his son’s early years, describing Bode’s fearlessness as a child as “freakin’ nuts.” The issue seems to take to heart its readers’ impatience to get out to the slopes. It’s big on photos, short editorial sections, and one third of the book is a spread on stuff to buy. It’s a fun read, but three parts attitude to two parts substance.
New Yorker
How pathetic was Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign? It was “a little bit like a parent watching a kid in a sporting match, and you don’t feel like you have as much control over it,” President Obama tells the New Yorker’s David Remnick. Perhaps more striking is Obama’s circuitous admission that he was blindsided by Trump’s victory, and his failure to reassure his own staff that it wasn’t “the apocalypse.” The White House was “like a funeral home,” a staffer says. For our part, we must admit we had figured such lack of gumption was limited mainly to the liberal press, as opposed to the White House itself. And how did that sit-down meeting with Trump go? He’ll tell Remnick “at some point over a beer — off the record.”
Time
For no apparent reason — other than, perhaps, that it’s in dire need of a vacation after this election — Time runs a double issue padded with “the most influential photos of all time.” They range from pictures of the Marlboro cowboy to Salvador Dali to the view of the Earth from the moon. While they’re all impressive, their biggest shared virtue may be the fact that none of them have Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in them. For those still interested in what’s going to happen to this country, there’s a “user’s guide to President Trump” which, like every other major media outlet this month, concludes determinedly that the transition has been “chaotic” and he “faces a steep learning curve.”
