Northeast Skiing Cant Keep Up WIth the West :: Journalism Journalistic Essays

Northeast Skiing Can't Keep Up With the West Skiers are very loyal athletes. They grow up learning on certain mountains and usually spend most of their lives skiing at those same ones. They remember every bump and turn on the way down. They know which lift to take because it is the fastest and has the shortest line. It takes a lot for a skier to stray from their normal habitat and adventure to slopes unknown. Actually, it takes two seasons of horrible skiing conditions, which is what the Northeast ski industry has recently suffered. Two long years of rain, ice, sleet, and bitter temperatures. The biggest and best mountains in the Northeast have had their finest trails closed almost all of the 2003-04 season. The less open trails, the more crowded the ones that are open are. The less lifts that are open, the more crowded the open ones are. The more crowded the mountain is, the more angry skiers are. So what do these angry skiers do? They do the unthinkable and look elsewhere. They look west. â€Å"The skiing out West is much better,† said Doug Sabanosh, managing editor of SKI Magazine. â€Å"The East is cold, cloudy, and gray while out West we have 300 days of sun.† Sabanosh grew up skiing in the Northeast, but he has been living in Colorado for the past 15 years. He says that the mountains out there are bigger, which eliminates the problem of crowdedness on the mountain. Trails are wide open, lift lines are short, and the weather is unbelievable. More people are following Sabanosh’s lead and heading out West to look for better skiing. The Northeast is slumping. The past two years have been slow. Resorts here in the East have been doing everything they can to keep their numbers up and stay competitive with the West. Recently, SKI Magazine came out with its top ten ski areas in North America. The list is voted on by the magazine’s readers. It is based on things such as region, snow, grooming, terrain, challenge, value, lifts, weather, service, and off-hill activities. Not one resort from the Northeast was in that top ten. Six resorts from Colorado made the poll including Vail and Steamboat. Mountains from Utah and Idaho filled in the rest of the list as well as Whistler Mountain in British Columbia. The West dominates this poll. Not even Killington in Vermont, which is one of the biggest mountains in the country, was in the top ten.