A Swiss Ski Chalet That Calls to Mind a Spy Movie

Every winter, Moncler- and Chanel-clad skiers descend upon St. Moritz for fresh Alpine snow, truffle fondue, and an après-ski scene steeped in excess. Many of the best dressed stay at the venerable Badrutt's Palace, whose founder, Caspar Badrutt, helped establish St. Moritz as a resort town. The hotel reopened for the season with 25 new suites and guest rooms, all outfitted with B&B Italia furniture and Loro Piana upholstery. Look the part by skiing into the plein air Paradiso Mountain Club & Restaurant in a cream down jacket and black fleece-lined boots. Pop a bottle or two of brut, selected from cellar containing more than 30,000 bottles.

The Palisades Tahoe ski resort has a lot going for it: an idyllic location seven miles from Lake Tahoe’s western shore, a peak elevation of 9,050 feet with 2,850 feet of vertical, and 6,000 skiable acres spread over two bases and served by 43 lifts.

Director Ridley Scott has advised people to avoid visiting Malta, one of the filming locations for his action flick, "Gladiator II."

It's not often that Marika Favé, our impish, fast-talking mountain guide, falls silent. It's a spring morning on the packed, sun-streaked gondola to the peak of the Marmolada glacier, the highest point in the Dolomites. A former national skier for Italy whose family has lived in the Fassa Valley for generations, Favé has been telling Jack, the photographer I'm traveling with, and me about the grimly determined Austro-Hungarian soldiers who dug a small city into the ice up here during the Great War. But as the gondola passes another rocky bluff and great blankets of untouched shadow-draped powder come into view, the war stories cease and a grin spreads across her face. We don't know exactly what the plan is when the gondola clanks to a halt at the Punta Rocca, a viewing platform at 10,700 feet that looks out over all of the Dolomites. But the mountain air seems charged with the palpable sense that, on this exact Thursday morning, something very good is about to happen.

Ski season in the western United States and Canada doesn't look like it did a decade ago. Despite the fact that climate change has made snowfall far less predictable, resorts have never been more crowded. This is partly because so many of the region's best mountains now accept the multi-resort Epic and Ikon passes, making it cost-effective to spend more days at more destinations, and also because the COVID-era uptick in the sport has endured. Long lift lines and packed runs, as well as sold-out slope-adjacent hotels, are now the norm.

Growing up in Florida, my winters involved ocean plunges in bathing suits, not skiing in snowsuits.

My friend Michelle and I took turns following each other as we skied through stands of snow- and rime-coated subalpine fir. It had been three days since the last snowfall, but on this frigid January day at Schweitzer, in Idaho’s panhandle, we still found soft, untracked powder. It was delightful, but not a surprise.

Sophie Hediger, a Swiss snowboarder who competed in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, has died following an avalanche at a mountain resort in Switzerland, the country's skiing federation said on Tuesday.

In the children’s section of Albertine, copies of “Le Petit Prince,” stories of Tintin and Babar and other much-loved French classics are for sale beneath a sapphire-colored ceiling gilded with hand-painted constellations. What’s arguably New York’s most enchanting bookstore opened a decade ago inside the palatial Payne Whitney House, an early 1900s landmark built by the architect Stanford White on the southeast corner of East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue that’s served as the headquarters of the French Embassy’s cultural and educational activities in the United States for the past 72 years.

Dec 20, 2024 • 11 min read

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alex Yin, 32, an options trader from New Jersey. He graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business in June. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Dec 19, 2024 • 10 min read