by Leigh Mytton

St. Anton am Arlberg, Austria - Most of us dream of walking in a winter wonderland, and this festive season I was fortunate enough to experience a genuine white Christmas in the picturesque resort of St. Anton am Arlberg.

by Leigh Mytton

With numerous skiing opportunities in North America, its easy to overlook the potential of the European Alps. It's not cheap to get there and you lose valuable mountain time in making such a mammoth trip.

by Tony Crocker

La Grave, France - Extremely Canadian is best known for its steep skiing clinics at Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia. Several of their guides and coaches are competitive freeskiers and have extensive photo and video credits from all over the world. Starting in the 1990s, some of the company's guides who were most knowledgeable about the Alps started to run guided tours in Europe. For advanced and expert skiers much of the best terrain in the Alps is uncontrolled off-piste, so skiing with guides greatly enhances the experience. Now the “World Tours” are a popular and expanding part of Extremely Canadian’s business.

I’ve enjoyed two of the clinics at Whistler Blackcomb, and in September 2005 a tour to Las Lenas, Argentina, so I naturally turned to Extremely Canadian to ski La Grave last March.

by Jonathan D. Auerbach

Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy - It was gusto from the get-go. Diana, my longtime Italian ladyfriend, charged her last run of an ace morning on the grand ski slopes of Cortina d’Ampezzo, firing expert turns down a chute called Eye of the Needle, so named for the rock formation one threads at the top of a 50-foot-wide rock wall and 800 vertical-foot drop. I’d rapturously watched her descend, and then skied solo until last bell.

by Anna Maria Espsäter

Geilo, Norway - “There’s something so quiet and cozy about a snow-covered town, like it’s been nicely tucked up and put to sleep,” I was thinking to myself as I stepped off the ski train from Oslo, the none-too-large capital of Norway. The small snow-covered town where I found myself on this dark evening in March, shivering a bit in the sub-freezing temperatures, was called Geilo and although significantly smaller than the Norwegian capital, with only some 2000 souls to its name, it still manages to be one of the country’s key ski resorts with no less than 39 slopes, 20 lifts and 220 km’s worth of cross-country tracks. It might have looked sleepy upon my arrival under its fluffy blanket of white, but as it turned out there was plenty of life in this 100-year resort nestled amidst stunning mountain scenery alongside the Ustedalsfjord, some four hours north of Oslo.

Story & photos by Bob Holt

Avoriaz, France - Perched atop of an enormous cliff only an hour and a half from Geneva airport, the custom built village of Avoriaz is a unique skiing and snowboarding destination with an atmosphere all of its own. The unique architecture of the wooden buildings make this a strangely compelling place to visit, and the car-free environment allows visitors to ski through the streets surrounded only by pedestrians and horse drawn sleds. This gives Avoriaz a very insular sensation, where visitors feel isolated and perfectly safe in their own little world. The village is the highest point in the sprawling Portes du Soleil ski domain which encompasses 12 villages spanning the French/Swiss border, and claims to be the largest international and linked ski area in the world, including 650km of groomed trails.

by Marc Guido

Courchevel, France - "Have an espresso. It's quite good."

This sage advice came from Skip King, an old friend and the American press attaché for the Courchevel Tourist Office. He had just flown in from Boston, and he didn't look much better than I felt. A nine-hour overnight flight from Miami had brought me here to Zurich, too.

Story & photos by Bruce Shenker

Gavarnie, France - What can you say about a day when you summit the highest peak in the French Pyrenees under the bluest, most cloudless sky that you have ever seen, and then afterwards, following a short rappel, you have a nearly 5,000 vertical-foot ski descent on soft spring snow on a giant mountain all alone, except for your 12 newest best friends? And then, when you think your adventures are over, you survive a hairy traverse above a cliff band to avoid skiing down a waterfall, and a mellow cross country ski along a river becomes a nail-biter as you have to hold an edge on a steep, icy slope to avoid sliding into the river. Then, with your skis on your pack, you have to cross four major piles of avalanche debris. Finally, just as you get back to civilization, a lammerger – a bearded vulture, of which there are less than 20 in Europe – soars in the cliffs overhead.

by Bob Holt

La Grave, France (September 2002) - What could I write about La Grave that hasn't already been written? This small French village claims no more than a couple of bars and hotels, yet it's home to some of the most extreme lift served terrain on the planet. A “resort” with just four lifts, no ski patrol, no avalanche control and an unlimited scope to do whatever the hell you want to without anybody to tell you otherwise ... whether it kills you or not. The imposing mountain of La Meije towers above the village, offering a total vertical drop of 2,150 meters (that’s 7,054 feet) of some of the steepest terrain in Europe.

by Bob Holt

Val d'Isere, France - Imagine a resort nearly four times the size of Whistler-Blackcomb with terrain to suit all standards of skiers and boarders, no matter how extreme your tastes. A resort with off piste possibilities so vast that books have been written about it. A resort with 300km of groomed runs, 97 lifts, two snowboard parks and two glaciers. A resort you could spend a whole season in, and still not fully explore.

Story & photos by Bob Holt

I knew two things about Les Arcs prior to our visit.