You could call this story “The Mouse That Didn’t Roar.” Or “The Biggest Ski Area That Wasn’t.” I’m talking about Mineral King, a ski resort in the Sierra Nevada Mountains slated to be built in the mid-1960s by Walt Disney Productions, but never happened. A passionate winter sports enthusiast, Walt Disney started skiing in the […]
It looks like a typical ski area. Skiers and boarders clamber onto Doppelmayr gondolas and high-speed quads from Leitner and there’s a ski school for learners. I paid 8,000 Tenge ($15) to dress in fox pelts and hold an irritable Golden eagle for a photo op, cafés serve koumis—fermented mare’s milk – the local beer is Karagandinskoye, […]
I had never kissed a cod. Or toasted bannock over a fire. Phrases like Owshegettinonb’y don’t flow off my tongue, and I didn’t know the meaning of mauzy. These experiences were all rites of passage when I skied Marble Mountain in Newfoundland, in eastern Canada. Bannock is a strip of dough wrapped around a stick that […]