How to get the best deals on trips this winter

If you need to get your riding fix and there's no snow in your backyard or at your local mountain, plan a trip!  Many daily deal sites offer discounted lift tickets, rentals, and multiple day ski and stay packages. Check out some of the following sites to see if there are deals up for your favorite mountains:

Buy With Me Boston
Groupon Boston & Getaways
Living Social Escapes - check out the main LS site and "adventures" too!
Dealfind Boston
TravelZoo 

Discount cards are another way to get great deals on lift tickets and some offer coupons for lodging as well: The Vermont Travel Club Card- $44 pp gets you from $10-$30 off each ticket at participating mountains throughout Vermont and a few in Maine as well. The Ride & Ski Card offers similar discounts throughout New England for $49. A portion of the proceeds from the card go to the Childrens' Hospital of Dartmouth, NH and they also do promotions at a different mountain each weekend sponsored by Harpoon (meaning lots to drink!), extra cheap tickets, and prize giveaways.

Lastly don't forget about trips organized by your local ski clubs and shops. Boston Ski and Sports Club and The SnowRiders both do day and weekend trips with transportation and discount tickets as well as vacations a few times each season.

Always take a moment to check out the resorts' sites as well- many offer last minute deals on ski and stay packages and often there are discount days like Okemo's Food Drive days (bring in canned food and get a cheaper ticket). Mount Snow's upcoming College Week packages start at $282 for 5 days of riding and 5 nights accommodations.

New England-made winter gear you should check out!

So the holiday season has already came and went but if you're still in the market for any new winter goods you should take a peek at the following locally grown companies (Burton no longer counts as local!).

Jib This Apparel
Awesome fleece-lined neck warmers and hats that can even be custom ordered in the colors of your choosing. This sweet goods are hand made by Amy, a fellow snowboard instructor, who works at Stratton Mountain.

Rhythm Snowboards
Started by brothers Pat and Matt Griffin and based out of Plymouth, MA. All boards are handbuilt and designed to handle all that nasty crud New England can offer. The lineup includes park, all mountain and freeride boards.

Bean Snowboards
Handmade in a garage in Boston, these boards are carefully crafted and not just kicked off an assembly line. All models are "reverse reverse" camber and Bean proudly states that all boards are eco-friendly- they even come waxed with environmentally conscious Green Wax.

 Buy local!

Snowless winter impacting the whole country

Interesting video clip on the Today Show this morning about the overall lack of snow throughout the country and how that is impacting the industry:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Whatever happened to La Niña?

At the start of this season word was we were going to have another good one. Talk of "La Niña" was widespread and a snowstorm at the end of October gave us all false hope that we were off to a great start. Some areas of New England received over a foot of snow and mountains like Killington and Sunday River were even able to open, albeit briefly. Typically in seasons past the majority of the larger mountains would be largely open by Thanksgiving week or shortly into December. However, here we are on December 28th a only a handful are operating over 50%. At least two days out of every week this month have been over 40 degrees, with some days reaching as high as 60. This is not to mention the four plus inches of precipitation which has not come in the white fluffy form we would love to see right now.

So what is La Niña and do we still have any hope of this season turning around? According to NOAA weather service La Niña is defined as cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific ocean that impact global weather patterns. This means equal chances for above, near, or below-normal temperatures and precipitation. Winter weather for these regions is often driven not by La Niña but by the Arctic Oscillation. If enough cold air and moisture are in place, areas north of the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast could see above-average snow.

While the 10-day weather forecast does predict a "chance of snow" and "few snow showers" for some resort areas, we aren't looking at much accumulation. On the upside we can hope that the temperatures will remain low enough for continued snow making, without which we would not be able to snowboard at all, bare spots and thin strips of snow reminiscent of end-of-season leftovers are standard currently. The mountains have been doing an impressive job on this front despite the uncooperative weather and all we can really do is maintain hope that the sky will soon open up and deliver a few feet of fresh so we can all get our fix.

Far too much grass exposed for my liking!

Best video segment this season goes to a skier?

I'm just as passionate about my snow porn as the next rider and try to catch all the big new releases each season. Last year's stand out hit for me was NowHere by Absinthe films- if you haven't seen it it is definitely a must see as is their film Neverland. The year before That's It That's All was all the rage and certainly got hyped up and rewatched by me a million times over. The cinematography was stellar, soundtrack pumped you up and the riding pushed the limits as only a Travis Rice film can.

Although I am thoroughly impressed with the newest T. Rice masterpiece The Art of Flight, it seems to me that a lot of these films have become more about riding the most extreme, gnarliest places these highly sponsored riders can get to even at the price of style. Deeper (TGR Films) took this to an even further point: showing Jeremy Jones and Xavier De Le Rue clawing their way up steep ice just to barely hop turn down is no longer a snowboarding movie to me. These films are beginning to lack to aspect of attainability I need to see. I want to watch riders doing amazing tricks in really cool locations that make me say "I want to do that! It would be awesome to go there!"

The clip I've linked to brings it back to the basics while still keeping it really interesting- the production is stellar, the shots and angles stylized while not being overly artsy (unlike some films... Solitaire...) and most of all it's just really fun to watch! Take note snowboarders, this skier is doin' it right!


JP Auclair Street Segment (from All.I.Can.) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.