The transition from winter to early spring presents awesome opportunities and painful challenges when adventuring outdoors. Head onto a ski slope or a bike trail and you are bound to encounter snow, mud, wind, rain, or yes, even glorious sunshine. Outside editors recently checked out the resorts, trails, and backcountry skin tracks in pursuit of outdoor fun. Here’s how we amid the seasonal change.
A Sidecountry Circuit
Despite living 15 minutes from the base of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, I often tell friends that my favorite place to ski is a little mom-n’-pop hill 30 minutes north of town called June Mountain. June is the kind of place that still has fresh corduroy at 3 P.M. and virtually no lift lines. But that’s not the only reason I love it. This little hill has chairlift access to arguably the best sidecountry zone in the nation. We call this area “The Negatives.” My fiancé and I went to June a few weeks ago and skinned from the top of the J7 chair out into the Negatives to see if there was soft snow remaining in the alpine. After an hour of switchbacking, we arrived at the top of the cirque to find untracked soft snow atop any of the dozen couloirs of our choosing. We skied 2,000 feet of supportable powder all the way down to the meadow and decided to push on and find more of it. We ended up linking three couloirs and 6,000 feet of perfect skiing with minimal climbing thanks to a bump from our favorite little ski hill. Check out our route here on Gaia GPS. Of course, we hitchhiked to the pizzeria to cap off an excellent day. —Jake Stern, digital editor
Pedaling the White Rim Trail
In early April, a group of friends and I pedaled Moab’s White Rim Road (not to be confused with Sedona’s puckering White Line Trail). The Jeep road offers 100 miles of incredibly scenic riding that exists somewhere between gravel and mountain biking. You can see the full 99.4-mile route here on TrailForks. We were celebrating our friends’ 30th birthday—they’re twins, and both ridiculously fit and talented cyclists. This trip was decidedly party-friendly: we had a support vehicle, and nobody was out to set any kind of speed record. On day one, we rode about 20 miles into a brutal headwind, and spent the afternoon exploring an exquisite band of cliffs near camp that offered protection from the relentless gusts. On day two, we had a little over 50 miles to ride, with a dampened but still persistent and powerful headwind. Around 25 miles in, one member of our crew took a fall and suffered a nasty gash on her knee, and we had to evacuate her. (Thank god we had a sag wagon, which made the whole process pretty simple.) The rest of us beelined to camp. That night, we crashed hard under a sky full of stars and woke to a short but steep pedal out. It was the perfect way to start bike season. —Abigail Barronian, senior editor
A Local Dose of Nature
You don’t need to buy a plane ticket or fight the weekend traffic to get a much-needed nature fix. Sometimes a little walk in the nearest patch of woods does the trick. It did for me, a dozen different times this month. A wooded path winds between and around two lovely fresh water ponds I’ve swum in all my life near my home in Osterville, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. The remnants of an old rope swing dangles from an ancient, scraggly pine, and always brings back memories of teenage antics. The trails are always strangely, wonderfully quiet, especially given their proximity to town. On hot days, the shade is a sanctuary. On rainy days, the canopy is an umbrella. On windy days, the trees and brush protect me. Every time I walk these woods, they’re different. A new bush in bloom, a new smell, a viewpoint opened up from a downed tree. For me, it’s 45 minutes and 2.5 miles of exactly what I need, whatever I need, every time. You can check out my route on Gaia GPS. —Kristin Hostetter, head of sustainability and community partnerships
The Best/Worst Backcountry Ski Tour
My housemate and I both suffered injuries in the past couple months, and at this point skiing down anything steeper than the bunny hill poses the risk of further injury. So, in March, we started going for very low-angle, long backcountry tours to get our nature and exercise fix. This type of adventure represents a complete reversal of what I’m usually trying to accomplish when backcountry skiing; routes I once would have disqualified for requiring too much walking and not-worthwhile skiing are now totally ideal projects. My favorite so far was a six-hour skin up a forest road to a lake in southwest Montana’s Tobacco Root Mountains. The sun broke through the clouds in time for us to enjoy a beer on the snowy lakeshore before rolling (and poling) back down the skin track. No turns or thrills to speak of, but the scenery was beautiful, the air was fresh, the exercise was grounding, and the company was excellent. It’s a change of pace from my usual outdoor activities, but these little romps—with assists from dips in hot springs on the way home—have effectively kept the injury glooms at bay. —Miyo McGinn, assistant editor
Two Families, One Ski Trip
Taking your four-year-old on a weekend ski trip is an exercise in patience. Doing so with your kid, another family and their small children can feel like a futile endeavor. No two kids follow the same schedule for naps, snacks, and meltdowns, and coordinating these different schedules feels impossible. But this is exactly what my wife and I did last month when we booked a trip to Keystone Resort in Colorado alongside our friends, Lia and Tillman Kleppe, and their two sons. I think everyone embarked on the trip hoping to have some fun time with the kiddos as well as some fun personal time on the slopes. Mother Nature immediately blew those plans away—literally. Screaming wind gusts forced the resort to close most chairlifts, creating lines that stretched to the horizon at the three remaining open. Flexibility is another skill in outdoor parenting, and we all adjusted our expectations. We ditched the lifts for the bunny hill and its magic carpet ride, and spent the day enjoying the laughs and enduring the tears that come with taking your kid skiing. An early bailout for hot chocolate and Jacuzzi time soothed whatever grumpiness existed. The real thrill came early the next morning when Tillman and I rose before dawn and skinned up the front side of the resort. The high winds were caused by a major storm, which dumped eight inches overnight. A quick powder run before breakfast with the kids was the capstone to a fun family weekend that went surprisingly well. —Frederick Dreier, articles editor