DCSki Newsroom

As the 2026-2027 season approaches, DCSki examines the equipment trends reshaping skiing and snowboarding, including BOA ski boots, fast-entry snowboard bindings, narrower carving skis, hybrid touring bindings, more advanced helmets, and lower-impact outerwear. The story also considers which innovations solve real problems for Mid-Atlantic skiers and snowboarders, and which are simply optional upgrades.

What do skiers remember decades after their local ski hill disappears? Drawing on nearly 1,600 comments submitted to DCSki’s Lost Ski Areas profiles, this story explores the experiences that stayed with generations of Mid-Atlantic skiers: learning to ski, working first jobs, riding rope tows, gathering in small lodges, and growing up alongside neighborhood ski hills that have long since vanished.

Masks, reservations, capacity limits, and parking-lot lunches made the 2020-2021 winter unlike any Mid-Atlantic ski season before it. Six years later, DCSki looks back at how resorts and skiers navigated the pandemic and how that period accelerated the shift toward advance ticket sales, mobile passes, online transactions, and other practices that remain with us today.

Skiers who buy season passes during the heat of summer receive lower prices and unlimited access once the lifts begin turning, but resorts begin benefiting months earlier. DCSki explores how advance sales help cover offseason expenses, reduce some of the uncertainty of a weather-dependent business, and secure customers’ commitments before winter arrives. Photo provided by Seven Springs Resort.

How much will it cost to get on the slopes this winter? The question has become surprisingly difficult to answer as date-specific ticket prices, advance-purchase discounts, passes, rentals, lessons, food, and travel send each skier’s total in a different direction. DCSki examines the prices Mid-Atlantic skiers are likely to encounter during the 2026-2027 season and offers some practical ways to keep the bill under control.

Fall brings a different kind of activity to Mid-Atlantic ski resorts, with Oktoberfests, foliage chairlift rides, mountain biking, live music, arts festivals, and even a celebration devoted to Bigfoot. DCSki rounds up some of the events worth checking out this fall as the mountains begin their gradual transition toward winter.

Buying a ski pass used to mean choosing a home mountain. And that was pretty much it. Today, Mid-Atlantic skiers must sort through national products, regional passes, reciprocal agreements, limited-day packages, blackout dates, and prices that change several times before winter. It can be overwhelming! DCSki tries to break through the confusion by examining the leading options for 2026-2027 and the skiers each one serves best.

Skiing has become expensive, but bargains have not disappeared. DCSki looks across the Mid-Atlantic for the season passes, night tickets, family programs, lodging packages, and other offers that can still put skiers on the snow without draining the winter budget.

One of the strongest El Niño events in the modern record is developing ahead of the 2026-2027 ski season, increasing the odds of an active, moisture-rich storm track across the East. DCSki looks at the latest forecasts, lessons from past El Niño winters, and the factors that could determine whether that moisture arrives at Mid-Atlantic ski areas as snow or rain.

In 1996, just after graduating from college and before beginning his career, DCSki’s Editor hiked to Timber Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Nearly 30 years later, on the other side of that career, he returned to the same trail for a sentimental journey through a landscape both familiar and changed — and a chance to reflect on the decades in between.

Before webcams, navigation apps, digital lift passes, and group texts, Mid-Atlantic skiers relied on snow phones, paper trail maps, printed directions, and carefully chosen meeting places. This retrospective recalls the uncertainty and occasional adventure of skiing before the smartphone while considering how modern technology has made trips safer, easier, and better documented.

Every winter, Mid-Atlantic skiers scrutinize thermometers and webcams, wondering why the snowguns are silent at their favorite resorts. This feature story steps into the snowmaking control room to explore the weather, water, staffing, financial, and operational calculations behind those decisions — and why resorts facing seemingly similar conditions sometimes make very different calls.