Ski Mags

[riverc0il]

Usually see some posts around here about the major three ski rags... Ski, Skiing, Powder, etc. Lots of quality ski porn flying under the radar though. Can't remember seeing any chatter about a newbie to the field... I just recently got my hands on The Ski Journal. Quality publication with not many ads. For those of you who got in on the N'East deal, it is similar in quality, slightly better layout and paper quality, but of course dedicated to only skiing (not New England focused but does have a Jay article this month). They are only on their second issue. Rather expensive due to low ad content. Much better than the other rags in quality though. Since Couloir merged into Backcountry, Backcountry is still my favorite as TSJ doesn't specifically focus on earned turns and is pricey. I just threw up a review of TSJ here for those curious. So what is that, eight ski rags? Ski, Skiing, Powder, Freeskier, Backcountry, The Ski Journal, Telemark, Snow (new upper end rag, maybe not even a "ski" rag proper). What else is being published focused on skiing? I am not including small localized printings such as NESM's Journal. Feel free to chime in with Board magazines, I am not familiar with them.

[drjeff]

My favorite isn't necessarily a ski mag as much as it's an industry trade mag, Ski Area Management (www.saminfo.com)

While you won't see stories about hucking big cliffs, or back country earn your turns stories, you will find tons of info about everything from ski lift technical operations, to snowmaking, to park design to rental shop layout. I look forward to each bi-monthly issue!

[severine]

Brian picked up an issue of SBC Skier the other day. It was supposedly for me while I was sick on Sunday but he quickly disappeared with it, so I can't say anything as to the quality of the content. All I know is it was Canadian and the pages were high quality.

[billski]

I have really warmed to Ski Racing magazine over the past two years. It's not for the social or real estate/vacation topics, but a lot of good articles on life style, equipment, technique, training, the business of skiing, sponsorship, glacier skiing, summer training, and of course race results reportage. I share my copy with non-racers and they really enjoy it. Not cheap, but very, very few ads, except those for very serious equipment. It's all meat, about 54 pages, can wrap you up for a whole evening of reading.

Skiipress World (free at stores also all the content is online, but a little hard to read) has had some really good "fabric of skiing" articles and gear review. The writing is very good. I look for it regularly, it's not a subscription.

I stick with SKI magazine, but gave up on SKIING, it was a little too lightweight.

I read Ski Journal last month, it's pretty promising.

[JoshG]

Check out Off-Piste.
http://www.offpistemag.com/
It is available for free at certain shops but worth it to support their low subscription. I much prefer it to Ski/Skiing. Its rough, newspaper...and obviously a small 'zine...but the content is good. They focus on BD (thus the name). Reviews, recipies, avi knowledge and general snow enthusiasm.

Canada's SBC Skier is also very good. I would compare it to Powder...perhaps a little better since lately powder has been more focused on layout and short articles. SBC does a good job getting a little more indepth on travel and such. http://www.sbcskier.com/

Kootenay Mountain Journal is another good Canadian centric (BC) magazine. Very well put together, good writers and beautiful pictures. I had a subscription awhile back but it got messed up in a move and I don't think I ever got my remaining issues which left a sour taste. They post up some content on their site in pdfs.
http://www.kmcmag.com/features.html

I recently got TSJ and have enjoyed my first issue (#2). I think your review is accurate. Anybody have issue one? It sold out and I am very intersted in reading the article on the future of day trip mtns...PM me if you have it.

[thinnmann]

Originally Posted by billski

I stick with SKI magazine, but gave up on SKIING, it was a little too lightweight.

A longtime reader of SKI, I recently got a free sub to Skiing. If what you say is true about Skiing being lightweight, then they may have changed their perspective or target audience. This is not a mag for 5-day-per-year skiers. Looks to me like they are focusing on big mountains, fat skis, big air and expert off-piste. The language and images look targeted towards single 20-30 somethings. The editors are keeping adult language in the stories. The images are of hard adventure skiing, along with lots of drinks-in-hand partying and a few nice butts. Skinet.com rags might be going for complementary reads: SKI for the aging boomers with the bucks, and Skiing for the restless youth. Their web site seems to split the difference. It is almost a refreshing change from the yearly round of predictable articles that appear seemingly cyclically in SKI. Instead of making me feel like some people's vacation homes are 10X more expensive than my year-round home, so far reading through Skiing makes me feel like I want to go out and go big.

[ERJ-145CA]

I like SnowEast magazine a lot. They publish 4 issues during the winter and are in their third year now. I picked up an issue at Borders a couple of years ago and then subscribed. It usually has a few articles about Northeastern resorts and a bunch of columns about Northeastern skiing and snowboarding.
www.snoweastmagazine.com

[bvibert]

TSJ looks promising. The price tag does seem a bit high though. Although I guess when you look at it it's still less than the price of most lift tickets for a year subscription....

[riverc0il]

Originally Posted by bvibert

TSJ looks promising. The price tag does seem a bit high though. Although I guess when you look at it it's still less than the price of most lift tickets for a year subscription....

The other way to look at it is that many "trade" priced novels and paperback non-fiction are $15.00+ so it is less than the cost of many books.

[severine]

Originally Posted by riverc0il

The other way to look at it is that many "trade" priced novels and paperback non-fiction are $15.00+ so it is less than the cost of many books.

That's the same point I made to him.