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The IPPY awards are the World’s largest international and regional book awards competition and this year the 14th annual competition saw 3,890 entries.  Snow Search Japan won the GOLD medal in the Travel Guidebook Category.

Snow-search Japan is the first book in a new series which explore countries in more depth than ever before. It also heralds a change in direction for WSG Media, from previously covering just snowboarding to including skiing as well.

The book has been designed for travellers who are visiting Japan for snow sports but want to experience many of the cultural delights Japan offers whilst there. It covers the major cities such as Tokyo that you’ll fly into and the ski towns where you’ll be based whilst there. Amongst other topics, travel, food, language, and working in Japan are all covered in detail, plus over 70 resorts have been comprehensively reviewed and broken down into easy-to-read sections and rated according to your style of skiing/riding.

Want to buy a copy?
http://www.worldsnowboardguide.com/shop/

  After skiing NZ for 25 consecutive winters I decided it was time to fufill a life time passion to have a northern hemisphere ski holiday.We are a family of five with two 15 yr olds and one 17 yr old.We belong to a Ruapahue ski club and I had seen some info kicking around the club about ski holidays but everytime I multiplied the cost by five I just about fell over.Last winter I saw a ski holiday featured in the herald travel section.This was run by Lianne Stott at Ski Traveller in Auckland.I began to email Lianne and with the benefit of her advise and experience we decided that our destination would be Copper Mountian in Colorado.  Copper mountian is an area called Summit County that includes the towns of Silverthorne, Dillon, Breckinridge and Frisco.The adjoining ski fields are Breckinridge, Keystone, Araprahoe Basin and Copper Mountian.These are all within a 15-40 minute drive from Frisco.From Frisco is a free bus service that runs between all these towns and ski fields that runs for about 19 hours a day.Brilliant.We never felt the need for a hire car at all and still managed to see a lot of the local area.Vail, reputed to be Americas largest ski field is only 20 minutes down the road from copper mountian but is not included in the Summit County area but easily accessible.  We booked 12 nights at Copper in a two bedroom, two bathroom, pull out sofa bed, fully equiped kitchen condo that was about 2-3 minutes walk to the chair lift.Copper village was very quaint, spotlessly clean, zero litter,comes with all the restaurants, shops, hot tubs, lap pool, skating rink, medical center and hire shops.For a family ski holiday this was fantastic.The ski field was supurb with great variety of beutifully groomed to challenging moguled steeps.The facilities on field were excellent.Copper had a deal Mt Ruapehue where we were able to ski on our 2009 seasons pass.This made to holiday way more affordable than I thought possible.  Liannes booking and airport advise was right on the button.Also her advise on comprehensive travel insurace was invaluble.Dont skimp on insurance.We had a great time, really loved it, and I cant wait to plan the next one.  Go Ski TravellerMark.

Greetings from Aspen/Snowmass,

We have received over 34 inches (86 cm) in the last week and the mountains are bottomless!! Powder shots were everywhere and the new snow definitely made everyone smile! This is a fantastic base for the spring skiing that is coming up so make sure to let everyone know that the skiing in Aspen/Snowmass can’t be beat!!! Here are some pictures from our recent storm.

Check out the amazing powder conditions in early December at Crested Butte in Colorado…..they received over 18 inches in 24 hours!