The Wildspitzbahn gondola takes skiers to the heart of the Pitztal Glacier, where pristine snow and high-altitude adventures await. The top station features Austria's highest cafeteria and offers delicious cakes as well as spectacular views of Austria's glaciers almost year-round.
What makes it shine are the behind-the-scenes moments throughout this five-part series. Without getting lost in technical detail or overselling the sport, it leans into what ski racing actually is: long travel days, fragile confidence, and moments where everything - a season, a career - comes down to a few seconds between gates.
The icefall, a chaotic jumble of ice blocks and crevasses, is one of the most hazardous parts of the South Col route on Mt. Everest. The serac is too dangerous to try to climb directly, as large pieces could fall off at any moment, or the whole thing could collapse.
Avalanches kill about 100 people in Europe each year, with vast masses of ice, snow and rock regularly crashing down on hikers and skiers who have been caught unawares. The structure of the snow, angle of the slope and variation of the weather can dictate whether a gentle disturbance like a gust of wind or the glide of a snowboard can trigger a deadly shift in the mountain.
Park City, Utah, one of the West's most beloved ski destinations, is having an unusually difficult season. For a state that prides itself on its snow, 2026 has started on an unexpectedly thin note. By this point in winter, rooftops are typically glazed in white and aspen groves disappear beneath Utah's signature "champagne powder." This year, that familiar scene is missing.
"The glacier itself has since 1996 melted continuously. Today the glacier is 300 meters (1,000 feet) from the original lift entrance, and there is now a large lake between the glacier and the original entrance. You would need a boat to access it in summer."
To get back to average snowpack, we essentially need to have the most snow that we've ever had for the last 30 years between now and mid-April. It would be extremely difficult for Colorado to get back to a normal/average snowpack. As an example, when looking at the Independence Pass SNOTEL site in central Colorado outside of Aspen, we typically have 13 inches of snow-water-equivalent at the end of February. This year, we only have 6.7 inches of SWE.
Snowfall in France this week has been huge, with some resorts seeing more than 2 meters (6.6 feet) in the last five days. A massive winter storm hammered the French Alps from February 10-13, unleashing monster snowfall that has buried resorts and reshaped the mountain landscape just days before Valentine's Day weekend. Across the Northern Alps - including iconic resorts in Haute-Savoie, Savoie, and Isère - weather stations reported extraordinary snow totals.
Images on social media show snowed-in cars, mountains of marshmallow powder, and landscapes buried under deep midwinter snow. In many of these areas, one would need to look back to 1999 to find thicker snow cover in February. In other words, this is an unprecedented post-2000 snow situation in most of France. However in 2018, the historic "Beast from the East" storm cycle delivered extraordinary totals to resorts in the south of France. Still, for much of northern Savoie and Haute-Savoie, February 2026 stands out as one of the most impressive snow periods in nearly three decades.
