I came across some great pictures of Corbet’s Couloir over on this thread at AlpineZone.com.For those of you that might not be familiar with Corbet’s, it’s a legendary chute at Jackson Hole that’s evolved into the chute to ski to prove what you can do, even though it’s not necessarily the most challenging (though I’m sure in some conditions it can be). S&S Chute, for example, is right next to Corbet’s, and requires a rarely-given ski patrol sign off before you can try to ski it.Jackson Hole offers a camp, called Steep and Deep Camp, for those who’d like to try to talk themselves into skiing Corbet’s over 4 days of advanced/expert level instruction.If you’d like to get an idea of how steep the beginning of the cute actually is, check out some of the Corbet’s Couloir videos on YouTube. There are also some great stories about Corbet’s over on EpicSki.com from a guy who’s an instructor at Jackson Hole.

This post is a little late, but on Saturday, July 28th I had the opportunity to drive up to Timberline and try some summer skiing on Mt. Hood. Work sent me to Portland, Oregon for a conference, and I’d read about summer skiing at Timberline before, so as long as I was out there I decided to make the 1.5 hour drive and check it out.Some pictures (full set available here): Overall it was really enjoyable. There wasn’t a ton of snow, but what was there was really not bad. It was slushy, of course, but not any worse than Vermont on a warm day in early April. The race lanes that they’d salted were even better — noticeably firmer than the public lane.Unfortunately, there was only one terrain park open to the public, and the features in it were bigger than I was comfortable with — really big hits and no boxes (just rails). The other two parks were reserved for camps only. There was a public halfpipe, but you had to ski all the way to bottom of the second lift to use it, so I passed. By the time I skied down there at the end of the day I was pretty tired and didn’t want to push my luck.Overall, though, I’d recommend Timberline without hesitation to anyone who happens to be within a 3-4 hour drive. I live in New York, and I don’t think TImberline is worth a 5 hour flight by itself, but if I lived in the pacific northwest I would definitely be at Mt. Hood a few Saturdays a month all summer long.

Yesterday I came across a thread on the AlpineZone forums that mentioned Mount Bohemia, an experts-only hill in northern Michigan that offers skiing unlike anything else you’ll find in the midwest, and supposedly even rivals the skiing out west. This sign welcomes skiers who might not know what they’re in for. The trail map is pretty interesting as well. An article in the New York Times from March 2007 gives a nice overview of the area and what it offers.Unfortunately, the chances of me ever skiing Mount Bohemia are close to zero due its super-remote location. It’s 6 hours from the nearest metro area, which is — wait for it — Green Bay, Wisconsin. If I ever do find myself out there for some reason, though, I will definitely give Mount Bohemia a try.

This is the view from the top of the Great Western Express lift at Brighton, Utah, taken in January 2007.

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I’m excited to announce that I’m almost done working on a ton of new features for Mountain Reviews.

First, Mountain Reviews joins the web 2.0 revolution with an updated logo, now featuring stroked type and a gradient! I’ve managed to resist reflections and anything shiny thus far, but I’m not making any long-term promises.

Now, moving on to things that actually improve the site, each mountain will have a ton of subsections that will give you the information you need when you want to kill time on the internet thinking about find the best places to go skiing and riding.

From the “features you didn’t even know you wanted” department, all the browse pages will have maps of the region you’re looking at.

And… (drumroll)... Canada, eh?

There’s more, but you’ll have to wait for the rest (I know, the anticipation is killing you). I’m excited about launching and really think the changes will help bring in a lot more reviews, which is what Mountain Reviews is ultimately trying to do. Keep your eyes open for the new version in the next few weeks!