Peter Kray

Aug 14, 2024 | elevationoutdoors.com | Peter Kray

Even before I got out of college I turned my back on summer as a time of leisure, or even too much fun. Sure there were frisbees to throw; Dead shows to attend; and a beautiful, smart, red-haired, green-eyed girl to take out for pizza and beer on Friday nights. But for someone who just wanted to ski all winter, June to August was the time to make money, and that meant it was time for work.

May 8, 2024 | elevationoutdoors.com | Peter Kray

Flight is born on the horizon,Somewhere else you could’ve been,When you wonder what you’re missing,Well, I bet it’s something bigThose are the first verses of “Road Song,” which I wrote back when I was still playing guitar. When I had yet to realize that the more I played, the less I wrote columns like this. That was 15 years and 100 articles ago. And 10 years before I set the guitar down to write The God of Skiing. .

Feb 27, 2024 | mountaingazette.com | Peter Kray

If you have ever driven Hwy 285 from the little town of Antonito, Colorado, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, you have seen the steep, diving ski runs of Pajarito Ski Area. “The Little Bird,” as locals call it, features a relentless face of black and double black diamond runs that drop straight from the summit to the base with hardly a dogleg or curve. “It’s surprisingly steep!” my friend Erik said.

Dec 14, 2023 | elevationoutdoors.com | Peter Kray

It was dry in Dogsleep. Too dry for December. Too dry for any month of the year. There hadn’t even been a drizzle since September, when the great fires burned in the West and you could hardly see across the street from all the smoke. But now the sky was so deep and blue, it seemed unbreakable, a permanent window across which nothing moved. Not even a stray cloud. The ski lifts sat idle. And without tourists, or work, only the rich kids were out at the bars. People were starting to get nervous.

Dec 7, 2023 | elevationoutdoors.com | Peter Kray

I can’t wait for ski season to begin. Like walking my dogs or enjoying a quiet Sunday with my wife, whenever I go skiing, I wonder why I ever bother to do anything else. Just last week at around three in the morning, coyotes woke me up yipping and howling on the other side of the wall around our yard, so close the dogs didn’t bark. When I went to bang on the window, I could see Orion in the sky above the mountains to the east.