Club Med says it’s the largest ski lodging outfit in the world — it has 18 resorts in the Alps — and is confident it can crack the market here. Specifically the mega-developer is said to be shopping for property in Colorado, California, and Quebec, and with real estate in the dumps it’s probably a good time to be looking. But for world-famous Club Med to succeed it’s going to have to dispel its cheesy stereotype. That is, a tacky buffet, battles at the bar for your one free drink, and hairy chests decorated with gold chains.

Read more awesome outdoor stories like this at Adventure Journal.

No, there’s not an echo in here. Yes, yesterday we mentioned that construction of Sochi is seriously behind schedule, but we didn’t tell you what it’s like to ski there. As one reporter learned, the skiing can be excellent, but if Putin or Medvedev show up to ski the entire mountain shuts down for them, and during the writer’s visit they ran out of coffee, wine, and even vodka. Also, the power went out. Oh, and there are metal detectors when you enter the ski hill cordon, and there are hundreds of armed guards at the lift stations, in the resort and even up on the slopes. If they’re concerned about security now, just imagine what fun it will be to attend the games.

There’s lots more awesome outdoor stories like this at Adventure Journal.

Snowboarder Danny Toumarkine suffered a traumatic brain injury on a routine jump in early 2011. “After nearly two weeks in a medically induced coma, four brain surgeries and thirty-three days later, Danny was discharged from the hospital.” Danny and his brother had dreamed of making a season-long snowboarding film, but they never thought they’d be making one like this. The full-length 22-minute film is on YouTube.

via YoBeat

You know how you bought that multi-tool for your bike that was supposed to be able to fix everything but you never actually use it for anything? Or that Swiss Army knife with 50 tools you don’t use? This is kind of like that. It’s a board you can use for surfing and snowboarding. Or rather, Rob Machado can use it for both. Not sure normal snowboarders/surfers would have as much luck.

The TimeLine crew has managed to find some powder while the West wallows in drought. Xavier de le Rue, Anne Flore Marxer and Victor de Le Rue are in the first of the season two releases from the group. They make the most of a snowstorm just before the holidays and a few couloirs with difficult access. It might not be the best light for filmmaking, but at least there’s snow.

Volcom team rider Bryan Iguchi is bouncing around to local snowboarding shops offering locals talks on backcountry riding. Iguchi has spent nights lost in the backcountry without food, water or shelter, and he’s lost a few friends to avalanches. His talks are aimed at warning local kids on a kind of scared straight program to teach them about respecting gates, backcountry travel, and general safety.

Working at Red Bull must be like working in the candy department of a toy store. These guys make boatloads of cash selling caffeinated sugar water that’s more expensive than the vodka people add to it, and they get to do insanely fun stuff with the cash. It would be so easy to hate them if they didn’t spend their cash on rad stuff. Now, I understand that people can get upset about how this backcountry location was, uh, “enhanced,” for the competition, but at least they didn’t put a chairlift on the site. God knows they could afford to. Check out Red Bull to learn more about their so-called future of snowboarding competitions.

Weather forecasters suck at guestimating snowfall amounts. What good is a forecast of “…6-12 inches or more of snow?” Part of the problem, according to NASA, is with interpreting the water content of snow as it’s being measured via satellite. Knowing how “wet” a snowflake is allows scientists to measure overall water content and how it will accumulate. So NASA is going to measure snowfall in the air over Ontario this winter, both via its DC-8 airborne science laboratory and from space. The goal is to make future satellite readings more accurate — but we won’t know if they’ve succeeded until 2014, when a range of new satellites launch that will be able to measure not just snow volume, but snowflake shapes, because that helps gauge their water content.