In 2010, the price of walk-up, single-day lift ticket at Vail and Beaver Creek ski resorts topped $100. Aspen quickly followed suit, and ticket prices at resorts across the country have consistently increased in the years since. The trend has raised a question that has dogged the ski industry for years: Is the sport becoming unaffordable for the middle class?

Industry leaders say that even though last-minute lift tickets at some resorts now exceed $100, skiing has never been more affordable if you're savvy about discounts.

As the familiar cold air of November sets in, skiers across the country are beginning to feel that recognizable early season itch. Last year's prolonged winter season was defined by a bitterly cold polar vortex freezing most parts of the East Coast and Midwest, and a historically destructive dry spell that thwarted a
recovery on the Pacific Coast. During this irregular winter, the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) reported that domestic mountain resorts logged 56.5 million skier and snowboarder visits, down slightly from the prior season's 56.9 million visits.
 

Intrawest Resorts Holdings Inc., operator of the Winter Park Resort and Steamboat Ski & Resort in Colorado, on Friday announced Thomas Marano is its new CEO, effective immediately.

The Denver-based company's (NYSE: SNOW) previous CEO, William Jensen, resigned for personal reasons. The CEO since June 2008, Jensen said in a statement that Intrawest "is well positioned to continue to build on the success and progress the entire team has made over the past five years and most recently since our IPO earlier this year."

In less than 100 days some 35,000 ski fans and families from around the globe will descend upon Colorado's Vail Valley for the 2015 World Alpine Championships. 

The event runs Feb. 2-15 and is expected to nearly triple the population of Vail and Avon. These numbers might seem a little daunting to a mountain town mayor, but Vail's Andy Daly is not your average mayor.

It would be fair to add Daly to the list of skiing politicians, except most of the others on the list can't ski. How many places has he skied? He'd love to tell you, but he's kind of lost count. Let's just call it hundreds of ski areas in North America and Europe.

With temperatures rising faster in the Alps than the rest of the world, alpine countries are working together to adapt to climate change and hope to set an example.

A recent Austrian climate change report found that the country's temperatures had risen twice as fast as the global average since 1880, with the number of sunshine hours in the Alps increasing by 20 percent.  

While this may please holidaymakers or locals enjoying longer summers, it is also likely to cause more landslides and forest fires, affecting the agricultural sector and local economy, the Austrian Assessment Report found.