A Skier’s Journal is a book I wrote about my first ski season at Snowbird in Utah. It’s about more than that, but that ski season is the basis upon which I relate other experiences (spoiler alert: also mostly about skiing).
The book is available in e-book and paperback formats from Amazon. You can read the e-book on Amazon Kindle e-readers, Amazon Fire tablets, many any other devices via the Kindle apps, or in web browsers via the Kindle Cloud Reader.
A few articles on this website contain excerpts from the book:
Visit ASkiersJournal.com for excerpts, photographs, and more information.
A Skier’s Journal’s Preface
In July 2005, at age twenty-four, I quit my job and moved from New York to Utah to ski at Snowbird, a resort about thirty miles southeast of Salt Lake City. My lifestyle, however, didn’t fit the ski-bum archetype. During the ski season, I attended graduate school full-time at the University of Utah and lived on campus in a student apartment. I was just a regular guy living a regular life (as a student) while skiing some of the best snow and inbounds terrain in the United States.
After every ski day that season, I published a report on my website. While rereading those entries in late 2017, I felt detached from the experiences I had described. The passage of time allowed me to read the entries more objectively, and I enjoyed them for more than their nostalgic value. I thought other skiers might also find the entries compelling. In January 2018, I began compiling them into this book.
Stories in the skiing media often feature extreme terrain, impractical skiing-centric lifestyles, and easy access to seemingly endless fresh powder. This is not one of those stories. Instead, my story features terrain accessible to any skier with a lift ticket, a skiing lifestyle tempered by school or work obligations, and fresh tracks obtained through luck and persistence, not by being given privileged access.
I hope my story demonstrates what it took for an ordinary skier like me to explore a mountain and find the fleeting moments that make skiing special. I hope you can identify with the doubts and challenges I faced before, during, and after that season. Most of all, I hope my story leaves you feeling more excited about skiing.
Mike Sandy
Salt Lake City, Utah
December 10, 2021