It's All Downhill: Now it feels like ski season

[View web version]( [It's All Downhill. The latest from the slopes of New England and beyone by Matt Pepin] Monday, November 19 | [Follow Matt Pepin on Twitter]( HAPPY WINTER There are many signs to indicate winter is upon us even before we've had Thanksgiving, foremost among them the flurry of ski area openings happening last weekend (Hello Stowe, Sugarbush, Sugarloaf, Okemo, Bretton Woods, and Loon). But the Boston Ski & Snowboard Expo was also a great way to really start to feel the stoke building for hitting the slopes. Here's my quick rundown of ski show superlatives and takeaways, written while enduring a travel delay because of snow. Best display: Ski New Hampshire (pictured above) nailed it. There was a band that looked like dirtbags (I'm using that term in the good way, like how some outdoors enthusiasts refer to themselves) but could play hip-hop as easily as they could cover Weezer. There were snowflake ornaments and a chairlift hovering above, and signposts showing distances to New Hampshire's ski areas from Boston. It was a classy display that felt like a cozy apres-ski hangout. Best swag: This has to be a three-way tie. Any booths giving away lip balm, fridge clips, or those cheap and thin scarves got my seal of approval. Best meeting: It was a real pleasure to meet Brian and Mario from the High Falutin' Ski Bums Podcast, as well as Brian's wife Andrea, whom I'm told can ski with the best of them. We talked skiing for several hours over a few Long Trails, and I got the lowdown on their new and improved look and branding for the podcast and its website. [Check it all out here](. Best taste of winter: The Ski Vermont setup included both Long Trail beer and an ice cream truck serving maple-sugar soft-serve and maple sugar candy. Long Trail's Base Layer probably gets my vote as the best flavor of the show. Best poster: The Peak Resorts group featured those classic old-time ski prints (coincidentally, right around the corner from a booth that sells similar prints for a considerably larger range of resorts and themes). I liked Wildcat's best, and gave it a prominent place in our basement shrine to ski resorts everywhere. News nugget: After 2019, the Boston Ski & Snowboard Expo is likely to be held in a new location. Bernie Weichsel, whose BEWI Productions runs the show, said at his annual awards luncheon that he was told by operators of the Seaport World Trade Center that planned renovations there would not allow it to be booked beyond 2019. Another viewpoint: I asked colleague Hayden Bird of Boston.com for his takeaways from the show. Here's what he wrote: "It doesn't matter how many hundreds of trail maps I look at, the childlike wonder never goes away. Maybe it's because they're the only thing that combines my nerd-level interest in geography with my passion for skiing. Whatever it is, it's been a constant since I first laid eyes on Ski Sundown's modest map in the early '90s. "I thought about this as I entered the Boston.com Ski & Snowboard Expo a week ago. No place in New England could satiate my curiosity with a greater variety of trail maps. It was quite a range (pun intended). Chilean resort Valle Nevado was there – amazingly now part of the Ikon Pass – as were scores of New England and North American resorts. In between conversations with resort representatives and a borderline unhealthy amount of free candy, I walked away with almost 20 new maps. Combined with the ones I already have, I've covered a whole wall of my apartment with them. An obsession, yes, but a good one I think. "Oh, and my favorite map? Same as it was in 1994: Whistler Blackcomb." CLICKING IN MAN VS. MACHINE: Who would you pick in a race between a drone and a pro ski racer? Depends on the conditions of the competition, right? An all-out downhill would likely favor the drone, but what if the drone had to fly through the gates of a giant slalom course? [That's what Salomon TV dreamed up for its latest video](. Olympic Alpine combined bronze medalist Victor Muffat-Jeandet faced a drone piloted by drone racing world champion Jordan Temkin. It was held at Snowbird in Utah. I won't give away the ending, but I will just say it was a pretty entertaining video. GONE BUT ...: The longer a ski area remains closed, the less likely it is to ever re-open, [according to a New England Ski Industry study first published in 2014 and revised several times](. The latest version indicates areas closed for just one season have a 46 percent chance of re-opening. Two years dormant reduces that to 35 percent, and it gets worse from there. When you get past eight years closed, the chances of re-opening are less than 10 percent. WELL DONE: Alan Fletcher, the founder of Nashoba Valley Ski Area in Westford, Mass., was honored with the Spirit of Skiing Award by the New England Ski Museum recently. [Dan Egan put together a fine tribute video that tells Fletcher's story quite nicely](. [Subscribe to BostonGlobe.com]( [Like It's All Downhill? Tell a friend to subscribe.]( [Sign up for more Boston Globe newsletters.]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [Pinterest]( About This Email You received this message because you signed up for the It's All Downhill newsletter. To automatically unsubscribe, [please click here.]( Please note: this will unsubscribe you from the newsletter only. If you wish to cancel your BostonGlobe.com subscription, please call 1-888-MY-GLOBE (1-888-694-5623). 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