Best Ski Resorts!

The exercise of picking a ski resort, of where to spend a ski trip, offers travelers a unique problem to solve. All manners of things enter a skier's decision: snow, terrain, lodging, airports, prices and, of course, the novelty of experience. So picking a ski resort for spring break 0r the New Year's holiday is similar to picking any vacation destination in that some locations may be valued for their newness, their untapped potential, or for widely-spread reputations.

But ski resorts are different from cities and other destinations in that so much can hinge on weather and the state of the mountain upon arrival, something that's built out of weeks and months of earlier climate activity. So in this way, people booking ski trips make bigger leaps of faith than those merely visiting a city or a region. For that reason, travelers putting ski trip itineraries together should consult more diverse sets of inputs and better data sources when planning their winter adventure.

It is with this in mind that we again produce this examination of the best ski resorts in North America. We consult diverse data points, updated statistics, and our own constantly renewed expert reviews of individual resorts to make the job of skiers, at least when it comes to narrowing where to take their ski trip, easier. This is the most comprehensive and in-depth ski resort list of its kind.

Where you ski isn't as important as where you go to college or where you decide to live. In many ways, it's not important at all. But, like skiing in general, deciding where to go ski is quite fun. The anticipatory exercise is as enjoyable as many parts of the trip itself.

So milk it for everything you can and read on.

We use something called the Pure Awesomeness Factor—PAF—to grade out ski resorts. Think of the PAF like you think of a kilogram, a liter or a degree Celsius. It's a scientifically significant measurement. Just as we keep a master kilogram locked up in a vault, against which we calibrate the world, PAF is our guide for judging all things ski.

The metric system, while an excellent set of units, was always supposed to be something more. Its creators aspired for the greatness that has been realized with PAF, which doesn't measure arbitrary things like mass, distance and temperature, but instead measures that most inscrutable, yet definitely existent property of awesomeness.

The difference, rather conveniently for all of us, is that PAF is a dynamic measurement that changes year to year. It doesn't change radically, of course, but its makeup changes enough that an annual reprise is a necessary exercise.

Enjoy!