Clay Malott

Skier, mountaineer, meteorologist.

Depth, Cold, Danger: What a 24-Year Satellite Study Just Revealed About Avalanches

Imagine a north-facing slope in mid-February. The snow is deep, the air bitterly cold, and every few minutes you hear the distant whump of a settling slab. A new 24-year satellite study of the Altai Mountains in East Kazakhstan confirms what those sounds already whisper to backcountry skiers: avalanche danger starts and ends with snow depth and temperature. In fact, […]
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Turns All Year: A Guide for How to Ski Every Month of the Year in North America

Ask any die-hard skier what keeps them up at night in the swelter of July, and odds are they’ll mention three innocent-sounding letters: TAY… Turns All Year. The idea is seductively simple: ski at least once every single month, no matter what the calendar or the weather says. The execution, however, is anything but. It demands early-morning alarms that ring […]
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Clay Malott |
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Mount Spurr Rumbling: Alaska Volcano Unrest Spurs Eruption Watch

Alaska’s Mount Spurr—a 11,070-ft glacier-clad volcano 75 miles west of Anchorage—is showing worrisome signs of life. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) reports elevated seismic activity with numerous small, shallow earthquakes now detected daily beneath the mountain. Over the past month, more than 100 quakes per week have been recorded, some up to magnitude 2.7, totaling thousands of tremors since last […]
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Vanished Slopes: Inside the Demise of North America’s Ghost Ski Resorts

On a frosty morning in Michigan’s Leelanau County, the chairlifts at Sugar Loaf Mountain hang lifeless, and the once-luxurious lodge lies in rubble. It’s a scene echoed in dozens of locations across North America. In fact, nearly 60% of all ski resorts in North America have closed since the boom of the 1960s and ’70s. Economic shifts, warming winters, and […]
Clay Malott |
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Skiing on the Equator: Investigating the Mythical Puncak Jaya Ski Resort

Puncak Jaya—also known as the Carstensz Pyramid—is a 4,884-meter (16,024-foot) peak in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia, famed as the only place in the equatorial Pacific with year-round ice. In recent years, an intriguing rumor has circulated: that a ski resort once operated on the slopes of Puncak Jaya, making it the world’s second-highest ski area despite its tropical location. […]
Clay Malott |
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