Skiing, Snowflakes and Winter Quotes, Sayings and Fun Facts

•  Watching the snow fall covering everything in a blanket of beauty.
• Drinking hot chocolate wrapped up in a nice, soft, warm blanket.
• The nice warm glow of heat given off by a fireplace or wodden stove.
• The crunch of the snow as you walk on it.
• Building a snow man with my family.
• Sliding down the hill on a plastic or wodden sled, or even a piece of cardbox box.
• Watching children or adults making snow angels on the lawn.
• The feeling of graceful gliding as you ice skate around the lake, or rink.
• The rush of the wind in your face as you ski down the hill.
• The holiday lights that make the wole outside look like a winter wonderland.

• Stretch pants - the garment that made skiing a spectator sport. - Author Unknown
• Skiing: the art of catching cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk.  -  Author Unknown
• Traverse: One of two ways to stop while skiing. Tree: The other method. - Author Unknown
• Kids today, all they talk about is big air. I say, stay on the mountain, that's where the action is. - Smooth Johnson
• My boyfriend's idea of a lesson was to take me on a black diamond run in the middle of a hail storm and say, "Go."  Ski patrol had to escort me to another lift to get me down the mountain.  No, that wasn't humiliating, not at all.  -  Claudia Black
• It's good to ski for fun, but I still want to win races as often as possible.  -  Herman Maier
• All things are possible, except for skiing through a revolving door.  -  Author Unknown
• Skiing is a dance, and the mountain always leads. - Author Unknown
• The sport of skiing consists of wearing three thousand dollars worth of clothes and equipment and driving two hundred miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and get drunk.  -  P. J. O'Rourke
• I think what it takes to succeed remains the same.  You have to have a real love of your sport to carry you through all the bad times, you still want to ski even when things aren't working.  You must have a commitment to work hard and to never give up.  -  Nancy Greene
• I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill. - Erma Bombeck
• Gotta use your brain, it's the most important part of your equipment.  -  Kevin Andrews and Warren Miller
• Skiing is the only sport where you spend an arm and a leg to break an arm and a leg.  -  Author Unknown
• When it comes to skiing, there's a difference between what you think it's going to be like, what it's really like, and what you tell your friends it was like.  -  Author Unknown

• Cross country skiing burns more calories per hour than any other sport.  It is also considered a low-impact, low-risk form of aerobic exercise.
• The longest ski season held in North America is Timberline Resort on Mount Hood in Oregon.
• Ralp Miller of the US, set the speed ski record at 109.14 mph on the slopes of Garganta Schuss in Portillo, Chile.
• The highest chairlift in North America is the New Imperial Express Superchair located in Breckenridge, Colorado.  It rises to a grand height of 12,840.
• Skiing was a vital means of transportation and a valuable military skill used in Scandinavia many, many years ago.  Skis more than 4,000 years old have been discovered there.
• The oldest ski resort in the Us is Sun Valley in Idaho, it opened in 1936.
• Alpine skiing originated from the mountainous areas of Europe, especially Norway.
• The schuss, or downhill run, is the quickest way to get down to the bottom of the run.  It was named after the sound the skis make on the snow.
• The first indoor skiing snow dome built in the US was the Meadowlands Xanadu in East Rutherford, New Jersey in 2007.

• When it snows, you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels. - Autjor Unknown
• Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof when your own doorstep is unclean. - Confucius
• The great thing about snow is it makes your lawn look as good as your neighbors. - Author Unknown
• Kindness is like snow - it beautifies everything it covers. - Author Unknown
• A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecesssary freezing of water. - Carl Reiner
• The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wakae up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? - J. B. Priestly
• Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only. - Joseph Wood Krutch
• Before you love, Learn to run through the snow, Leaving no footprint. - Turkish Proverb
• The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. - Doug Larson
• Oh! the snow, the beautiful snow, Fillling the sky and earth below. Over the housetops, over the street, Over the heads of the people you meet. Dancing, Flirting, Skimming along. - J. W. WatsonSnow: a form of precipitation that usually occurs three weeks prior to and the morning of your departure from your ski vacation. - Author Unknown
• Life is like a blanket of snow. Be careful how you step on it. Every step will show! - Author Unknown

• The world's largest snowflake recorded fell at Fort Keogh, Montana on January 28, 1887. It was reportably 38 cm wide and 20 cm thick.
• Snowflakes are ice crystals formed into different patterns.
• Snowflakes has many different forms, some snowflake researchers use as many as 35 shapes to identify them. The most used snowflake forms are: plates, stellar crystals, columns, needles,spatial dendrites, capped columns, and irregular forms.
• A single snowstorm can drop 40 million tons of snow, carrying the energy equivalent to 120 atom bombs.
• Mt Killimanjaro in Tanzania is the only permanent snowcap within sight of the equator.
• At one point, Denver Colorado was buried under 21.3 inches of snow, 19.4 inches which fell in 24 hours.  The heavy wet snow snapped trees and wires causing seven million dollars worth of damage.

• There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you...In spring, summer, and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. - Ruth Stout

• Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." - Robert Byrne

• I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood. - Bill Watterson
• Winter came down to our house one night quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow, and we, we were children once again. - Bill Morgan, Jr.
• Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. - Author Unknown

You will have a cold winter if:

• A heavy crop of berries are found on holly and dogwood trees
• Ants build their mounds high
• Animal have thicker coats of hair or fur
• Wooly worms have heavy coats and they have a wide black band
• Squirrels build their nests low in trees and gather nuts early
• Birds are seen migrating early or huddling on the ground
• Larger numbers of spiders are seen in the fall

• The coldest place in North America is Snag, the Yukon Territory of Canada.  On February 3, 1947 it  had a recorded temperature of -81.4F.
• The first day of winter is the shortest day of the year.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost (1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.