Skiing Around The World – Volume 1 by self confessed ski-bum Jimmy Petterson came out 14 years ago. Now it’s been reprinted and is on sale along with the even bigger Skiing Around The World – Volume 2. Skier & Snowboarder magazine News Editor Patrick Thorne compares the old and the new and explains why these are two books every skier should have in their library.
The Second Edition of probably the greatest skiing book in the world has finally been published. Back in 2005, ski writer, powder hunter, world traveller and self-titled ‘ski bum’ Jimmy Petterson published one of the biggest and best ski guide books ever written. Probably THE best.
While Jimmy includes chapters about the classic resorts such as Aspen, Verbier, Chamonix, and the like, he is a true connoisseur of obscure, off-beat, and exotic ski destinations.
Skiing Around The World Volume I – Chronicles of a Ski Bum, instead, takes skiers on an exciting and entrancing travelogue through the snow slopes of no less than 47 countries.
And whilst the great descents of the famous resorts of the Alps and Rockies are all in there, so, too, are more unusual and often exotic destinations many of us might never think of skiing – Hungary, Albania, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Cyprus, Greenland, and Liechtenstein – the list goes on.
Jimmy’s book isn’t some dry travel text book recounting standard statistics and facts you can Google for yourself these days. It is his first-hand account of skiing all these places for himself.
Better still, Jimmy is a very talented photographer so the book is choc-full of fantastic imagery of these often remote and otherwise largely unknown ski destinations.
Skiing Around The World Volume I not only had unrivalled content in the history of ski publications, it was also a gloriously high quality publication – the size of a world atlas, produced to a very high quality—one of the biggest and best ski books ever published—physically as well as intellectually.
It sold out years ago.
Jimmy didn’t stop skiing and didn’t stop travelling, though. He continued his odyssey, hiking through rain forests in Africa and South America with skis on his back to reach the last remaining snow caps on high mountains just to make a few turns and continue his quest to ski the snows of more countries than anyone else ever has. Now having skied in 75 countries, we think he may have gotten there.
Now, 14 years later, ‘Skiing Around The World Volume II – Collecting Ski Resorts’ has just been published, and with it there’s a reprint of the original book.
There are new chapters for all the main ski nations, but with coverage of different resorts. For example, Volume I had sections for Canada for CMH, Banff, and Lake Louise whereas Volume II includes Revelstoke, Castle Mountain, Kicking Horse, Fernie, and Mustang Powder cat skiing.
But for connoisseurs of the more off-the-beaten-path ski destination there are new treats in store. One of Jimmy’s favourite secret stashes is on the ‘Amsel’ in Saalbach.
Lesotho, Israel, Greece, Turkey, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, England, Scotland, Antarctica, North Korea, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Peru, Venezuela, Uganda and Hawaii all make the cut in Volume II.
The original book had 440 big-world-atlas-sized pages, Volume II is bigger still with 616 pages to give a combined total of more than 1,050 pages, which together contain an incredible 1,600 images from more than 70 countries and 500 ski resorts.
In the history of ski writing, and indeed skiing itself, that’s quite some achievement.
The books are not currently available to buy in the shops but can be ordered all through Europe and the US from:
…whilst stocks last!
Categories: News