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Top 4 Alternatives to Skiing During Low-Snow Seasons

Originally posted on Powder | By Ian Greenwood | Last updated Dec 9, 2025 11:48 AM ET

Winter has arrived—kind of.

While some mountains and skiers are dancing through the snow globe, others are wondering when the mercury will finally plummet. In the latter category, opening days are inching further and further into the distance, and the mood’s beginning to sour. (California, we're looking at you.)

If you’re among the ranks of snow-starved skiers, this article should help. We’ve compiled five very reliable alternatives to skiing when the conditions don’t stack up, from meteorological pursuits to archeological digs that would make Indiana Jones blush.

Snow or not, the world remains your oyster. Try one activity or try them all! By the time you’re finished, old man winter will have gotten his act together, hopefully.

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1. Become a Professional Meteorologist

Those hours spent scouring the forecast for signs of snow weren’t wasted—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You weren’t procrastinating or “acting neurotic again.” You were learning about the weather. Now, thanks to the lack of skiing going on in your local area, it’s time to take the obsession—sorry, academic endeavor—further, find a new career, and lead a new life.

Our advice? Enlist in a meteorology program and finally put all that knowledge of oscillations to good use. You’ll need to be patient at first. There are a lot of acronyms to get through, like ECMWF, GFS, and UKMO. Eventually, though, after staring at suspiciously warm long-range weather models for long enough, you’ll start to understand expert terminology, including FOMO and FML.

Photo: AscentXmedia/Getty Images

2. Go Skiing Somewhere That You Used To Make Fun Of

What do you call a brown, grassy hillside with a few measly inches of snow? An “East Coast powder day.” Very funny, right? Guess again. This season, as the snow totals creep higher in the Northeast while the parts of the West stay wet and warm, there may be skiers swallowing their pride as they consider trips to places that they used to make fun of.

If you’re a member of their disgraced ranks, don’t be too embarrassed, but come prepared. Pretend that you knew how good the skiing in the Northeast was all along—I love'Jason Peak, Killingtown, and Maid Rivers-Glen!'—to avoid being cast as an interloper during your visit.

Before fleeing eastward, you’ll also need to re-watch Good Will Hunting a few times to dial in your accent. You could mention a fabricated Dunkin’ order a few times on the chairlift, too, but don’t talk about it so much that you raise suspicion. And yes, thanks for asking, you can leave your credit card at home—transactions can be settled with maple syrup or Moxie, depending on the port of call.

3. Enter a Lost Nordic Burial Chamber To Find the “Tome of Weather”

Skiers know the “make it snow” classics. Do a snow dance, put a spoon under your pillow, and flush some ice down the toilet—after accomplishing all three, the cosmos will tilt in your favor, dumping powder overnight. But in reality, this is kindergarten stuff. Necromancers, wizards, and warlocks everywhere laugh about these silly rituals in their private Facebook groups.

However, there is an ancient, magical tome that can actually change the weather, locked beneath the ground in a Nordic burial chamber. Why distract yourself from skiing when you can bring winter back? A word of warning, though: Supposedly, one of the members of the latest party to venture there left their Strava location data on and, instead of blowing up the spot, they were discovered by supernatural forces. Then, they got into a scuffle with a guy whose name we can’t pronounce, but sounded bad. Cthulhu, maybe? Needless to say, the group failed to set a segment record on “Dark, Vibrating Cavern With Weirdly Sharp Teeth-Like Stalactites 12k Out and Back.”

We don’t want you to end up like them. So, for legal reasons, we won’t tell you exactly where the tomb is, but if you can find the weather book—without getting cast into a dimension where climate change is even worse and you can only ski on Mars, that is—you could save this season yet. Good luck.

Thomas Barwick/Getty Images

4. Just Start Playing Pickleball

There is salvation at the end of this long, snowless tunnel, we promise. And, luckily, it doesn’t need to involve communing with the dark arts. Well, not exactly. It’s called pickleball!

You probably think that on the mountain, amid biting winds and swirling snow, you’ve felt the peak of the human experience. Frank, a happily retired older gentleman who recently delivered the game-winning point during a mildly contested pickleball match without requiring his heart medication, would disagree.

Frostbite? Expensive ski passes? Your toenails fell off? The snow water equivalents are tracking below average? Technical outerwear? “You’re freaking me out, man,” says Frank. “Get it together. They have a three-point lead.”

Follow his enlightened path. Put the skis down, stop tearing your ligaments for no reason, and pick up the paddle. If you find the fundamentals of pickleball hard at first, don’t fret. There are parts of the game that will quickly remind you of your former favorite activity. You can, for instance, spend needlessly large amounts of money on paddles that won’t improve your swing.

This article first appeared on Powder and was syndicated with permission.

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