ACCESSING SKI LINES ONLINE

Planning a good ski trip has always involved gathering lots of information and making plans well in advance of departure, not to mention good luck with the weather. Fortunately, current intelligence about skiing has never been more accessible, at least in theory. The Internet can bring a blizzard of facts about ski areas and snow conditions around the world to anyone with a computer, modem and access to the web.  As you'll note in Larry Walsh's roundup in this week's travel section, many ski areas now maintain their own home pages. The best offer a glimpse of their trail systems, lift prices, snow conditions and special events, as well as photos of available accommodations. Unfortunately, many resorts update their pages only during the ski season, an oversight that makes them less useful for advance planning than for trying to figure out how many layers to wear on any particular day. But several well-designed online ski information clearing houses have been established and are updated through the year.

A site operated by the University of Maryland, http://www.skimaps.com, ranks high on the list, providing links to hundreds of ski areas around the world, plus pertinent details.  If you're looking for the latest news on ski resorts, check into http://www.skinet.com. Its resort database offers complete profiles - including mountain stats, lift ticket prices, contact info and special programs - for more than 800 ski resorts worldwide.  The Ski Central site at http://skicentral.com provides snow condi tion reports for more than 350 resorts, updated twice daily. There are equipment reviews, links to skiing organizations, waxing and tuning instructions and various chat rooms.  AMI News calls itself the world's largest producer of ski news, providing snow-condition reporting to hundreds of radio and TV stations. Its four-year-old Web site at http://www.aminews.com is the most visited snow sports site on the Internet. Hourly weather and snow condition updates are posted from virtually every ski area in North America and Europe. It also features snowboard and cross-country reports.  A new site, http://www.SkiResorts.com, provides complete information for many individual resorts and also provides access to thousands of hotels and condominiums  Now in its fifth year of publication, snoZone (at http://www.wzone.com/snozone) was the Web's first true skizine with a wide and well-written editorial calendar, job listings, avalanche reports and ski patrol information.  During the season, you can also access the latest snow and weather conditions by tapping into the National Weather Service ski report (http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/skirep). And if your trip is still in the dreaming stage, you might as well have some straightforward facts about long-range weather forecasts anywhere in the world. You can find them at the Climate Data Center (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov).   More on waiting for "the perfect flight."  In response to my column last week, reader and former travel agency owner Iris Walker wrote to advise about two possible pitfalls to keep in mind whenever you alter your original flight plans at the last minute.  If you're lucky enough to get a seat on the flight you want, make sure the airline computer is updated so you aren't automatically listed as a "no-show" for your original departure. Otherwise, the computer will automatically cancel any return flight reservations you may have.  Checked baggage is the other issue. If you plan to try and stand by for an earlier flight, take your bags to the gate. If you do get on the plane, you can either carry on your bags or check them there. If you check your bags at the ticket counter and get on an earlier departure, you'll probably have a long wait at your destination for them to arrive.  


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