Busy Pair Ski, ‘Board At 39 Winter Resorts

Laurie McIlvaine and Gavin Ehringer have a job many snow fans would gladly commit at least six of the seven deadly sins to get: They ski and snowboard.

Ehringer, a 34-year-old Seattle native, and McIlvaine, a 38-year-old Colorado skier, have been paid to take a 20-week snow odyssey in the western United States and Canada.

Their job: drive from ski area to snowboard slope and write about their experiences.

You can catch their reports on the World Wide Web. Just dial up: http://www.GoWest.com and click on the “Cheap-N-Deep” icon. GoWest is an electronic adventure travel magazine.

Ehringer formerly wrote a snowboarding column for the “Rocky Mountain News” in Denver. His Cheap-N-Deep partner, McIlvaine, is a professional ski patroller and fashion designer.

They began their adventure last November at Monarch ski area in Colorado and will end there on April 13.

In between, they’ll carve smiles on the snows of 39 winter resorts, including North Idaho’s Schweitzer.

In a report of the best and worst of their experiences so far, Ehringer picked Crystal Mountain near Mount Rainier as having the best scenery of any winter resort they’d visited. That included such scenic giants as Mount Bachelor, Ore. and Whistler/Blackcomb, British Columbia.

Ehringer said two of his worst experiences were having his car towed - with McIlvaine’s dog inside - in Telluride, Colo., and spinning out while driving in snow on Big Mountain, Mont.

As difficult as it may be to believe, Ehringer says his job is hard work. And plenty of it.

First, McIlvaine and Ehringer ski and board hard at least one out of every three days. Ehringer says by the end of their journey, they will have been on the snow around 50 days.

On days they aren’t on the snow, they’re driving between winter resorts and writing. They write at least one story - usually two or three - on each area they visit and transmit it to GoWest. In their “spare time,” they do all the things we do when we’d rather be doing something else, like laundry and auto maintenance.

While it sounds like a great way to stay in good shape, Ehringer says he was in better shape before he took on the GoWest assignment. Normally, he could work out daily at home. On, the road, he spends days driving or writing and gets less exercise.