In the spirit of the winter season and with skiing on many people’s minds, we decided to take a tour of this years site design of many ski resorts in North America. Many of the sites viewed have similar set-ups with some sort of a side show with photos, a widget with the temperature, snow base depth, and number of trails open. We explored many sites from major ski resorts to much smaller ski hills located in places you wouldn’t think would be associated with skiing. Our favorites included visually appealing sites with good navigation and a smooth color scheme. This was a fun project and hopefully it will get you in the mood to hit the nearest slope! Here are our favorites:

Aspen-Snowmass.com

Not only our favorite site because it’s our home but this site shines all together!  It is mainly a flash based site with alternate loading for ipad and non-flash browsers.  It has some great animations and interactive widgets through-out the site.  The photos are rich and are up-to date.  The navigation is not the easiest to navigate but all around it is a very impressive site!

Kicking Horse Resort Website

The Kicking Horse Website is on of the most visually atractive ski websites out there.  Very well done with a “Aged” flash movie embedded into the home page.  It has tons of style and it is also very user friendly.  Excellent Site!

Mountain High Ski Resort

Many of these sites in our post here have a pattern.  The closer they are from a major city, the better the design of the site.  Mountain High, located in the Angels National Forest about 45 minutes from downtown Los Angeles is a fun site geared toward a younger crowd.  Excellent torn paper content area with the cement background.  The navigation is clear and being in Cali where gas is certainly not cheap the site has a gas calculator!

Taos, New Mexico

The Taos site is simple yet stylish.  You get the hint that this mountain is not to be messed with.  The navigation is very clear.  This page is not loud and the point is clear.

Copper Mountain, Colorado

Copper Mountain’s website has a retro design with simple rounded corners.  Interesting color choices and rich topography.

Sugarbush, Vermont

I remember skiing Sugarbush resort as a kid. A rustic town hidden away in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont, Sugarbush reminds me of Covered bridges, barns and stone fences.  The site here reflects this well.

Heavenly, Lake Tahoe California

You feel as if your flying above the trails when viewing this site. The clear boxes here make the photos come alive.

Breckenridge, Colorado

Great Image slideshow, rich photos, many clear options.

Waterville Valley, New Hampshire

Bright Colors with this site. Nice ribbon effect.  Easy navagation.

Winter Park, Colorado