Italian espresso. Photo by Eben Mond

This is how a typical ski day in Italy goes:

9 a.m.: Meet your friends for a coffee at the local cafe, then head to the ski hill over winding mountain passes in tiny Euro cars with two-wheel drive.

10 a.m.: Spin a few laps inbounds at the resort. Then stop at an on-mountain hut for more coffee and a pastry.

11 a.m: Head out of bounds (not that there's a gate or any kind of boundary line warning you that you're leaving), and skin out to an untouched powder field under jagged 13,000-foot peaks. Italian powder somehow seems sweeter than its American counterpart.

Darcee in the Dolomites. Photo by Eben Mond.

Noon: Stop in another hut deep in the woods. Drink red wine straight from the jug, eat crusty bread slathered in stinky cheese, then drink more red wine.

2 p.m.: Ski down from the hut. Powder seems even sweeter after two glasses of wine.

4 p.m.: Drink biera and eat sausage pasta with more cheese until it's time to dance or sleep. Then do it all over again.

A ski design example from Folsom.

We recently took a tour of a new custom ski manufacturer based in Boulder, Colorado. From the outside, Folsom Custom Skis looks like any old garage, a warehouse with a sliding metal door in a rundown lot in North Boulder. But inside, ski presses, rolls of topsheet logos, and two guys

We'll admit that ski jumping isn't the sexiest sport. Ski jumpers don't make it on the covers of glossy magazines and barely anyone outside their sport even knows their names. Lindsey Van? Who's that? She's the Olympic Committe's Athlete of the Month for October 2008, that's who she is. She holds the record for the longest ski jump ever

Starting Christmas day, 15 million households nationwide will be able to tap into a television channel entirely dedicated to skiing (and other mountain sports): The Ski Channel, created by Steve Bellamy, the founder of the Tennis Channel. "If we close all the ad deals on the table, we will hit our first year's number before we launch," Bellamy says. "We have added a ton of incredible programming." That "incredible programming" will include movies from Warren Miller Entertainment, Rage Films, Level 1 Productions, and will have the broadcast rights to New Zealand's World Heli Challenge, taking place next year, and the U.S. and World Freeskiing tours. Sounds pretty good to us. The only time we'll definitely be switching the channel? When the Ski Channel airs the US Snowshoe Racing tour.

Aah, reverse camber skis. We remember when the Spatula was as revolutionary as it got. Nowadays, practically every ski manufacturer makes a fat powder ski with rockered tips and tails: The Black Diamond Megawatt, the Salomon Rocker, the K2 Pontoon, and more. One of our favorites is Rossignol's S7 Caballero, which has a handcrafted top sheet by artist Steve Caballero that represents the sin of gluttony. It's a twin tip with reverse camber at the tip and tail and 115-millimeters in the waist. Freeskier Sage Cattabriga-Alosa helped design it. Rossignol recently announced they'd be making a telemark model of this ski

It's fall. Which means winter is right around the corner. If you've been slacking on your lunges and squats at the gym, don't fret. We have the ultimate miracle training device for ski conditioning. And the best part? You can train while watching tv. That's right, you heard us: Get ready for ski season and watch Monday Night Football at the same time. How does this miracle work, you ask? It's called the wall sit. Or, in this case, the tv sit. You can eat even chicken wings or drink beer while performing this quad-booster. Here's how: Prop your rear against the wall, bend your knees at a 90 degree angle (knees should be directly over your ankles), and stay put. For as long as you possibly can. Until your quads quiver like a sewing machine. Until they feel so weak and noodle-like, you collapse onto the floor. Then take a minute-long break and do it all over again. The best challenge is staying put for the duration of the commercial break.

Flylow's Greg Steen sampling the goods at Odgen's Powder Mountain.

You

The Yellowstone Club chairlifts come with wind and snow protection.

And you thought your ski pass was expensive. At the Yellowstone Club, an exclusive private ski resort in the Gallatin Mountains of Montana, membership costs start at $250,000 and slopeside mansions go for between $2 and $6 million. Due to economic hardships

Flylow athlete Charlie Cannon has been known to do crazy things: Launch cliffs backwards, juggle machetes while skiing, and dress up in gold chaines and short shorts. He recently appeared in Powderwhore's new film, The Pact, and on the cover of Telemark Skier magazine. As a self-proclaimed Jugglemarker, he's taken to throwing machetes on his on skis. We talked to Charlie about how exactly one does that.

What do you do for dryland training?

Charlie: I've been practicing juggling on different moving objects