Last year, I learned a valuable lesson in Ellicottville: Craft beer is obliterating the stereotype that American brews are weak and watery.

Now, I'm learning something else: A private ski resort isn't always a private ski resort. 

Eighteen months after our first visit to charming Ellicottville, the brood and I are back to check out nearby HoliMont, the largest private ski area in the United States (by membership). The good news for non-members like us is that HoliMont is open to the public on weekdays, which is how we've been able to ski there. The resort's 46 trails and eight lifts are providing some textbook spring skiing, with the welcoming atmosphere enhanced by stone fireplaces in the expansive main lodge and floor-to-ceiling windows facing the snowy slopes.

Spring skiing, especially with children who are learning to snowboard, provides a natural excuse to enjoy a beer or three. And as is the case with 12.6 percent of Ontario March Breaks, St. Patrick's Day just happens to be the very last day of this year's nine-day parental gauntlet.

Good thing the Ellicottville Brewing Co.'s wares are so well-represented at nearby Holiday Valley, the largest public ski area in New York State. The eponymous lodge's raucous T-Bar lounge pours a Ski Bum hoppy ale and a Blueberry Wheat Ale garnished with real berries. Next door, the fifth outpost of the Massachusetts-based John Harvard's Brewery is home to 20-plus taps, including a decadent Chocolate Cherry Bomb Imperial Stout produced by Ellicottville Brewing.

Craft beers multiply exponentially during the annual Holiday Valley Beer and Wine Festival, when more than 30 brewers crowd the resort's base area each November. For even more sudsy variety, EBC's stylish dining and entertainment complex serves up flights and brewery tours.

READ MORE OF MY CRAFT BEER-MEETS-SKIING STORY IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Until the 14th day of March, oh great and robustly suspendered Nigel, my 2018 sacrifices to you had gone unanswered. I dined upon everything that pleased you in the past -- nachos, cinnamon buns, poutine -- but you favoured me not with heavy snows upon the slopes of skiing.

With each failed sacrifice I turned to fresh sustenance. Would chicken wings curry favour with you? Apparently not. Would curry curry favour with you? Again, not a single flake fell. Oxtail rotis? Sushi? Oxtail sushi? Sushi rotis? Try as I might, your new culinary predilections remained mysteries to me.

It was with a heavy heart that I dug deep into my freezer for something, anything, that might please your too-tightly-trousered magnificence. It was the Monday of March Break, after all, and my family was about to head to Stowe, Vermont.

That’s when I saw them, sheathed in plastic and bundled together with an elastic band. The wieners were quickly defrosted in boiling water, grilled in a pan, and served “à la Ikea” between two equally freezer-burned buns. It wasn’t much, oh fickle and surprisingly stout Nigel, but it was worth a shot.

Fat flakes fell furiously as we neared the self-proclaimed “Ski Capital of the East,” and I began to joyfully suspect that I had satisfied your latest craving. We all ordered hot dogs from the kids’ menu that evening, and lo and behold, we awoke to more than a foot of fresh powder. When I fist-bumped a complete stranger on the hill that day, oh yellow-mustard-preferring Nigel, it wasn’t only because of the sublime conditions. It was also because I had made my way back into your blessed favour.

Needless to say, before heading to Fernie Alpine Resort in early April, I joined my daughters in sacrificing half a pack of franks to your glorious, duosyllabic and relatively common name. Upon arrival, I witnessed a great omen -- Fernie’s annual Eighties-themed Hot Dog Day -- that foretold of many snowy days to come. It also foretold of some serious hangovers and vintage-store remorse, but that’s another story.

You again unleashed your powers of precipitation that night, compelling me to hike up Snake Ridge and glide down into Cedar Bowl the next morning. If that's what dining upon tube steaks gets me, oh munificent and elastic-waistband-requiring Nigel, I’ll renew my Epic Pass ASAP and see you at Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in July.

Love,

Adam “Kobayashi” Bisby

As they have done for so many things -- Lego, Christmas, Top 40 radio pop -- my two daughters have renewed my appreciation for schussing under the stars.

Nearly 14 years after my last night-skiing session I found myself in the exact same spot at 5pm: The top of Blue Mountain's Memory Lane run.

The grooming machines had just finished turning the snow into a carpet of corduroy. At the top of the run, dozens of skiers and snowboarders waited for the hill to reopen. It was a surreal time of day: Dazzling floodlights replaced the dwindling daylight, while the sunset painted the sky a pale, wintry yellow. Just as the sun dipped below the horizon the yellow barrier was removed, and my family carved down the hill with nary an ice patch in sight. As we regrouped by the Silver Bullet chairlift for another ride up, I overheard both my girls singing Imagine Dragons' "Thunder." "Now I'm smiling from the stage while / You were clapping in the nose bleeds..."

A little swagger on the slopes? I love it.

Resorts have been lighting runs since the 1920s, and today, scores of hills across Canada offer night skiing. While many base their business on after-work and after-school skiers from nearby cities, a growing number of resorts are revamping their evening appeal by offering much more than schussing under the stars.

READ THE REST OF THE 2004 STORY IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Who knew a slideshow could be so therapeutic? Last night's display on our living room TV helped ease my family's jet lag, as well as the shock of returning to snowy Toronto, with giddy reminiscences of our four weeks in New Zealand.

It also took me back to the slideshows of my childhood. My dad would deploy one of those tripod-mounted projection screens and, if I was lucky, I'd get to use the handheld "clicker" to advance the projector's carousel. Because they were near-weekly events, we saw the same photos over and over again, and we'd often spot details that were overlooked the first 17 times around: A picnic shot revealing a surreptitious cookie grab, a near-perfect family portrait in which yours truly was flying low.

These days,  new observations are even easier to make as we rename, sort, crop and share images. Indeed, upon further review of our time in the Land of the Long White Cloud...

...sometimes a stalagmite is just a stalagmite. (In the otherworldly Ngarua Caves south of Abel Tasman National Park.)

...all I need is some rope, a sturdy maple branch, and that meltwater-filled pothole in front of our house. (Just off the bucolic Rakaitane Track along the Arnold River near the lovely village of Moana.)

...isn't it amazing what you can do with Velcro? (En route to the Franz Josef Glacier in Westland Tai Poutini National Park.)

...I still don't know what the shepherd is doing here. Trying to sneak up on baby Jesus? Some kind of "Thriller" dance move? (Christmas Eve on the gorgeously deserted Anapai Bay Beach in Abel Tasman National Park.)

...if not for the signage I would have held an eel to my face as I would a newborn kitten. (At the wonderful Jester House Cafe near Nelson.)

...what a nice shot of my family on a bridge spanning Taupo's Huka Falls. The water is this incredible iridescent blue colour and...hold on a sec...what is that random guy doing?!? 

Phew, it's a perspective thing. I'm pretty sure he is neither groping nor pick-pocketing my wife. 

Sung with plenty o' twang to the tune of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies TV show (1963-71) and 1993 film (I still want my Blockbuster Video rental fee back).

Come and listen to my story 'bout my wife named Ang,
A poor buccaneer, greatest momma in the land,
A few weeks ago we were driving 'round NZ*,
With Ang and her phone in the shotgun seat.

Spoken: An iPhone 6 that is. Black and gold, it was free (when she signed a two-year contract with a company that is partly owned by...Satan?!?).

*Sorry, that's "zee," British (and many Canadian) friends.

*****

Related anecdote: As we were driving into Christchurch (on the left-hand side of the road), I failed to signal an abrupt lane change after inadvertently activating my windshield wipers for the 314th time.

The driver behind me had just honked his horn -- fair enough -- when a sketchy-looking woman stepped off the sidewalk in front of us and darted into our lane. She gestured at me to roll down my window, which at home in Toronto I would never do. This being New Zealand, however, I figured she wanted to offer some helpful tips on the proper use of windshield wipers.

Instead, she jabbed her index finger at me and barked: “Why did you toot at me?!?”

“I didn’t, er, toot at you,” I replied, taken aback. Behind me, my daughters giggled at the use of “toot.”

“You’re an American liar!” the woman declared loudly.

I wish I had corrected her on both counts, but all I could muster was a swift denial. “It wasn’t me, it was the guy behind me!”

“Frucking...framerican...friars,” she mumbled, and spun on her heel to face the poor tooter.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled earworm.

*****

Well the first thing you know Ang is snapping from her seat
The kinfolk said, "iCloud storage isn't free..."
Angela replied, "Keep it zipped and watch the road,
“We just hit the Instagram motherlode...”

The morning of our departure, a friend asks my wife if she's excited about our trip to New Zealand. “It’s not so much excitement,” Angela replies, “as it is disbelief.”

It's true: After six months of planning, it seems impossible that the big day is finally here.

Such is the emotional irregularity of trip anticipation: We expect excitement, but we get incredulity. Inspiration soon gives way to insecurity, and elation morphs into depression at the drop of an airfare. The stages of this buildup are different for everyone, I’m sure, but here’s what transpired for me this time around:    

STAGE 1: INSPIRATION
New Zealand? Where do I sign!?! Our friends are moving there for a year -- to Motueka no less, which is sandwiched between a national park and wine country -- they’ve invited us to stay with them, we all love wine, we all love sandwiches, their kids are BFFs with our kids, we’ve always wanted to visit NZ, we’re due for a big family adventure, we all love wine, it could not be more perfect.

STAGE 2: BARGAINING
OK, if we travel over the holidays the kids will only miss a few days of school. They spend most of December crafting awkwardly non-denominational ornaments anyway. Luckily, you’ve got a bunch of paid vacation time, and my Oscar-winning screenplay will be complete any day now. And do we really need a functioning furnace this winter?

STAGE 3: OVERCONFIDENCE
‘Twas I who navigated the medina of Fez without a guide (and only got lost two-score and nine times). ‘Twas I who had the ski school pick up our kids from the chalet. ‘Tis I who has but thrice laundered his passport. A New Zealand quest? ‘Tis child’s play, I tell you!

STAGE 4: ANGER
Me: So let me get this straight: All 27 times I selected your super-discount airfare, someone else grabbed the seats while I was filling out the seven pages of passenger and credit-card info. And it just so happened that the next-best fare was two grand more than the one I wanted. Do you honestly think I’m going to go for the new fare? Who does that? Doesn’t this sound like a scam to you?

Them: Well sir, it’s a busy travel time for travel to Mexico, and…

Me: Mexico? We’re going to New Zealand!

Them: Ah yes, sorry sir, New Zealand. Excellent choice. As I was saying, it’s a busy time for travel to New Zealand, and…

Me: No, wait, I’ve changed my mind. What do you have for Molvania?

Them: Ah yes, Molvania. Excellent choice. It’s a busy time for travel to Molvania, and…

Click!

STAGE 5: ACCEPTANCE
I will let the rigours of travel planning wash over me like the oceans of guacamole in my soon-to-be-Oscar-winning screenplay. I know that sometimes those guacamolean seas will be chunky, as they are on the way to New Zealand when a customs official asks, “Are you carrying any fresh fruits or vegetables?”

“No.”

“Nuts?”

“No.”

“Meats?”

“No.”

“Honey?”

“No…”

“Hold up there good sir!” our 10-year-old exclaims. “Let’s back things up for a sec. Mother and Father, I distinctly recall you stowing several large jars of honey in your luggage. I believe it was the cheap non-organic stuff. Anyway, officer, I just want to make sure you have all the correct information at your disposal.”

There is an incredibly awkward silence. The customs official stares at us blankly. We stare back. Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barks. Which is odd, considering we are in an airport. Then again, it’s probably one of those sniffer dogs searching for concealed honey.

Trouble is, we can’t truthfully correct our full-disclosure-obsessed child for fear that the maple syrup in our luggage will be confiscated. Maybe maple syrup is right after honey on the customs checklist!

That’s when I jump in: “No no sweetie, that wasn’t honey. It was my all-natural ball wax.”

The awkwardness relieved, we go on our merry way.

STAGE 6: EXCITEMENT
I often find that people say “you must be getting excited about your trip” long before you genuinely feel that way. For me, the excitement starts the moment I miss my last deadline.

STAGE 7: DISBELIEF
I think this is why so many people walk around airport departure levels in zombie-like states. It makes sense in arrivals, jet lag and all, but in departures it is the only reasonable explanation for the exorbitant price of duty-free bocce ball wax.

Full disclosure: I'm trying to like Instagram. I have an account I use now and then, but as a travel writer I can't help but feel it undermines my chosen field. A click is a click is a click, I suppose, but when you get paid by the word the power of digital photography becomes highly disconcerting. Then again, 375 million active users can't be wrong, and many of the posts I come across are pretty damn cool. That must be why Instagram is making me feel so optimistic about my family's upcoming trip to New Zealand.  

With exactly one week till take off, I just stumbled upon New Zealand Tourism's "Top 10 Instagram spots in 2017." ​

Which ones are already on OUR itinerary?

On the northeastern flank of British Columbia's 2,408-metre Terminator Peak, a group of 10 skiers, some with avalanche transceivers in hand, charge into a small stand of pines.

"Over here!" shouts Martha Handford of Canmore, Alta., as soon as her beeping device locates a buried target. Her Australian rescue partner, Scott Burley, immediately deploys an extendable probe and begins stabbing it into the snow in a spiral pattern. A direct hit is made in less than a minute, prompting the pair to start digging like crazy.

It's a scene that would send chills down the spine of any back-country veteran; thankfully, this isn't a real rescue. There are no physical signs of an avalanche and two ski patrollers in red jackets shout instructions from a groomed trail nearby. If any doubt remains, it evaporates when a member of the group pauses to snap a selfie.

The skiers are in the midst of a weekend-long avalanche skills training (AST) course run by Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. The six men and four women, from the ages of 23 to 63, aren't locals or staff. All of them are here on vacation.

Until quite recently, most resorts did little or nothing to educate visitors about avalanche avoidance and survival. Ski areas such as Kicking Horse spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on snow-safety measures such as forecasting, signage, fencing and ballistics, but they aren't technically responsible for the terrain outside their boundaries or for lift-ticket holders who choose to enter it. So safety training for guests was typically left to third-party outfitters and alpine organizations.

What has changed? Back-country skiing has exploded in popularity in the past decade, so now many of the resorts that tacitly enable the inherently risky activity are working harder to educate resort skiers on back-country safety. Most of British Columbia's big resorts – Kicking Horse, Revelstoke, Whitewater, Sun Peaks and Whistler Blackcomb, to name a few – have all been expanding their snow-safety education programs in recent years.

"We're at the start of a shift in resort mentality," says Sean Nyilassy, a member of Kicking Horse's mountain safety department who leads the weekend-long programs. "From our boundaries, you can instantly enter uncontrolled back-country terrain, where inexperienced or uneducated skiers can run into trouble. We still see a lot of people out of bounds without the proper equipment, and for every 10 we see there are 100 who get away with it. This puts our guests and our rescue personnel at risk. But with the proper education, the risk goes down."

Snow-safety education got a shot in the arm in 2004 when Avalanche Canada's headquarters opened in the town of Revelstoke, B.C., 150 kilometres west of Kicking Horse down the TransCanada Highway, the aptly nicknamed "Powder Highway." Among much else, the NGO issues daily avalanche forecasts for Canada's most popular back-country regions via its website and smartphone app – both of which are invaluable AST tools – and shapes AST curriculum. Revelstoke is a fitting home for the centre, given that snow safety is such an inescapable fact of life in this part of the world. A few blocks away, the Land of Thundering Snow exhibit at the Revelstoke Museum & Archives explores avalanche research and snow science, with an online component that focuses on skier safety both in and out of bounds.

Ten years after Revelstoke hosted its first course, a variety of AST programming occupies just about every weekend from December to March. A day-long companion rescue skills course, meanwhile, is designed to refresh rusty skiers and educate time-crunched visitors.

Then there's the "Avalanche Ranch," which Revelstoke unveiled in 2014. The wireless transceiver training area, the first of its kind in Canada, occupies a hockey rink-size basin at the top of the resort's busiest lift and allows skiers to hone their transceiver and probe skills. "This is as much about awareness as it is about ability," explains avalanche forecaster Chad Hemphill. "It gets the seriousness of back-country safety across more effectively than a bunch of signs."

Hidden under the snow blanketing the Ranch are eight targets. Each is toggled on or off at a junction box, and when each is struck the box emits a loud beep. Hemphill's demonstration draws the attention of several youngsters, who shout encouragement to the target-seeking travel writer struggling through waist-deep snow.

Young skiers such as these, and their worried parents, are the focus of other resort-based programs such as Whitewater's month-spanning "Avalanche Awareness Beyond the Boundaries" – a free course now in its seventh year – and Sun Peaks' All Mountain Skills weekend camp, which launched in 2014.

"What do kids want to do? They want to duck the rope and ski out of bounds. And I would say the vast majority of them are unprepared," says Bodie Shandro, who runs Sun Peaks' camp. "Kids show up and say, 'I'm here because my dad says I have to be here,' but by the end of the day, they're totally into it."

READ THE REST OF THE STORY IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL (AND FIND OUT WHERE YOU CAN TAKE AN AST COURSE)

Second marriages, second winds, second chances, split-second miscalculations — if I had to ascribe a theme to the last few months of 2017, it would be "The Summer of Other People's Babies."

Being an uncle, both formally and informally, offers the best of both worlds when it comes to infant exposure: All the fun and cuteness with none of the diaper-changing and Pack N’ Play deployment.

If there's one aspect of early fatherhood I do not miss, it is the late-night set-up of the latter. Indeed, it seems like only yesterday that I placed this (entirely fictional) call to Graco's (entirely fictional) help line:
 • Welcome to Pack N’ Play customer support! For help deploying your folding crib, press “1” or say “deploy.”
 • For help extracting your Pack N’ Play from the overstuffed trunk of your car, press “2” or buy a minivan already.
 • If your Pack N’ Play is sitting in a twisted heap in the middle of your in-laws’ spare bedroom, press “3” or swear loudly.
(Sound of “1” being pressed)
 • Crib deployment. Before you begin, remove any sharp or dangerous objects — or heckling in-laws — from the room. Also, good luck deploying your Pack N’ Play while holding a phone.
 • Remove the Pack N’ Play’s nylon cover (assuming you haven’t lost it) and stand the crib on one end. Then remove the mattress pad by releasing the Velcro tabs. If you’re having trouble this early on, you should probably give up and put junior to bed in the bathtub.
 • Next, splay the four legs. Even though it’s jutting up into your face, resist the temptation to push down on the centre of the crib. If you do, you’re screwed.
 • Snap the four side bars into place by alternately twisting, pulling, shaking and bashing the central button thingy. Then push down on the (badly damaged) central button thingy until the crib is fully unfolded.
 • Put the mattress pad in the bottom of the crib with the “soft” side facing up, and place the fitted sheet over the mattress pad. What fitted sheet, you ask? Don’t worry, the bare pad isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it looks. To continue, press “pound.”
(Sound of “pound” being pressed)

Congratulations on deploying your Pack N’ Play! Don’t forget to put a child in there at some point.

​If, however, you have become trapped inside the Pack N’ Play, please hang up and call 911.

How much wetness and/or wildness does $25 million get you? That’s the amount Oklahoma-based Premier Parks spent on upgrading the former Wild Water Kingdom in Brampton.

The answer: A lot. In addition to renaming and revamping its three blackout rides and two high-speed slides — both of which deliver seven-storey drops — the recently reopened and renamed Wet ‘N’ Wild Toronto has added a host of new pools and rides.

The towering “Bear Footin' Bay” play structure, for instance, is festooned with sprayers, slides and a giant tipping bucket. My daughters were nimble enough to avoid being soaked by the latter, and could not have been happier when my own nimbleness fell short. However, their gleeful mockery would only sweeten my inevitable revenge.

This watery intro also primed us for "Hurricane" and "Typhoon," a pair of tandem-tube slides that quickened our pulses and whetted our appetites for two of the main attractions: "Krazy Kanuck" and "Caribbean Chaos," which rise together over the former site of a mini-golf course.

Krazy Kanuck was relatively tame, taking as many as five inner-tube riders down back-to-back curves, drops and vortex loops. We tried it a few times, and soon determined that whizzing down backwards increased the fear factor substantially.

Once the girls had built up their nerve, we took the other staircase up to Caribbean Chaos. This slide builds anticipation with an enormous scream-reflecting wall that looms over the entrance to the waterpark. It proved to be just as thrilling as it looked, especially for my daughters who, at my subtle request, were sent down backwards by the ride attendant. As we rocketed up the watery wall and felt gravity loosen its grip, their wide eyes and delighted screams made me grin triumphantly. Revenge was sweet indeed!

A few of the new attractions were still under construction during our visit: Oh Canada!, a free-fall slide with a 360-degree loop; and Klondike Express, side-by-side racing tunnels that loop and drop. The new Wet 'n' Wild Jr. play area, meanwhile, was shunned as being “for babies,” although I did like the look of the shady deck chairs. Thankfully, dozens more were arrayed around the half-million-gallon "Big Surf" wave pool, which is surrounded by the "Muskoka Soakah" lazy river. 

​For GTA-based families who want to combine watery refreshment with watery excitement, Wet ‘N’ Wild fits the bill nicely as the only good-sized standalone waterpark in the area. Just remember to beware the bucket!

WHERE TO STAY
The new Courtyard Toronto Mississauga/West is less than 15 minutes by car from Wet 'N' Wild, and features a full-service restaurant and lounge where you can refuel post-waterpark.