Vail Daily columnist Warren Miller sings the praises of the smaller, mom-and-pop ski areas. “Let’s hear it for the hundreds of small ski areas across America that afford the opportunity for people to make their first turns and thus experience their first taste of freedom” Miller writes. “Those resorts are where you can still get a hamburger for under $15 and what grooming there might be is done by a 30-year-old Tucker Snow Cat or the ski patrol sidestepping. A resort where everyone walks from the muddy parking lot to the base lodge, in their fur-covered after ski boots, carrying their brown bag lunch in one hand, their ski boots in the other and their skis and poles over their shoulder. A place where lift tickets are sometimes less than half of a so-called ‘destination’ resort. But isn’t a small resort also a destination?”