Skiing

Mammoth Mountain reported nearly three feet of new snow had fallen by noon Friday, and the Eastern Sierra ski resort plans to operate 12 lifts this weekend.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama said Vice President Joe Biden got "a little over his skis” on Sunday when he said he supported same-sex marriage on a morning TV talk show. But Biden did it out of a "generosity of spirit," Obama said in the full interview with ABC's Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America," broadcast today. Obama said he had already made a decision that he would affirm the right of gays and lesbians to marry and was planning to do it in advance of the election.

Two-time Olympic champion Hermann Maier retired Tuesday, ending a career in which he became one of Alpine skiing's most prolific racers and almost lost a leg in a motorcycle accident in 2001. The 36-year-old Maier cited surgery on his right knee in the off-season as the main reason for his retirement. The Austrian speed specialist won two golds at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, and earned three world championship titles. He won 54 World Cup races and four overall titles, putting him second only to Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark , who captured 86 race victories.

At his kitchen table, orthodontist Bob Smith tried to solve a problem that dogged him on the ski slopes in the early 1960s by using dental tools and foam to fashion prototypes of fog-resistant goggles. As he developed what is commonly called the modern ski goggle, he often traded early versions of the eyewear for lift tickets. His were the first to feature a sealed thermal lens and breathable foam venting, according to Smith Optics, the company he founded in 1965 in Ketchum, Idaho, to manufacture them.

A lot of women ski racers look forward to the day they can marry, settle down and have a child. Sarah Schleper, the only U.S. Ski Team member born in the 1970s, has already knocked off two of the three. She is married, has a child, but never settled down. After finishing a respectable 14th in Thursday's giant slalom, Schleper hurried through the media mixed zone area at Whistler Creekside and made a beeline toward 2-year-old Lasse. "That's my baby," Schleper said. Lasse was wearing a lime-green hooded snow jacket when Daddy handed him over the fence to Mommy, who picked the boy up and threw him on her shoulders.

"Hot dog skiing" gained Olympic legitimacy when moguls became a medal sport in Albertville in 1992 and aerials in 1994 in Lillehammer. Spins, flips, twists and other aerial maneuvers are performed to fast-paced music in this crowd-pleasing event. People to Watch Anne Battelle (above) is 30 and did not even take up mogul skiing until after she had graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, but she could be the U.S. sleeper after finishing eighth at Lillehammer. Why?

Since she won four medals at the 2008 Olympics, including a gold in the balance beam, Shawn Johnson has retired from her sport, written a book, won the mirror ball trophy on "Dancing With the Stars," torn up her knee while skiing and had reconstructive surgery. Oh, yeah, and she's doing gymnastics again. Johnson, 20, who came to the Beijing Games as defending world all-around champion and Olympic favorite, accepted her silver all-around medal, one rung below American teammate Nastia Liukin, with both a smile and tears.

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Bruce Willis says he's willing to give away his central Idaho ski resort to a nonprofit . The Idaho Moun tain Express reports Willis told county leaders that he is willing to donate the Soldier Mountain ski area in Fairfield , a three-lift resort he has owned since the late 1990s, to the right group . . . . Airport security screeners picketed San Francisco's Terminal 2 during the busy 6:30-7:30 a.m. period Thursday ...

Ski resorts from Southern California to Lake Tahoe are crowing over the latest series of storms that brought much-needed snow to a dry season in which they've been playing catch-up all winter. Bear Mountain and Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake received 24 to 27 inches of snow as of Sunday afternoon. Snow-making machines were turned off as the storm blew through the mountains. (Roads are open but chains are required on Highways 38, 18 and 330 that lead to the resorts.) The storm also dumped 18 to 22 inches of powder at Mountain High in Wrightwood where the East and West resorts opened Sunday.

It's February and the weather outside is frightful - for ski resorts. With unseasonably toasty temperatures in parts of the Southland, skiers and snowboarders who would normally head for the slopes at this time of year are instead visiting the beach. "It's hard to think about skiing when it's like 80 degrees in town," said Wendy Brennan, an avid skier who helps organize two ski clubs based in Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach. "It's particularly hard to get people away from the beach and up to the mountains.

I'm not sure if "leapling" is really a word, but if you are one - someone born on leap day  -- you may stay free at Mammoth Mountain ski resort on Feb. 29. There's finally snow, too (about a foot from a recent storm, as of Tuesday) at the resort that got off to a snowless start in December and January. The deal: Leap Year Babies Stay Free offers a choice of one free night (with a second person) at Juniper Springs Resort, the Village Lodge, Tamarack Lodge or Mammoth Mountain Inn on their birthday.

Jill Kinmont Boothe was the national women's slalom champion and on the cover of Sports Illustrated when she set out to win a 1955 race that would help put her on the U.S. Olympic ski team. As she sped down a Utah mountain slope, she lost control on an icy bump, struck a spectator, crashed and tumbled into a tree. When she finally came to a stop, she couldn't feel anything. This must be death, she later recalled thinking. Her neck broken, she was paralyzed below her shoulders, her promising career as a skier over at 18. But Kinmont Boothe became a role model of a different sort, the subject of a book and two Hollywood films, a teacher and a painter who refused to let her crippling injuries turn her into a different person.

Birds were singing. Insects were buzzing. And a large skunk suddenly appeared in the road in front of meteorologist Paul Pastelok as he drove to work in rural Pennsylvania. Pastelok missed the skunk, but the close encounter this week was a reminder of how freakishly warm the winter has been from the Plains to the East Coast, and how the higher temperatures have upended everything from wildlife to resorts whose life cycles are dictated by snow. In New York City, where "unseasonably mild" and "balmy" have been the forecasts of late, temperatures this week have been at least 10 to 20 degrees warmer than the usual average high of 39, a pattern seen across much of the eastern half of the country.