Hello readers,
My name is Ian Wood, and I’ve been a writer for Unofficial Networks since 2021.
I started skiing at Pats Peak in New Hampshire in the early 2000s. My family moved up a little north in New Hampshire, so I transitioned to Mount Sunapee Resort. Over the following years, I gradually got more into skiing, collecting trail maps and magazines and scavenging the internet for information regarding ski resorts across the planet. Shoutout to websites like New England Ski History and the New England Lost Ski Areas Project (NELSAP) for letting readers like myself learn so much about the ski industry.
I went to Proctor Academy in high school, which has its own ski hill. The Proctor Ski Area has facilities for ski racers, ski jumpers, and cross-country skiers. During my four years at Proctor, I worked as a ski patroller at the hill, eventually becoming the captain of that team.
For college, I looked for a place that would allow me to learn more about the ski industry and ski during my free time. This brought me to Westminster College (now known as Westminster University) in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I studied Marketing and Spanish.
During my time there, I got to explore various ski resorts across the Salt Lake City/Ogden area. This included working as a liftie at Snowbird during my freshman winter, being a restaurant host at Solitude during my sophomore winter, and working at Snowbird again as a restaurant host between my junior and senior years.
After a gap year in Utah that was shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic, I moved back to New Hampshire and began working at a law firm. I eventually became a paralegal, which I still do as my full-time job. While scrolling through Facebook one day in 2021, I found an ad for Unofficial offering an internship. I eventually applied for it, which led to a paid job offer, and I’ve been working here since.
Over the roughly four years I’ve worked at Unofficial, I’ve written about many things. Perhaps the most interesting ones have been the revivals of Granite Gorge and Tenney Mountain, analyzing various new expansions and trail maps, diving into the histories of abandoned ski areas, Killington and Pico shockingly transitioning to local ownership, interviewing Rad Smith about his new Deer Valley trail map, and Vail being Vail.
At this point, I ski on average between 42 and 52 days a season, and I’m currently at 38 days for the 2024-25 season. I typically ski at Mt. Sunapee, Killington, and Ragged. Outside of skiing, my other hobbies include watching sports, traveling, reading (mostly about skiing), going on hikes around New England, and worrying about things I have no control over (e.g., politics).
If you ever have a scoop, article idea, or a correction when I inevitably misspell something (I shockingly got third place in a spelling bee once), you can reach out to me at ian@unofficialnetworks.com.
