Escape the humdrum and snowboard every day? Mount Baker's 'lifties' tell how it's done

The morning commute is bumper to bumper. A man in the next lane absently blows on his morning coffee. Catatonic. The woman in the rearview mirror texts rapidly. Distracted. The line of cars crawls endlessly toward heated offices and stale coffee. Bad benefits. Insecure tenures.

But — and there's always a but — there is another way to live. Alyeska, Jackson Hole, Mammoth, Vail. Mythical places that only exist in the "10 Winter Getaways" pages of ski and travel magazines. Yet real people actually live there. And they ski and snowboard more than you.