Claire Walter

 
Award-Winning Journalist and Author

Brief Biography

Claire grew up in Connecticut, studied in Massachusetts and lived in the New York area before saddling up and heading west in 1988. In Colorado, her vocation and her avocations mesh neatly. She has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, mostly on skiing and Colorado travel, and is a frequent contributor to leading national and regional magazines. She is a member of the American Society of Journalists & Authors, Society of American Travel Writers, North American SnowSports Journalists Association, Les Dames d’Escoffier and the Colorado Authors' League. Claire lives in Boulder, CO, with her husband Ral Sandberg.

Specialties and Experience

Claire has long covered skiing (Alpine and Nordic), snowshoeing, hiking, backpacking and scuba diving. She is not only an award-winning writer, but she is a recognized authority on these subjects. More recently, she has written about cuisine, particularly Western regional foods. Other topics include culture, tourism and environmental issues, with particular focus on the Rockies and other mountain regions. In addition, she is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and holds an advanced dive card from PADI. And she has now restored her second Victorian home, the first an 1870s brownstone in Hoboken, NJ, and the second a "newer" 1890s prairie Victorian in Boulder, CO.

Claire has skied Colorado's mountains, hiked and snowshoed its trails, rafted its rivers, attended performances in its theaters and concert halls, dined in its fine restaurants, attended its renowned food and cultural festivals, explored its museums – and has written about it all. Her knowledge extends along the spine of the Continental Divide to other Rocky Mountain states and also to Canada. 

She is widely traveled. Her U.S. trips have taken her to every state except for a cluster in the deep South and North Dakota. In the Western Hemisphere, she has explored places from Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina (and from there to the Antarctic Peninsula) to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay along the Arctic Ocean. International travels have taken her to Europe (primarily the Alpine regions of Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland, as well to England, Scandinavia, Slovenia, Spain and Wales); to Latin America (Mexico, Honduras, Argentina and Ecuador), and to the Middle East and North Africa (Morocco, Israel and Turkey). She has ventured partway across the Pacific to Hawaii and all the way to China (three times), New Zealand, Thailand, Australia, and Bali. She has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, hiked Switzerland’s mammoth Great Aletsch Glacier, skied in the Southern Hemisphere during the North Hemisphere's summer, and scuba dived in Southeast Alaska – in winter. In-season and off-season, she has pursued her interests and written about them.

Professional Affiliations

*American Society of Journalists and Authors (Board of Directors, 2001-2006)
*Boulder Media Women
*Colorado Authors' League
*Les Dames d’Escoffier
*North American SnowSports Journalists Association
*Society of American Travel Writers