Working as "The Snow Hunter," Patrick Thorne has spent all of his adult life as a full-time, year-round ski travel writer. He has edited ski magazines and websites, written for hundreds of publications around the world, and received multiple awards for his work. Since publishing his first book, The Essential Ski Holiday Guide, in 1984 at just 20 years old, Patrick has written or contributed to a dozen ski books, including the best-seller Powder.

In the 1990s, he created the world’s first database of over 6,000 ski areas worldwide, which is used by many ski websites today. A lifelong snow obsessive, Patrick has closely tracked global snow conditions for four decades and runs SaveOurSnow.com, a site dedicated to fighting climate change.

Patrick first skied at age 15 and has since visited more than 250 ski areas worldwide. He lives and works on an eight-acre "croft" (small farm) in the Scottish Highlands, where he can ski in his own back field whenever there’s an inch of snow. He and his wife, Sally, have three sons, two daughters-in-law, and one granddaughter—whom they ski with whenever possible. The family also includes two ponies, two dogs, two cats, eight hens, and 500 Christmas trees—none of which ski.

Through ancestry research and DNA testing, Patrick recently discovered he’s distantly related to a rather more famous writer: William Shakespeare, likely his first cousin, 13 times removed.