bootleg trail
n.— «No one knows who cut the first bootleg trails. By definition it would have to be after 1937, when the first rope tow was erected on Mt. Mansfield. If charging for a lift lent a certain legitimacy to the sport, it also put pressure on the accessible terrain. Frowned on or not, a little creative pruning mirrored the pioneering hard work that originally cleared the surround pastures.…Runs were cut, and skiers in search of untracked snow traversed further into the woods.» —by Andrew Slough The Traveling Skier: 20 Five-Star Skiing Vacations Aug. 1, 1991. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...
Jim in Columbia, South Carolina, has noticed sportscasters’ use of the phrase on the season with reference to a period of time. This construction shows up in the sports pages as early as the 1880s, first referring to a team’s revenue and...