By Marty Basch

More than 20 years ago, David Goodman spent a winter living out of his Dodge Dart and skiing New England’s wild backcountry. The result was a book of 33 ski tours called “Classic Backcountry Skiing’’ published in 1989 that turned the ’82 Harvard grad into a free-heeling cult hero leading followers into places like Mount Washington’s Tuckerman Ravine, faded Mount Mansfield trails, and Mount Greylock.

After three years of skiing and research, often with his teenage daughter and her friends during school vacations, the Waterbury Center, Vt., writer has released a reincarnation of the classic, a 50-ski tour book called “Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast’’ (Appalachian Mountain Club Books).

“As I got underway, I found that virtually everything had changed,’’ said Goodman, 50, who now drives a Toyota Matrix.

Some trails have simply faded away while others have been renamed, rerouted, and lost to development. But others have emerged.

“The big picture is very much what it has always been,’’ he said. “The Northeast is home to some of the best backcountry terrain and ski history anywhere in the country.’’

The new guide book continues to express Goodman’s love of New England ski history and his detailed descriptions of each outing. Gone from those in the original tome are tours like Woodstock, Vermont’s Skyline Trail (“casualty of modern development’’), New Hampshire’s Carter Dome (“fun for snowshoes, but more survival for skiers’’) and a tour in Nancy and Norcross Ponds (“I suffered so you don’t have to’’).

Maine had been a problematic state for Goodman in the past as many of the wild lands are owned by paper companies so trails would come and go with logging. But with the growth of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s 100-Mile Wilderness lodge-to-lodge trails and the Maine Huts and Trails system, “Maine suddenly is emerging as the hut-to-hut ski capital of the East,’’ he said.

Goodman believes in a backcountry skiing resurgence because of better equipment, more detailed maps and guide books, and the homogenization of the ski industry. “I think a wilderness experience feeds your soul,’’ he said.