Backcountry Magazine January 2015 – Risk vs. Reward Issue

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This January, Backcountry Magazine is offering a crash course on how to stay safe this winter. From life-saving skills to simple-but-effective tools and tricks, the safety issue covers what it takes to get out there and back again.

But first, Adam Howard heads to Cortina and Asolo, Italy, where he investigates the Parisotto family’s 76-year-old boot-making business, SCARPA. And while they thrived through the transition from leather to plastic boots, will SCARPA remain the AT and telemark forerunner?

And leading up to the second-annual Backcountry Basecamp tour, which focuses on safety and the love of getting out there, this issue expands upon our mainstay “Mountain Skills” department. We’re putting all our safety-focused content under the Basecamp name, including the most underrated skills and the newest tools to keep you safer.

Also inside: Devon O’Neil discloses how trees can predict avalanches, and Biff America tells us why we shouldn’t trust Shakespeare.

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: DOUG STOUP: THE ICEMAN
From playing NCAA soccer to a successful modeling and acting career to being the top polar explorer of his time, Doug Stoup is an enigma. Host Adam Howard recently journeyed to Antarctica with Stoup and their conversation ranges from Doug’s personal training of A-list Hollywood actors to near death experiences; adventures with Doug Coombs; and taking novice skiers to the South Pole.
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: TELE MIKE RUSSELL: TURNS FOR ALL
Tele Mike Russell grew up as a sharecropper’s son in Delaware before attending college and becoming an executive in the pharmaceutical industry. Then he watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center and decided he’d better follow another path, this one to skiing in Colorado, where he’d go on to find a family in the National Brotherhood of Skiers and help found its backcountry program.
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: ERIC BLEHM: MEET YOUR HEROES
Eric Blehm’s roots in snowboarding run deep. He started riding during the sport’s infancy, and after college became an editor at Transworld SNOWboarding Magazine. Years later, he was in a lift line when a fellow rider saw the “Craig Kelly is my Co-Pilot” sticker on his board, and asked Blehm: “Who is Craig Kelly?” He was floored by the notion that there were snowboarders out there who didn’t know who Craig was. And this inspired him to write The Darkest White.
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