On May 7, Black Diamond went public in a reverse merger with backpack manufacturer Gregory Mountain Products. BD Ski Category Director Thomas Laakso offers his perspective.
Tennessee native Ben Clark left home at age 19, delaying his career path as an architect to follow his dream: to climb Mount Everest. Four years later he stood on the summit and wondered what to do next...
Backcountry Magazine editor, writer and photographer Drew Pogge's feature "The Ghost Coast: Labrador's Torngat Mountains" was recently awarded first place in the independent journalist category of the 14th Annual Northern Lights Awards...
Wind ripped across the summit of Powder Mountain today. But the weather, no matter how hard it raged, couldn't keep up with our crew of gear testers...
Coffee, 250 pairs of skis, bluebird skies and six inches of new snow. Needless to say, the first official day of the 2010 Backcountry Gear Test Week started off right...
Our office was flooded with entries for the 2nd Annual Backcountry Magazine 2009 Mammut Photo Contest, and it wasn't easy to choose a single winner. Fortunately, Mammut provided five prizes to give away to the most worthy shutterbugs. See the winning shots and read an interview with grand-prize winner Kevin Olsen.
We had come off Allensby Pass and were skiing along the hillside on Allensby Creek when it happened. Albizzi was in the lead and picking his way rather high on the hill when we heard a rumble above us. A cloud of snow came rolling down the mountainside heading straight for us...
The non-profit organization Save Our Canyons (SOC) has been fighting for the protection of wilderness outside of Salt Lake City for over three decades. Formed in 1973 in opposition to the opening and expansion of Snowbird Ski Resort, the group continues to fight commercialization and development - most currently Snowbasin's avalanche training classes and Alta's proposed ski lifts on Flagstaff Mountain.
On August 4th, 2009, American ski mountaineer Dave Watson became the first person to ski the bottleneck and upper shoulder of Pakistan's 28,251-foot K2. German mountaineer Hans Kammerlander may have skied from the summit in 2001 (accounts vary), but for Watson, the accomplishment wasn't about claiming a first descent. "I was fully under the impression that he [Kammerlander] had already skied it," he says. "My main goal was to try and ski up high on the shoulder. To make turns up there would be the raddest thing I could do."
Every March, the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse sends skiers the 40 miles from Crest Butte to Aspen, Colorado. This past March, Conor Hagen, with help from Andrew Kastning, directed and produced the film Beyond Midnight: The Grand Traverse. The film debuted on August 22 at the Center for the Arts in Crested Butte. More dates will be announced shortly.
