Backcountry Magazine’s Gear Test Week, our annual pilgrimage to Powder Mountain, Utah, kicks off tomorrow. More than 40 testers will evaluate some 200-plus skis and 100 AT and telemark boots for five days to create next fall’s 2015 Gear Guide. Here’s how the first day unfolded.
Butte Bound: GORE-TEX U.S. Ski Mountaineering Nationals Head To Crested Butte
After more than a decade at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, the U.S. Ski Mountaineering Nationals are headed to Crested Butte Mountain Resort, Colo. on March 14-16. “We’ve wanted to mix it up and move it to a new venue,” says race director and Team Crested Butte skimo athlete Bryan Wickenhauser. “It’s great to give the sport some exposure in a new area.”
Know The Snow: Inside Project Zero’s Video Contest
“We’re trying to create a new norm that really embraces avalanche safety skills,” says Tom Murphy, director of operations at the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE), of the Project Zero initiative. Project Zero aims to reduce the number of avalanche fatalities to zero. And the initiative’s latest project is a community-sourced video contest and education campaign called Know The Snow.
Call your doctor: 2014 Silverton Sickdays Photo Gallery
For the third year, Bent Gate Mountaineering of Golden, Colo. took over Silverton Mountain for three days of private skiing, backcountry touring and partying. And it sounds way better than the flu. We sent Colorado-based photographer Casey Day to the Silverton infermary and he came back with this photo gallery.
The Future Of Telemark? TwentyTwo Designs’ New NTN Binding
Is telemark dying? Chris Valiante and the binding builders at TwentyTwo Designs say no chance. That’s why they recently announced a licensing agreement with Rottefella in order to build their own NTN bindings. New NTN options from TwentyTwo may not be available for at least another year, but the Driggs, Idaho-based company was offering a […]
A Decade Of Powderwhores: BC Filmers Prepare to Turn 10
In 2005, brothers Noah and Jonah Howell released their first ski film, PW05, under the name of Powderwhore Productions. What PW05 lacked in high-budget heli flyovers, it made up for with soul, soul and shredding. Nine years later, they’re still skiing hard and making annual films that bleed the same spirit of their original flicks. […]
The Elegant Path: Behind the Backstory
To illustrate our monthly reader-submitted essay, “Backstory,” we send the selected story off to any number of freelance artists not fully knowing what we’ll get. “The piece was very esoteric,” contributing illustrator Jamie Givens writes on his Studio Peril blog about Todd Krankkala’s January 2014 essay. “[It] described the author’s feeling of flow as he […]
Video: One-Legged Shred
“I want to show people that it’s possible to be good at skiing if you have a disability,” says Vasu Sojitra (“That Guy,” BCM 93). Well, good seems like an understatement, and disability seems like a relative term. Vasu crushes it, as shown in this early-season edit. He and his friends at T-Bar Films produced it […]
Remembering Magnus Kastengren
Extreme skier Magnus Kastengren died Sunday in a fall on New Zealand’s Mt. Cook (12,316 ft.). The Swedish ski mountaineer was skiing near the summit ridge at 3,700 meters when he fell, reports the New Zealand newswire The Press. Kastengren was on the mountain with friend and longtime ski partner Andreas Fransson. The pair had […]
From the Ashes: Sun Valley Trekking’s Coyote Yurts Rise Up
“The two yurts, they got completely nuked,” Sun Valley Trekking Co-owner Joe St. Onge says about their Smoky Mountain Coyote Yurts, which were burned in Idaho’s Beaver Creek Wildfire over the summer. But the yurts have been resurrected. “I headed straight there after the Teton season wound down and spent the last two weeks with […]
