This year, we’re releasing a special edition of the Photo Annual for subscribers only, featuring a clean, basement-wall-worthy, light-on-the-text cover. High schooler Jake Teuton is the subject of the cover shot—it’s a stunning Bruno Long photo from the Selkirk backcountry. Jake didn’t know he was BCM’s new coverboy, at least until he inadvertently ruined the planned surprise unveiling of the cover […]

In the December issue, contributor David Rocchio travels to Central Europe’s High Tatras, located in the far north of Slovakia. Decades after any Soviet presence, all is well in the land of Dracula, and a growing adventure sports community, far off most Western skiers’ radars, has taken root. The author calls it a “frontier” where a lack of local language proficiency can leave you on your own. But with the right guide, you can get into the High Tatras, which are heavily protected in winter. Once there, Rocchio says, “You have entire mountain valleys to yourself.” Here’s the beta on how to get there.

Last Saturday, November 9, more than 150 skiers and snow enthusiasts converged on North Conway, N.H. for the third edition of the Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop (ESAW). Having doubled enrollment since its inception, the full-day event brought in presentations from some of the most revered avalanche experts in the country. “This third year seems to be the breakthrough,” says Chris Joosen, lead snow ranger on Mt. Washington, of the turnout.

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 […]

Casey Day has a simple goal—to stop suicide. Seven years ago, Day’s friend J.T. Fielder, took his own life in the Colorado backcountry. After that, Casey, a ski photographer from Silver Plume, Colorado, decided he didn’t want anyone else to go through the suffering that he and his friends had experienced. So along with a […]

“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 […]

At nine-months old, Vasu Sojitra contracted septicemia, an infection that caused a blood clot in his right leg. “So they had to amputate it,” Vasu says. “I don’t remember it. I’m just completely used to it…it’s a lifestyle now.” Skiing is part of Vasu’s lifestyle, too, and he skis the backcountry 20 or so days […]

The sled is piercing into my hips. I’m six and a half miles into Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness heading toward Boundary Creek Yurt, and from my waist, I’m pulling 40-pounds of supplies. It is rhythmic and almost monotonous…and painful. Why did we bring so many beers? I glance up at the High Uintas cloaked in snow. A light wind dusts powder off the peaks, and I gaze farther into the distance. Oh yeah…that’s why. I’m not drinking tea after we shred those stashes.

“There’s the act of skiing, but then there’s the whole act of discovery,” Andrew McLean says in the opening segment of Powderwhore’s new film, “Elevation.” “There’s just this sense of exploration that you can’t get anywhere else,” McLean adds. And that statement holds true for much of “Elevation.”