After five years, the standing speed record for a car-to-car trip on Washington’s Mount Rainier (14,411 ft.) has been broken. On Monday, May 20, skimo racers Nick Elson and Eric Carter made the round trip in four hours, 19 minutes and 12 seconds, more than 20 minutes faster than the previous record.
Backstory: Dead Dog’s Tidings
The morning sun is a welcome presence, its first few rays shooting at me over the ridge to the east. I huddle against the mountain, trying to maximize my surface area for sunlight while somehow minimizing my exposure to the wind. The howling wind dies down for a moment and I revel in the sweet, […]
2014 Backcountry Shred Test
Up here at 9,000-plus feet, the air is a little thinner and the mountains are a little gnarlier. We’ve been running our annual snowboard test at Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR) and in the surrounding backcountry for the last five years. Here, we have the ultimate testing grounds: the inbounds terrain spans park and pipe […]
Backstory: The Dog
I didn’t want him. I wasn’t ready for him, either. I was a 25-year-old dirtbag living in a camper. It was early in the winter and, already, I was seeing the folly of my camper-living dream. I was trying to make it work with a girl, but living on the road and ski touring every […]
Lift-Accessed Guiding, Spearhead Huts and Hamburgers: An Interview with ACMG President Keith Reid
“I kinda wear a few hats,” Keith Reid says quietly between sips of coffee. The Whistler-based mountain guide is a senior examiner for the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. He’s the ACMG’s President, too. And beginning this winter, he became supervisor and lead guide for Whistler/Blackcomb’s new resort-accessed touring program, run buy Extremely Canadian. Dehydrated and […]
Solitude’s Backtracks program 10 years after….
While the number of resorts offering a guided backcountry experience continues to grow, one program remains unique: At Utah’s Solitude Resort patrollers literally cross the line, doubling as guides in their Backtracks program. It started in 2003 and in early February of that year editor Adam Howard joined line patroller and lead guide Ian Reddell […]
Backstory: A Unique Ski Partner
I hit Lake Ediza around dusk and set up camp on the north side of the lake. After salami, cheese, and beer, I turned in for the night. A full moon shone. I would have liked to stay up to admire it, but I needed to get an early start the next morning to summit […]
Remembering the fallen of Colorado’s Sheep Creek Avalanche
There’s nothing that drives home just how small the backcountry community is more than a tragedy. So when I heard the vague radio report on Sunday morning of Saturday’s catastrophic avalanche that claimed five young men near Loveland, Colo., there was little doubt a text or phone call was soon to follow. By noon, there it […]
