We’d been bushwacking through dense pines for over an hour when we finally reached the snowline. Mt. Lassen loomed thousands of feet above us, patchier than it should have been after a lackluster winter across the West. It was mid-May, and volcano season was upon us. As with any good spring ski mission, it would involve a little bit of everything, smothered with a heavy dose of patience.

Sammy Carlson is no stranger to the spotlight. But after competing at freeskiing’s highest stage, the Oregon native now feels most inspired filming far from distractions in the mountains of British Columbia. There, while working on his current project, Resilience, he’s continuing to define what’s possible in powder.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed today, July 20, that ski mountaineering will be added to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy. InsideTheGames.biz reported the news from the Main Press Centre in Tokyo, where the IOC has gathered in advance of the Summer Games. This news comes after skimo premiered in the 2020 Youth Winter Olympics in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was officially proposed by the IOC executive board in June. To celebrate the news, we’re republishing a story written by Backcountry’s Adam Howard from 2014, when the IOC granted provisional recognition to the International Ski Mountaineering Federation, a first step toward the inclusion of skimo as an Olympic event.

As a teenager on a road trip with her father, a Sofia Jaramillo borrowed his Nikon point-and-shoot to capture scenes along the California coast. She pointed at a lighthouse and, she says, “out of pure magic, I got this image that was composed perfectly. It was like opening a present.” That moment, along with influence from her journalist mother, helped shape a photography career for Jaramillo. Since those early days, Jaramillo spent time in Jackson, Wyoming, in 2015 for an internship at the Jackson Hole News and Guide. After an assignment to photograph a trip up the Grand Teton, she began focusing on adventure photography and, after a few more years of freelancing and newspaper work elsewhere, she returned to Jackson in 2018 to dive into outdoor photography, all while capturing, embracing and advocating for diversity in the outdoors.

On a snowy January weekend, I took my AIARE Level 1 course with Petra Cliffs’ co-owner Steve Charest, who has been an AIARE course provider since 2009. Local Covid restrictions made this year’s courses different from any others Charest has taught over the past decade, and Charest’s Vermont-based courses were unlike others in the country. Throughout the winter, the state had some of the most restrictive regulations in the country.